Everyone needs to be a Self-Leader

Image Credit: Imagebase.net 

Self-leadership is the ability of one to manage their lives in such a way that it brings about positive outcome in their lives. When you practice self-leadership, you become your own leader as well as your own follower. A self-leader strives to lead themselves to personal development and excellence. One of the advantages of self-leadership is that, a self-leader is able to keep constant supervision of their improvement and/or relapse as they spend most of their time with themselves. The reason why I use and highlight the word, ‘most’ rather than ‘all’ is because most people ‘sleepwalk’ throughout their existence and as such, are not aware of how they spend their time. They have little if no control of their lives.

It is easy to influence or to be influenced by the person one spends their time with and therefore with the ever-presence of one’s self we tend to shape our lives with our thoughts and beliefs. For any leader to be an effective leader, they need to first be effective in leading themselves. Until one is able to successfully lead themselves, the chances of them having effectual leadership of others is nearly impossible as the cliché goes, ‘you cannot give what you do not have.’

In order to achieve effective self-leadership, one needs to go through the process of inner influence first otherwise the individual might be easily influenced by others in which will result in them being puppet leaders. A puppet leader is a person who is supposedly leading others but with no control of the situation - other people who are more influential or mentally stronger than them will make decisions and lead through them. Self-leadership helps one to know their “stand” and understand themselves better and assists us to exercise self-motivation. It is one of the tools needed to pursue our individual visions and goals as it includes self-control and self-knowledge.

While it important to celebrate and encourage self-leadership in ourselves, we also need to be aware of narcissism tendency as these two are usually confused for one another. A narcissist is a person who is excessively fascinated in themselves. The “word” comes from a Greek myth about a proud young man named, Narkissos, who fell in love with his reflection which in end became his undoing. People with narcissism behaviour tend to put themselves above anyone else and have no regard for others whilst on the other hand, a person who “possesses” is effective self-leader is not too independent and arrogant; they are aware that it takes a good leader and each individual player to effectively achieve teamwork. An effective self-leadership balanced with effective group-leadership can benefit both the individual and the organisation collectively.

An effective self-leader is a person who “values” their individualism and therefore are more likely to encourage and value the identity of each individual follower or in this aspect, employee. This will encourage employees to showcase their unique skills and therefore contributing towards the development of others and the organisation as well.

The external leader (leadership of others) within us needs to recognise and appreciate the internal leader in order for the two “characters” not to clash with each therefore resulting in self-conflict.