One of the foremost, if not the greatest, requirement for anyone who aspires to provide leadership to others is the ability to lead themselves effectively.
Leadership does not begin when you decide to lead others. It starts when you are willing to follow the dictate of yourself in the path of inspiration, discipline, and integrity.
If You cannot lead yourself effectively, you do not have a perfect chance of leading others because people are watching you and taking cues from your patterns while evaluating your leadership worthiness.
While many things can be learned, self-leadership transcends mere learning. Even with many books on leadership, nothing will make you lead yourself better than a vibrant decision laced with discipline to focus on being the best version of yourself. A version that inspires sets a goal and follows through in achieving the goals. This is when you set the table for becoming a better leader.
Becoming intentional about leading yourself may not be an easy task, but it is a worthwhile ‘project’ with innumerable benefits. One of those benefits is self-control which will, in turn, have a tremendous ripple effect on many other aspects of your life. This will ultimately position you to provide quality leadership to yourself and others.
The journey to leading yourself may not be an easy ride, as it has been said before, but understanding what the trip entails will give you a clearer picture of how to find your way.
Consider the following factors as essential needs in leading yourself rightly.
Mindfulness and Purposefulness: We cannot over-emphasize the need to be intentional and mindfully following the track of your purpose. In addition, you must always wake up with a decision to add value to yourself and those around you.
Present yourself where you can get honest feedback, take your time to reflect on it, and adjust where necessary.
Self Management: Effectively self-led people have many things in common, and a few of those things are a high sense of humility, honesty, selflessness, self-motivation, and inspiration, compassion, empathy, gentle approach, self-appreciation, risk-taking, and self-discipline. In addition to honest feedback, these virtues will provide you with the adequate skills you need in your self-leadership journey.
Integrity: Without being ambiguous, integrity simply means to be true and sincere to yourself. This will reflect how dedicated you are to the principles of self-control even when nobody sees you. The unfortunate clap-back of lack of integrity is that such a person becomes one without discipline, trust, and worth. Guess what? Nobody wants to follow someone unsure of him or herself. Therefore, it is pertinent that you must trust yourself enough to believe that your decisions and actions count for a worthy cause, which will ultimately inspire others to follow you.
Every great leader we have today or the one we have had in the past are people who started their leadership journey by leading themselves before spreading the wings of their leadership to others.
Israelmore Ayivor says, “A true leader is still a leader even when he takes up servants’ duty, provided he maintains a human face and added integrity to his self-retained qualities.”
Leadership matters at all times, but it starts with you being able to lead yourself adequately.
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