Self Development: Lead Yourself Before You Can Lead Others
By: O'Reilly Media
Tags: Self Development, Leadership Development, Self-awareness, Leadership

Self Development: Lead Yourself Before You Can Lead Others

Editor’s Note: Before you can lead others, you must be able to lead yourself. As a senior executive and expert on the Lean mindset, Jean Dahl reviews the skills and abilities that one needs in order to become a leader that people want to follow. We’d love to hear from you about what you think about this piece.

You must be able to lead yourself before you can lead others. The skills, abilities, and competencies discussed in this piece — self-development, having a bias toward action, meeting challenges head-on, to name a few — will provide you with the strategies and insight to do just that. As we discuss them, you’ll find that many of these skills, abilities, and competencies are quite interrelated and difficult to separate from each other or talk about in isolation. Becoming self-led means being a well-rounded person — someone who is emotionally, physically, intellectually, spiritually, and socially balanced across both their personal and professional dimensions. Let’s take a look at how you can develop the expertise to become a leader that people want to follow.

Keep in mind that change doesn’t happen overnight. This is a journey that will last a lifetime. And don’t beat yourself up or give up when you stray from this path. At any point in time, you can find your way back and continue your journey.

Believing and Trusting in Yourself Through Self-Development

To be a leader that people want to follow, you must offer them the stability and security that comes from truly believing and trusting in yourself. And yes, people are looking for true leaders to believe in and follow, now more than ever.

However, a leader cannot teach what they cannot do. “Do as I say and not as I do” does not apply here. You must develop your skills and abilities before you can teach, develop, mentor, coach, and lead others, which means you must first be able to trust and believe in yourself. To accomplish this, you must dedicate yourself to the lifelong pursuit of perfecting your craft as a leader. Leadership is an art that’s situational and adaptive and requires creativity.

The pursuit of perfection is an elusive and ultimately unobtainable goal. However, it’s the mechanism that drives you to become a seeker who challenges the status quo. It must become the motivating factor and common thread throughout your life and your leadership journey.

Leaders often experience a “good to great” moment when they’re well prepared and are at the right place at the right time. At that moment, they find themselves at the juncture where preparedness meets opportunity. Some call this “luck,” but luck has very little to do with it. Continuously practicing and honing your craft through the pursuit of perfection means that when an opportunity presents itself, you are ready to face the challenge head-on. To an outsider looking in, a great leader makes it appear easy to lead well. However, that statement couldn’t be further from the truth and actually creates the wrong impression of how difficult it truly is to become an effective leader.

Practicing the craft of leadership is difficult because there are no canned answers; leadership is situational. What worked well in one challenging situation may not work at all in the next one you encounter. You must take that leap of faith and develop the skills and abilities to respond and face each challenge while you continuously develop, improve, and evolve your ability to respond to others in the world around you. Therefore, it is crucial you believe in yourself and your capacity to face the disruptive forces that are all around you, dedicating yourself to always be learning and growing as a leader. “Practice makes perfect!”

And no one can do it for you. Self-development and continuous learning must become a part of your daily routine. Reflection and introspection are two important tools for learning to believe and trust in yourself. It’s imperative that you get to know yourself well and that you “check in” every day to figure out how you feel, what you’re thinking, and what’s on your mind. I’ve developed the habit of getting up early to take advantage of the stillness the morning offers. Before the hustle and bustle of the day begins, I sit quietly with myself and meditate for at least 15 minutes. I clear my mind and just breathe, taking deep, full breaths from my diaphragm. I push everything but me out of it so that I can concentrate on my body and mind to figure out what is going on inside of me.

I’ve found that practicing daily meditation helps ensure my breathing fills my body with oxygen, which helps me think and act more efficiently. Whether you realize it or not, your mind, body, and soul are all connected and need to be in alignment. Being “in touch” with yourself is very important, because it impacts how you function throughout your day. Emotions, mood, temperament: all come directly from what is going on in your body. And don’t kid yourself: if you are in pain or chronically stressed, it will show on the outside.

Take the time to reflect, and come up with questions that help you to understand who you are and how you relate to yourself. Also, make sure to think about the things you’ve learned and any insights you’ve gained. I suggest keeping a journal to record your findings so you can refer back to it later — this helps to facilitate awareness of how you respond, both mentally and physically, to different situations and allows you to use those insights in the pursuit of continuous learning and improvement. So use the 15 minutes after you meditate to answer and record your responses, then periodically reflect back on them to ensure you are learning and growing.

