What is Self-Leadership?- Definition and Benefits

Introduction 

Leadership is a well-known trait that everyone aspires for. Through leadership, you can effectively manage a team, influence the people and move towards success. But before you show leadership to others, it is crucial to get familiar with the concept of self-leadership. Philosophers have rightly said that before you start leading others, you have to lead yourself. The irony of the saying is that people don’t understand how is leading others and self-leadership different. So, in this article, we will look at one of the most important steps towards leadership i.e. self-leadership. Let’s know What is Self-Leadership?

What is self-leadership? 

Self-leadership refers to the ability to make conscious decisions and control our thoughts and conduct to move towards achieving your self-created goals or the objectives that you want to achieve for your organization. The simple meaning of self-leadership is to perform the act of leading yourself without any external influence. It refers to the process of mastering some crucial traits of your personality. 

It is considered as one of the foundation stones of all other personal traits. We all know that we have to push ourself for doing certain things in our life. But self-leadership is about the degree to which we can motivate ourselves to do something. The purpose of our life gets strengthened when we are self-disciplined and self-led. 

In a nutshell, self-leadership is the culmination of all the practices that help us to learn what we are, what desires we have in life, and how we can guide ourselves to achieve all the goals. So it is a total of three questions what (what are our actions), why (why we want to do something), and how (how we ought to achieve the goals). 

If we break these words, we will see that the self-leadership term is a culmination of knowing yourself, having a proper vision, having faith in yourself, doing what you say, understanding your capabilities, engaging with positive energies, and much more. It is not about self-obsession but a trait of personal growth. When you decide to lead yourself, you aim to develop a better you, for which you set different goals. 

Understanding the word ‘self-leadership: 

Leadership is often associated with following someone else. Whenever someone demarcates leadership skills, we start moving behind them. So we can see that leadership requires two-person: one who is giving directions and the other who is taking them. 

But if you analyze the word self-leadership closely, it does not ask you to follow any other person. Instead, it asks you to develop your path and take action for achieving the same. The idea is to determine on our own what I have to do, why I want to do it and how can I do it. So it requires you to know of SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats). 

What are the benefits of self-leadership? 

1. A person who has developed self-leadership can make their decisions without the influence of the other. So if you want to leave an impact on others, you have to make your personality impactable first. 
2. A self-led person can become a better entrepreneur, top manager, mentor, and achieve other high positions in life. 
3. Self-leadership forms the foundation of leadership qualities. 
4. Persons working in high positions must have self-leadership because they don’t have anyone to take their decisions. So if they are not self-led they will face difficulty in taking the utmost important decisions of their life and business. 
5. A self-led person is more likely to be disciplined and proactive towards all situations. 
6. A person without self-leadership cannot control themselves and are more likely to stay diverted i.e. they suffer from a lack of focus. 

How to achieve self-leadership traits? 

A person is said to possess a self-leadership trait when he develops foresight and does not require other persons for making his decisions. He demarcates exceptional dedication towards his work. To achieve self-leadership, one has to create self-awareness. Only after developing self-consciousness, you can expect yourself to complete all the goals that you have chosen for yourself. 

Here are some tips that you should follow to develop a sense of self-leadership: 

1. Clear goal and vision: Clarity is crucial in life for becoming your leader. Every leader must develop a clear vision to know what he wants to do in his life. Only when one has a clear goal, can one build the foundation on self-leadership. If you don’t know what your goal in life is, then you are more likely to copy others thereby losing your self-leadership trait. When you try to follow others without any clear goal, you will found yourself stuck in the middle without any direction to go.

Vision refers to a long-term goal and the expected future position of your company or your being. So if you want to develop self-leadership, choose your goal, and have a clear vision by following these steps: 

1. Write down your goals and aspirations on a piece of paper. You can start with small goals like daily and weekly goals that you have to achieve. 
2. The goal should be clear and you should be able to answer the details of when, where, what, which, and why
3. Measure the success of your goals: Try to measure how many goals you have achieved and how much is to be achieved in the future. For instance, if your weekly goal is to write a research paper, you can keep a goal of some words to be written in a day. Then you will measure that you have at least completed those words. 
4. Keep your goals realistic and achievable. If you are keeping very high goals like writing a whole research paper in one go, you might feel defeated. 

