Self-leadership is often understood as you forcing yourself to do things that you don’t really want to do. Instead of starting with grinding things out based purely on your will-power, you should start with figuring out who and what you really love.
Leadership, generally speaking, is a confusing thing. Part of the reason why people are confused is that we have one word that is used to mean a lot of really different things.
We also have a number of competing narratives in our mind about what a leader is, and whether leaders are generally good, bad or morally neutral. The sad fact of the matter is that when surveyed, only about 1/3rd of employees stated that they trust their leaders at work (35% to be specific).
Leader: Person, Place or Thing?
One of the things that we need to consider first is what do we mean when we say leadership.
It is totally possible to have someone who is a “leader” who is not leading, nor are they gifted in leadership.
It’s also possible to have someone who is not gifted in leadership, not a leader (in the organizational sense) but is totally leading. It’s like a cruel trap ala Dune “When is a gift not a gift?” – or in our case “When is a leader not a leader?”
We use the same term “leader/ leadership” to describe an innate attribute, a position within an organization, a state of being, an activity or a skill set. No wonder we get confused.
Also, we really don’t know what makes someone a leader, except for the fact that they have followers. The reality is people who have studied leadership, especially in the western context, where there’s a fascination with the topic bordering on obsession, and for every example or attribute of a leader that you find, you just as easily find the opposite.
For every strong outspoken aggressive take charge type of leader there is another quiet introverted soft soft-spoken leader who demands the respect of the people around them. For every Teddy Roosevelt there is an Abraham Lincoln, and for every Elon Musk tweetstorm there is a Warren Buffett who has never tweeted and has lived a relatively quiet life (3 kids, 1 wife, no asperations for interplanetary travel).
Leaders defy categorization, and the main attribute among them being the presence of followers.
Leader: Culture and Context
Leadership is dictated both by culture and context. This is why we see some leaders thrive in a certain environments, and then struggle greatly in others.
Many men who are very aggressive and authoritative in the office can also simultaneously be passive and unengaged in the home. They would never think of showing up at the office, plopping down in a lounge chair and play on their phone for the next two hours with their feet on the coffee table, but for some reason that’s fair game in the house. Context controls everything.
Consider Dwight D. Eisenhower the general. Supreme commander of the Allied Forces in World War II. Suffered with his men. Understood leadership and motivation. Brilliant strategist. Motivator of men. Fearless.
And consider Dwight D. Eisenhower the president. Known for hunting and fishing trips. Confusing speeches. Considered a “do-nothing” president in his day. An unwillingness to fight politically, his effectiveness was limited (for an interesting article look at this University of Virginia article) and he didn’t speak out authoritatively on some of the hottest issues of his day.
Context made all the difference. Brilliant general. Mediocre president (although with time passing, he looks better and better, but that might just be the comparison to recent presidents…).
Culture also makes a huge difference in real and perceived leadership potential.
American’s love bold leaders. We love dramatic speeches. We love the great man myth. And that leadership style just doesn’t work as well in today’s multi-cultural, fast changing world. There’s just too many factors, too much information and too much complexity for a single person to be able to comprehend let alone engage meaningfully.
Asian cultures have a different set of expectations on their leaders, which on its face seems very different from the American expectation. Cultivating an awareness of the whole and listening is prioritized over being the person who talks first and talks loudest.
Self-Leadership: Who and What
Self leadership is being intentional and thoughtful about what you decide you’re going to do with your energy. It’s not being reactive, it’s being proactive. It’s not being a victim of your circumstances but instead working within your current situation to move toward the vision of what you want. One of the key prerequisites of self-leadership is establishing a compelling vision.
Vision is the ability to consider something that doesn’t exist (yet), that you want. Or state of being that you’re focused on achieving that does not exist (yet). The presence of the “yet” is important, because the difference between what “is” and what “could be” is what gives you motivation.
This is the challenge of self leadership and this is where love comes in. We like the idea of discipline and and generating willpower out of thin air. We will just generate the power out of nowhere.
The reality is that we have passions and desires and loves that generate emotion, and that emotion generates willpower. Practice that willpower enough, and you’ll generate something else – habits – but that’s a post for a different day.