Developing a Healthy Mind and Body

Whether you’re aware of it or not, your followers are watching you. So if your own life is a mess (either personally or professionally, or even both), why would people want to follow you as a leader? Leading a chaos-filled life doesn’t inspire confidence in your followers.

Eliminating Chaos

Have you ever known someone that leaves you feeling physically, emotionally, or intellectually drained or exhausted to the point that all you want to do is go take a nap after you’ve spent some time with them? That’s a sure sign of a toxic person or one-sided relationship. On the other hand, have you ever spent time with someone and found that, after the interaction, you both felt mutually energized, uplifted, and supported?

We all have relationships in which the energy ebbs and flows. Sometimes you get more than you give, and vice versa. However, when you end up getting the short end of the stick more often than not in your interactions with a particular person, then it’s time to examine how healthy that relationship is for both of you.

As a Lean leader, you will be constantly challenged by those around you to solve their problems for them. I just spoke with someone the other day that wanted me to “save” her by figuring out the answer to a challenging situation she was facing. When I tried to shift the dynamic of the conversation to get her to take responsibility for figuring out the solution, she actually got angry with me and walked away; that was totally her prerogative, and I respected her decision to remove herself. However, it did not change the fact that the situation needed to be addressed and resolved, which was still her responsibility. It just wasn’t going to be me who charged in on my white horse and saved her. Those days are long gone for me.

Toyota’s leadership development program intentionally places the company’s potential leaders in just these types of situations. It is up to them to face the challenge head-on and figure it out. Their sensei or teacher is not going to hand them the answer. Each student must take responsibility for figuring out a solution and then present it to the teacher, so that they can together evaluate its potential to solve the problem. That is the responsibility that leadership brings with it. You are inherently a problem solver, because much of what leadership is comes down to how effectively you face and solve the challenges that cross your path.

Keeping a Healthy Body

When working to develop yourself and to create a healthy mind, it’s also important that you assess the health of your body. Many high achievers fall prey to habits that create a self-induced high caused by the endorphins that are naturally released in response to threatening situations.

Many high achievers get caught in this cycle; the more successful you become, the more self-induced pressure you put on yourself to maintain that success. It becomes harder and harder to break away from this destructive cycle.

That’s where good old-fashioned physical exertion can help. You might already have a physical routine that helps keep you centered, but if you don’t, I encourage you to explore physical outlets, like running, dancing, swimming, yoga — whatever appeals to you, and more importantly, whatever you can integrate into your daily life as a habit. The benefits of exercise for mental well-being are well documented, and making exercise a part of your everyday life can help you to work past some of the less desirable mental habits that we sometimes fall into and that can stunt your growth as an effective Lean leader.

Make Time for Yourself

You MUST make time for yourself! “Me time” refreshes your mind and body. Look at your schedule and figure out when you can consistently carve this time out.

Guard your “me time” carefully. It will make you a much calmer and more well-rounded Lean leader, even if it turns out to be only a few hours a week. Take it and DO NOT feel guilty about it. Remember, you are worth it!

Understand Your Own Reality

Finally, you must cultivate an awareness of your reality. For me, this meant seeking enlightenment by learning about and practicing Buddhism. Buddhism helps to foster a state of awareness that develops a connection between your mind, body, and soul.

In Buddhism, enlightenment is achieved by letting go of those things that you cannot change. Once you realize that fretting over things you can’t control results in a lot of wasted time and energy you can never get back, you can begin to focus instead on what’s important — that is, the things that are right in front of you, in the here and now. Being present is a wonderful thing because it allows you to experience all that life has to offer in real time. Buddha taught that enlightenment is achieved by developing a stillness of mind that allows you to peacefully live in the present, without all the self-inflicted noise and drama we create for ourselves

Stillness is achieved through meditation, which, being the overachiever that I am, I thought would be a breeze for me. However, I quickly learned that even sitting still for five minutes was difficult for me. My mind, no matter how hard I tried to focus on my body through deep breathing, would quickly fill and race with ideas, things I needed to do, events of the day, you name it — they were there in my head as I struggled to bring my mind back to focus on my breathing. Over time, though, I found it got easier and easier to sit quietly. First 5 minutes, then 10, then a half hour, and eventually I could sit for as long as I wanted. I ultimately found that about 15 minutes a day works well for me; when I am feeling especially nervous or anxious about a situation in my life, I extend it to about 30 minutes.

I know this might sound odd, but what I discovered was that I actually needed to slow down to move forward. My concentration and overall state of well-being improved, and when I would go for a run, I found myself not replaying the tapes of the day and beating myself up over the things I thought I didn’t handle well. I stopped worrying about things I couldn’t control, the quality of my relationships improved, and I found I attracted healthier people into my life.