2. Taking risks for success is okay: Life is a tale of unpredicted moments. So if you want to succeed in life, you should not fear taking risks. By taking risks, you develop experience and become a self-led person who wants to live on his terms. Never discourage yourself from taking a risk-based on your previous failures. Your focus should be on success and if for that you have to take some challenging task, never step back. Make sure that you have calculated all the relevant factors and then heading towards the risk. 

3. Introspect yourself: Introspection is also a crucial factor for developing self-leadership traits. Everyone leads a busy life. But the one who takes out some time for himself achieves self-leadership. Creating awareness in yourself before making a crucial decision is of utmost importance in both professional and personal life. So, Spend some time comparing your past and present, what you have done, what you are presently doing, and what you wish to do in the future. 

Taking a break for introspection and analyzing one’s actions will help you to understand where you are falling and what you need to correct. You can always take the help of a notebook where you can write down what you have done in the whole day, and what you want to do the next day. This will help you to plan your actions and become a self–leader. 

4. Motivate yourself to stay away from negative feelings: 

The most crucial aspect of becoming your leader is to push yourself away from negative energy and negative people. Don’t tolerate any negative vibes around you. Motivate yourself and give a reason to yourself to stay away from negative habits like laziness, fear, shyness, etc. Only after overcoming these negative feelings, you can become a successful example for others. 

5. Take your responsibility: To achieve self-leadership, you have to be courageous enough to take responsibility for your actions. You must understand that you are the sole person who is responsible for what you think, speak, and do in your life. You should be confident enough to take the responsibility of others also who look to you for guidance and inspiration. 

6. Keep a focused approach: Focus is the process of staying clear about everything. When you are focused, you don’t say yes to anything without considerable thought. You have to understand what is crucial for you and whatnot. Based on that, you have put your focus on the right thing. Don’t be a man of words but a man of actions and this is possible only through focus and perseverance. 

7. Truthfulness is vital: When you want to lead yourself without any external factor, it is vital to stay truthful to your conscience. Only truthfulness can assure your authenticity. When you are truthful, it will reflect in your thoughts, speech, and conduct and the alignment of these three aspects will lead to mastery of self-leadership traits. When others see that you are honest, and possess integrity they will naturally get attracted to you. 

8. One should be emotionally flexible: To achieve self-leadership, emotional flexibility is also a crucial factor. You should be able to understand what your emotions are. Only when you know what you are feeling about a particular thing, you can try to change your emotions. When you can gain control over your emotions, you can show courage when needed. One should also try to become empathetic to other’s feelings. 

9. Understand the emotional intelligence model: 

Emotional intelligence is equally important as is mental intelligence. Therefore we need to have emotional intelligence too to become our self-leader. We have four key components of self-awareness. These are Self Awareness, Social Awareness, Self-management, and relationship management. 

So you have to start by becoming aware of your being and progress towards becoming aware of what is happening around you. Then comes the task of managing your actions, behavior, thoughts, speech, etc. to create a positive impact around you and lastly make sure that the way you are behaving with others is right. By achieving these four pillars you can become a great self-leader and gradually an exceptional leader for others. 

10. Don’t forget to perform actions 

You mustn’t restrict yourself to only words. If you want to lead yourself on your own, you have to perform relevant actions for the same. Learn to overcome your procrastination. The actions that you take must be effective enough to help you move towards the achievement of your goals. Make sure that you are not wasting time on useless activities. The actions that you are performing must be related to the goals that you have set for yourself. 

11. Realize your capabilities: 

Another important step to becoming a self-leader is to believe in yourself and understand the potential of your mind and body. We all have different capabilities and for realizing what we are good at, we have to try different things. When you came to know what you are great at, put that to your advantage and you will ultimately end up leading your life on your terms. 

12. Develop a self-monitoring habit: The most crucial part of achieving self-leadership is to develop a self-monitoring habit. Since self-leadership requires you to play the role of both mentor and mentee, you have to have a check on what you do. In this process, you evaluate your performance and check for the scope for improvement. It will require constant practice, monitoring, and evaluation. 