The presence of those loves are the first clue and the first energy source of self-leadership. Considering why you do things and what you’re doing and who you’re doing them for creates a cocktail gives you emotional energy needed to take action. The worst thing you can do in this situation is to amuse yourself. Distract yourself. Busy yourself. Doing things you can tolerate instead of demanding that you figure out what you really love. We live in state of partial engagement that means we never really pour ourselves into much of our lives, but we also never really risk much pain. It’s a bad compromise that will only leave you frustrated and bitter.
Self-Leadership: Doing the Prep Work
First consider your WHO.
Who are you taking this self-leadership for? It can be for yourself, I can be for someone that you care about, but I’d recommend considering someone else. Many people who do not have the intrinsic motivation to become fit for their own benefit, but will do so because they care about their family. They take care of themselves because they care about other people and they want those people to have a relationship with them for a long-time. This 3-minute video captures that idea of how your who matters (good luck not tearing up if you’re a parent):
Many people who are not willing to sacrifice for their own benefit are willing to go through hell and high water in order to help and serve the people that they love. This can get out of balance, but identifying who are the people that you love the most in your life, and how you can love them best serves as a powerful source of motivation to take self-leadership.
Second consider what you LOVE.
Considering what you love to do is also an essential foundational building block and practicing self-leadership. Making yourself do things you hate just for the sake of building self-discipline is self-defeating. If don’t enjoy something then you need to think about why you’re doing it.
Don’t get me wrong there are many things that are hard to do initially that are well worth it, but having a clear vision of WHY you are doing it becomes the driving force for your choices today. This isn’t a new idea, it’s just beginning with the end in mind.
This is having the eternal perspective.
It’s considering what do you want people to say at your funeral.
But the beauty of this exercise is to think about what other things that you do or can do that will move you toward that end.
Think about what do you want people to say at your funeral – this man made a ton of money (which will all go to other people now) or this man was a pillar of the community who cared about his family, nieghbors and even people he never met personally?
It gets back to to the core questiosn of what do you want your life to stand for? Too much of the time we’re distracted. We’re distracted and we’re just trying to get through the week instead of trying to think about what it is we would really love to do.
I’m not telling you to quit your job. I’m not telling you to do anything insane. I am telling you this to start really considering what it is that you love to do. That is going to be one of the first steps and determining what it is you really enjoy, and it’s going to be choosing to prioritize that. Making sure that there is some aspect of things that you love in your day-to-day life is something that is going to energize you, and help start to build the idea of self-leadership.
Leading yourself is much easier when you know why you’re doing it, what you’re pushing toward, and who you’re doing it for. Without those motivational foundational pieces anything else is just going to be pushing cart uphill. Pushing boulders up hills only to have them roll back down again is pointless (ala the torture of Sisyphus for you classics lovers out there) – unless you know WHY you’re doing it. Viktor Frankl rightly said “Those who have a ‘why’ to live, can bear with almost any ‘how’” – and I would add that those who have a ‘who’ can bear just as diligently, maybe even moreso.
The temptation is thinking we can skip the WHY and just get to DOING. But being self-disciplined and showing self-leadership we realize that discipline always has an reason. It always has a focus, and there’s always a WHY and that WHY helps you to choose to do things that are difficult.
Why you would choose things that are painful in the short term? We as a culture we generally admire discipline, but we need to have a mental and emotional discipline to pause and consider who, why, and where we want to end up before we start taking action.
Self-Leadership: Conclusion
Self-leadership builds on itself. The more you are used to practicing self-leadership, the more you will be able to exercise that self-leadership. Self-leadership begins as an ambition, becomes a skill, develops into a mindset, and ultimately is a way of life.
By starting with what you love and who you love, you will be able to make self-leadership easier to start, easier to persevere in when it is difficult, and easier to exercise for the long run.
If you don’t have clear goals, clear loves or someone you want to serve; if you don’t know what it is you’re really passionate about, if you don’t know who you’re doing this for then you are setting yourself up for failure. Self-leadership without vision is just self-focus and will ultimately be self-defeating.