Why Self-Leadership Precedes Team Leadership
When you think of leadership, what do you think of? Do you think about how you lead your team or organization? Are you mostly considering a management style? Well, at Building Champions, we believe that self-leadership precedes team leadership—which impacts your organizational influence. So before you can lead anyone else, you must be leading yourself well.
In this article, we unpack the four key areas of self-leadership so that you can strengthen your well-being, create a compelling vision for your career, get clarity on your role to enhance your job performance and increase your overall productivity. Healthy leadership starts with you!
4 Key Areas of Self-Leadership
Well-being. It’s a component of leadership—because how you show up matters. Your life, your words and your actions impact others. You may not think you have much influence, but you do. And there’s a ripple effect because the people you impact will impact others. And how you show up in life and leadership will be directly influenced by your own self-leadership. So are you taking care of yourself? Are you making an effort to get healthy in all areas of well-being: physical, mental, social and spiritual? It can be easy to lose focus and drift in an area of life that you once considered important, but if you create a plan and set appropriate boundaries, you can stay on track, lead yourself well and, in turn, have a positive impact upon the people you care most about. And that’s a legacy worth fighting for and leading yourself toward.
Career Vision. Are you clear on your leadership purpose? Do you know what you do and why you do it? Are the values of your organization in alignment with your own personal values? Without a career vision, it can be easy to drift in and out of jobs, organizations and roles. But if you spend time identifying your convictions, your strengths, your growth areas and the unique combination of skills and traits that you possess, you’ll be able to better identify who you are, what you want and where you want to go. We believe that every employee asks: Do I belong? Who am I becoming? What am I building? And if you answer those questions for yourself, you’ll be able to create a career vision so clear that you’ll know exactly why you trade your 40+ hours each week.
Performance. Do you ever feel like your workday gets away from you? Like you had the best intentions to get things done, but allowed interruptions and distractions to derail your day? That’s why you need to identify your high-payoff activities. What are the activities that make the biggest difference in your work, your team and your organization? What can you do and what should you delegate? Do you have goals established with achievable deadlines? Are your high-payoff activities tied to a goal? If you get clarity on your role and stay focused on the tasks that make the biggest contribution to the overall success of your organization, then you’ll not only experience an increase in your job performance, but you’ll also feel more engaged in your role.
Productivity. As leaders, we often feel like we must be accessible and approachable at all times, but you can (and you should) set boundaries. If you’re always in reactionary mode, then you’re not leading yourself well. By setting healthy boundaries around your time, you’ll be able to create habits that allow you to get the most done each day. And by focusing on your stated goals and the routines that make you successful, you’ll find yourself to be more productive than you’ve ever been. And boundaries shouldn’t be so rigid that you don’t allow flexibility when needed, but they should be considered important so that you’re able to work in a way that makes you the best employee, person and leader you can be.
How you lead yourself sets the stage for all other aspects of leadership. We know it’s vital to the health of an individual, team and organization. That’s why we’re so excited to announce that we’ve packaged our self-leadership coaching frameworks into three digital courses. We recommend bundling all three courses to get the most out of your investment and to best grow in your self-leadership. The new eLearning product drops next week, but you can learn more about it here. This framework has helped thousands of leaders like you and we’re confident it will help thousands more.