To make it an easy task, you can motivate yourself by: 

1. Rewarding yourself for each goal 
2. Increasing your willpower 
3. Identifying every little win and celebrating it. 
4. Check for the factors that pushed you towards failure. 

Things that can become an impediment in achieving self-leadership skills: 

Certain things can stop you from achieving self-leadership in life. These are: 

1. Living in paradigms that don’t exist: The first thing that can stop us from becoming our leader is living in false paradigms. For instance, we constantly believe that whatever is happening is okay and I don’t need to push myself for more. This kind of attitude will stop you from changing your life. When you start telling yourself that what I am getting is enough you stop putting extra effort into achieving success. You lose control over your mind and lose self-leadership qualities. 

2. Desiring other’s validation for your efforts also makes you weak: 

When you do something and you look for other’s appreciation, we stop ourselves from leading ourselves. We become surrounded by negative thoughts and start thinking of what others will think of us. In that case, one cannot become a self-leader. You start looking towards others for what your next move in life should be. This feeling is so much persuasive that you stop controlling your thoughts and lose the feeling of self-leadership. 

3. If you choose to stay ordinary throughout your life, you won’t be able to gain self-leadership: 

The feeling that you will remain ordinary or simple throughout your life can push you away from achieving self-leadership. You have to motivate yourself that you are capable of achieving an extraordinary life. With this feeling, you will put in efforts in every work and start believing in yourself, as a result of which you will develop self-leadership traits. 

4. Losing hope for betterment: It is often said that hope can put life even in a dead person. But a hopeless person starts moving towards doom. Therefore if you want yourself to develop self-leadership qualities, you have to have hope for betterment. No matter how much worse your situation is present, believe in yourself and God and you will see miracles. To stay optimistic, get in connection with good habits like reading, follow your passion, have good company, give time for self-improvement, etc. This will make your journey enjoyable and you would start feeling happy to lead your life in a disciplined manner. 

5. Developing negative habits and staying in a negative atmosphere: If you are surrounded by negative things and you are becoming exhausted, chances are that you will stop becoming a self-leader. Therefore one should stay away from negative vibes, pessimistic friends, and downgrading things. To cheer up your mood, you can do the following things: 

1. Spend time with your family and friends at least once a week. 
2. You can join some clubs that resonate with your thinking and allow you to follow your passion 
3. You can practice meditation, exercising, and physical activities. 
4. Take out some time for following your hobbies like gardening, drawing, painting, writing, and so much more 

Rounding up: 

Self-leadership is an essential step to become a leader and motivation for others. But hardly do we know what self-leadership is, and how to achieve it. Therefore in this article, we understood that self-leadership is all those practices by which we try to regulate our behavior, speech, thoughts, and actions that are stopping us from achieving growth. Then we looked at different things that we can do to develop self-leadership like setting clear goals for ourselves, staying truthful, following our passion, taking relevant actions, staying in good energy, and much more. 

FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions): 

Ques1: What are some good books on the topic of self-leadership? 

Ans: Some books for understanding self-leadership are: 

1. Self-Leadership: The Definitive Guide to Personal Excellence,  written by Dr. Christopher P. Neck, Charles C. Manz, and Jeffery D. Houghton (2nd edition, 2019)
2. Self-Leadership and the One Minute Manager: Increasing Effectiveness Through Situational Self Leadership authored by Mr. Ken Blanchard, Susan Fowler, and Laurence Hawkins (2005), etc. 

Ques 2: What are some of the reasons for low self-leadership quality in society? 

Ans: i. The primary reason is the societal setup that does not let you become your leader.

2. Also, emotional intelligence that plays a crucial role in developing self-leadership is often ignored by people. 
3. As we have seen above self-leadership requires you to put in a lot of effort that only a few individuals are ready to put. Therefore we tend to move behind others rather than setting our own goals. 

Ques 3: How can one improve self-leadership traits? 

Ans: i. By getting clarity of goals 

ii. By becoming courageous to take calculated risks in life 

III. By spending time on your personality and emotional intelligence 

4. By spending some time with friends, family, and nature that heal your pain and give you a reason for living and working hard. 
5. Be curious about things. Always stay ready to learn about new things and use them to guide yourself in a better manner. 
6. Put your efforts in the right task so that you are not wasting your energy and actions on useless things.