Are you making it hard for you to be successful…??
You will probably have heard me banging on about leadership, team effectiveness and team performance. I’ll have said how it's really important that we as leaders, get the best out of our teams #blahblahblah. What you won't hear me bang on about so much, but I really do care about, is our own performance and our own effectiveness. Did you know there's a term for it? It's called self-leadership. It's really not talked about that much, but actually, it's really important, particularly for those of us with success on our list of goals.
Let me give you an example. When I went through my Royal Navy training (the second one) to become an officer (yes, I've done two sets of basic training), they told us that we shouldn't expect to be able to lead other people if we couldn't lead ourselves. Whaaaaaat?
What does that even mean?
Well, according to Charles C Manz (1986), this is what self-leadership is:
“A process through which individuals control their own behaviours, influence themselves, and develop intrinsic motivation by employing cognitive and behavioural strategies to achieve personal and professional goals.”
Blimey, that’s a bit academic blah, isn’t it?
What it actually means for me is you are as good at getting the best out of yourselves as you are about getting the best out of other people. Simples!
If you want to get really granular about “What does self-leadership mean?” in 2002 Houghton and Neck devised 9 ingredients of self-leadership. Here’s my take on them:
Self-observation – you’re able to see what you’re up to and if it’s helpful or harmful to your success.
Self-goal setting – you know where you’re headed, and it’s a meaningful destination, so you direct your hard labour accordingly
Self-reward – you provide cheeky little treats to yourself (spa day, anyone??) to both celebrate success but also reinforce behaviours you do want
Self-punishment – you don’t dig out your cane or anything! But you’re able to have that honest conversation with yourself when you messed up.
Self-cueing – you tee yourself up for success by, e.g. lining up the sports kit the night before an early morning run
Natural rewards – you know what makes you smile/tick and you use those things to help you do hard things in a way that doesn’t feel that hard
Self-talk – you don’t have a ‘Nasty Negative Nelly” nagging (oooh alliteration!) at you all the time in your own head but instead have a balanced voice that acts as both Yoda and cheerleader.
Visualising Successful Performance – you ‘see’ yourself doing those hard things well and you feeling good about it!
Evaluating beliefs and assumptions – you question any stories or beliefs you have and make sure they’re fit for purpose and not causing any undue harm.
That’s a lot isn’t it? In my experience, we're a bit hit-and-miss with these. We do some of them sometimes. There are others we look at and think, "Nah, not for me, thanks." And even the ones we're decent at, we're probably not nailing them as well as we could be. It's like having a toolkit where half the tools are rusty, some are missing altogether, and the rest you're using to open paint tins when actually they're meant for something else entirely.
Creating conditions for success
Could you imagine a member of the Army getting ready to pursue an enemy across a battlefield but having done no preparation for it? They have no proper boots, the wrong gun, zero ammunition, no idea what the enemy's weapons look like, no clue if there are mines and zero air support.
Utterly bonkers, right?
Yet when it comes to getting the best out of ourselves, we often don't do anything to create the conditions for our success. We just expect ourselves to crack on. We figuratively (and sometimes literally) wander onto a live battlefield! And then we're surprised when we don't smash it out of the park. (facepalm)
Spreading the word
So, this month, I have the privilege of bumping my gums about this very important topic to my local networking group. We'll discuss how to recognise how good you are at self-leadership, what you need to do differently about it, and why some of our own psychology might get in the way of executing our self-leadership as successfully as possible.
Topics I'll be touching on
These are some of the topics that I'll be exploring in my ONLE talk this month. Each one plays an important role in effective self-leadership:
Stop relying on willpower
When it comes to tackling difficult tasks, most of us rely on willpower. But willpower is bloody flaky. It's like a muscle that gets tired. Willpower is affected by your emotions, energy levels, how well you've slept, what you've eaten, whether someone cut you up in traffic this morning, and the list goes on.
If it were as simple as forming simple habits and applying a bit of willpower, wouldn't we all be fit, healthy, non-smoking, moderate-drinking paragons of productivity?
Instead of relying on willpower, try tapping into your "why-power" (a concept coined by Viktor Frankl, a Holocaust survivor and psychiatrist). Why-power connects you emotionally to your motivation. It’s the deeper reason behind what you're doing.
Emotions don't weaken why-power, they strengthen it. It's like choosing a salad instead of chips because you're focused on your health and how you want to feel tomorrow, not just because you're trying to white-knuckle your way through a diet.
Mind the gap – your self-concept
One of the most powerful frameworks I work with is the self-concept model. This model looks at the gulf between our self-image (who we think we are) and our ideal self (who we think we should be).
There's a lot of "should-ing" going on around us. We're influenced on our ideal self by everything we see on social media – because everyone's doing really well all the time and they're super successful, right?
The wider the gap between your self-image and ideal self, the lower your self-esteem. And when your self-esteem takes a hit, you're not in the right mindset or emotional state to lead yourself effectively.
Stop "should-ing" on yourself
Like I said, there's a lot of "should-ing" going on around us. "I should be more productive." "I should have more clients." "I should be further along by now." “I should be a paragon of productivity”….
Every time you "should" on yourself, you're negatively judging and widening the gap between your current self and an idealised version. It's a form of self-criticism that rarely motivates positive change. Instead, it tends to leave us feeling “less than” and stuck.
Step on that sh1t right now. Notice when you're doing it and try replacing "should" with "could" or "want to", or, even better, “choose to”. It will help you make a shift from feeling obligation to choice. That feels a whole lot better.
Sometimes, we need a different conversation with ourselves or someone else to help us understand what's really going on, rather than just piling on more "shoulds."
Know the difference between resilience and endurance
There's an important distinction between these two concepts that many of us miss.
Endurance is pushing through despite the pain, gritting your teeth, and bearing it. But if you don't schedule in downtime, your body will force you to take it, and that could result in burnout, breakdown, or chronic fatigue.
Resilience, on the other hand, is about bouncing back AND learning from challenges. It's not just about how long you can push yourself, but how well you recover, adapt, and come back stronger.
The strongest self-leaders know when to push through and when to step back. They understand that sustainable performance comes from balance, not perpetual grind.
Want to learn more?
If you are interested in this topic, I’ve got a few options for you.
You can see how good at self-leadership you already are - I've got a cheeky little PDF you can download.
Or if the gulf between self-image and ideal self resonated with you, there's a resource you can download which steps you through an assessment process to figure out how wide apart those things are and what you might want to do differently about them to be more in line with your ideal self.
Download Self-Leadership Resources
Or even better, book a chinwag with me and we can pick from a whole smorgasbord of solutions that can help you become a better self-leader.