One of the most valuable lessons I learned through all of this was that there’s a right way and a wrong way to reflect on the past, and the goal is to “learn forward” — that is, with an eye toward my future, by not dwelling on or repeating the past.

Life is a series of patterns that play out over and over again. If you’re going to change your responses to these patterns and learn forward, you must be able to examine the past and make changes to affect the outcome the next time around. Reflection and introspection give you the tools to do just that.

Developing a Bias Toward Action

One of the most common traits I’ve observed in successful leaders is their bias toward action. They don’t wait around for someone else to solve their problems. They take it upon themselves to take responsibility for the results they achieve in their lives, both professionally and personally, which is complemented by a strong work ethic and a sense of follow-through. But taking action doesn’t necessarily mean rushing to make decisions or trying to quickly handle issues, because without understanding the consequences or thinking through the ramifications of your actions and/or decisions you can end up with an equation for disaster and ultimately experience failure. It means getting off of GO when facing issues or problems and turning your ideas into tangible results that move you and those around you forward. Developing a bias toward action means you’re taking on the challenge of developing a new habit, as well as the habitual behaviors to effectively address the problems, situations, and issues you face in your life.

This means eliminating procrastination from your life. I know firsthand what a struggle this can be: I used to play a self-defeating game of procrastinating about stuff that was important to me, both personally and professionally, so that I could rush in and yet again save the day or myself from whatever peril I was encountering (remember that “savior” complex?). But you should not put off important things. Waiting until the last minute might very well backfire on you, resulting in poor work product or bad decisions being made in a rush.

To be an effective self-led leader, you must first be able to take action yourself to get results. You must lead by example and show others that no matter your formal title or role within an organization, there is no task so small that you can’t perform it yourself to ensure you get results that move things forward. Possessing a bias toward action will make you a leader that people naturally want to follow.

Facing Challenging Situations Head-On

Life is full of adversity, and going through it thinking that you’ll never encounter obstacles is an unrealistic perspective. Many a great leader was born through adversity, because it’s in the face of challenging situations that we either rise to the occasion or fail. Yes, we would all love to float through life without facing our challenges. However, that’s not a realistic expectation. The difference between those who succeed and those who fail is their attitude toward failure.

Here are six tips to help you effectively face and deal with the challenges that come into your life:

1. Objectively define the challenge that must be addressed and own all parts of the role you played in it. Playing the “victim” card when it’s not warranted is a sure way to lose credibility with the people involved in the situation. You must honestly and openly evaluate the situation to ensure it’s worthy of your time and energy. Don’t let your pettiness or vanity get in the way of seeing the situation for what it truly is or cause you to make a mountain out of a molehill.

2. Do not allow your emotions to get the best of you. Many challenges may elicit strong emotions that might just overtake you and make things worse. So find a mentor, someone whom you respect and admire, and go over the situation together. Ask your mentor for an objective, third-party opinion. Also, being overly optimistic or pessimistic will taint the way you handle the challenge, so validate your perception of the reality of the situation before taking action.

3. Don’t procrastinate. Time doesn’t make things better. It only puts the situation farther back in your rearview mirror, and as time passes, you become less and less likely to address it. The problem with procrastinating is that the situation, most likely, will manifest itself in a different form over and over again in your life until you do face it head-on. On the flip side, don’t prematurely rush in and try to face it without doing your due diligence. Sometimes cooler heads need to prevail, because a win/win situation is what you’re after. Burning bridges or making enemies means that somewhere down the line those actions will come back to haunt or work against you. As Stephen Covey, author of The 7 Habits of Highly Successful People (Simon & Schuster) believed, being a leader is about doing the right things. So figure out what those things are, and then take action or do them right, because it’s all about how you execute to get the results that benefit everyone involved.

4. Trust in yourself and be confident that you can overcome this challenge. After all, we’re all human, and no one has superpowers that are better than yours. Empower yourself using the qualities of integrity, honesty, trust, respect, and belief in yourself to build an attitude of self-empowerment and determination.

5. When you do take action, celebrate the fact that you attempted to face the challenge head-on, no matter the outcome. We don’t always get what we want and things don’t always turn out as planned. So, regardless of the outcome, pat yourself on the back for having the courage to try: it says a lot about who you’re becoming.

6. And finally: welcome adversity, because it builds character and strengthens your resolve. Working through adversity prepares you to take on bigger and bigger challenges as you progress through life. Remember, practice makes perfect, and when you’re faced with the biggest challenge of your life, you’ll be able to more effectively respond to, resolve, and move through it.