Self-Leadership Series 1 – #3 Why does self-leadership matter?
This post shares a personal story of a client who made a significant change in her personal and professional life when she decided to focus on self-leadership. It also looks at how focusing on self-leadership equips us with the foundational skills and tools to better navigate being a human!
Emica was a highly capable and well-regarded engineer working in key roles on multiple large and complex projects. However, she was desperately unhappy in her private life, finding herself with full responsibility for the running of her family’s household while also having to generate the family income. She had no support or empowerment to make any of her own life choices. She even had to seek permission from her husband to get her driver’s licence. Emica could see that the issues in her personal life were having an impact on the confidence and presence she had in her role. She knew that something needed to change and made a conscious choice to do something about it.
Emica sought out the support she needed to get started with her self-leadership journey – prioritising herself and her personal learning. This helped her gain the clarity she needed to begin the process of making tiny changes that would move her closer to her personal aspirations and goals. Over time, and with a regular and committed practice, Emica was able to make significant changes in her personal and professional life.
These changes would never have happened if she had let her life simply run its course, without enacting self-leadership through developing a clear intent and the willingness to open herself to different perspectives and new possibilities. Without prioritising this, Emica would likely have remained in the unhappy life she had previously found herself in. Somewhat ironically, getting her driver’s licence ended up being an important part of this process, providing both a boost to her confidence in her ability to back herself and the practical freedom that comes from not relying on others to get around.
Why does enacting self-leadership matter? If you were to ask Emica, she would say it is because it can change your life.
At its essence, the learning that is available to us when we commit to our self-work opens our ability to see different perspectives and new, often not previously conceived, possibilities. Without it, we are limited in our daily actions and interactions by our current beliefs, thoughts, behaviours and ways of being. We can also miss everyday chances to learn about ourselves and others and to grow from this knowledge and experience.
Simply put, if we don’t quarantine a part of our busy schedule for personal learning and wellbeing self-work, then change will usually only happen when it is forced upon us. Often this ends up being through adverse situations: the loss of a job, a new boss, the passing of a loved one, injury or illness, a divorce or separation. And while ‘forced change’ naturally fuels and is often vitally important to our growth, investing time and initiating focus on our self-work helps us to take the lead in our own development.
It’s possible, of course, that you already know this. Perhaps you are a leader who already has in place habits and routines that support your learning and wellbeing? If this is the case, no doubt you will be familiar with the benefits of creating space and slowing down to reconnect with yourself. Keep up the great work. Hopefully these blog posts will give you some ideas for continuing to refine this practice. If this is new for you, there is no time like now to get started.
In summary – why does self-leadership matter?
A focus on self-leadership equips us with skills and tools to better navigate being human. We learn how to navigate our thoughts, behaviours, beliefs and all the richness and complexities that being human inherently brings. I like to think of this as the ‘being a human 101 stuff’ that we should have learned at school but didn’t!
It helps us to access more of our vast inner resources from which we can begin to lead from the inside out. It is from that place that we are better able to nurture our dreams and inner most desires into reality.
The fourth post in this series will invite you to consider your personal motivation for attending to self-leadership.
This post is an excerpt from my draft book Activating Self Leadership
Photo Credit: Bree Hughes 2022 (Taken on a trip to Mt Field National Park with Bree to see the Turning of the Fagus)
Self Leadership Series – Part 1 #1 Something needs to change
This post explores the idea that when we find ourselves in a ‘stuck’ place that only we can truly be our ‘own rescue’. It also highlights the importance of leaders prioritising and focusing on their own development is the catalyst for change in the broader ‘system’ (team, organisation).
Fourteen years ago (age 36) my external world looked bright, but my internal world was dark and empty. I was unable to see the beauty of the flowers in the garden. I was unable to feel the joy emanating from my three beautiful daughters. I was unable to experience and connect with the magic of life that was all around me. I was a prisoner to my own thoughts. Alive but not living. Surviving but not flourishing. I was so consumed by this experience at the time that I could not really see what was happening and nor did the people that loved me in my life have any idea at the depth of the hollowness I had found myself in. I did know one thing however. I knew that something needed to change.
I realised no-one else could make that change. I had a choice to make and I knew that I needed to be my own rescue. I made a promise to myself to stop focussing on the ‘shoulds’ and the barrage of mental chatter and to follow my heart ( I didn’t even know what that meant at the time). This was a turning point and the start of a commitment to move a little more towards myself.
In the years that followed, I sought out new experiences and people that experienced the world in ways different to what I knew ( & how I had been socialised), I learned to connect with and to express and honour how I was feeling; I got better at regulating my emotions and learned how to become the observer of my thoughts; I practiced meditation and trained as a yoga nidra teacher; I surrounded myself with friends, colleagues and therapists that could really ‘see’ me and support me when I couldn’t do that for myself.
I became a student of art therapy which was perhaps the most transformative part of my evolution to date. It was through the non-verbal language of symbols and exploring and experimenting with art process that I was able to connect with and come into relationship with my own inner landscape.
I finally had accessed some of the ‘felt’ or ‘embodied’ experience of what people meant when they talked about this idea of ‘leading from the inside out’.
Through the mirror that other people held for me ( we all do that for each other), I started to see and begin to own who I really was and to claim the parts of me that I had never known and certainly not owned, celebrated nor leveraged in my life.
Through this time, I continued to work as a leadership, change and culture professional and in 2014, I began my current leadership and culture practice – Evolving Leaders –with the purpose of evolving the consciousness of leaders to make the world a better place.
What I have witnessed repeatedly through my organisational development work is that unless leaders prioritise and focus on their own evolution and growth then change in the system (team, organisation,) will be limited.
The simple fact is that organisations don’t change, people do.
The same applies in life whether we are in a formal leadership ‘role’ or not, doesn’t matter. What does matter is, that when we consciously focus energy and effort towards our own evolution and growth we begin to unpeel the layers of our socialised selves. This is the pathway to getting a little closer to who we truly are. When we choose this path, we ignite change not only in ourselves, but become a source of inspiration for those around us – our families, teams, communities and organisations.
The second post in this series will look some of What I’ve discovered about self-leadership.
This post is an excerpt from my draft book Activating Self Leadership.