Course 4. Foundational Leadership Principles: (Discussion #3) Lead Yourself
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Great Leadership, unsurprisingly, starts with yourself!
Practice what you preach. Lead by example. I am sure all of you heard these phrases. But why are they so iconic?
Because the journey starts with the first step and you are the person who is taking the initiative to lead -- Start a journey! So, you are the one who needs to take the first step before expecting others to do it.
To start with leading yourself, close your eyes and visualize two people: someone who inspired and encouraged you to be like them, and someone who discouraged you to be not like them.
Then, write down the good qualities of the person who inspired you as well as the qualities of the second person. You do not have to be specific with the details. Just a bulleted list.
Now, compare the list to yourself. Note the good qualities you have, the bad qualities you have, and give yourself a rating on a scale of 1-10. What we just did is identified your strengths and weaknesses and what you need in order to lead yourself. This allows you to create self-awareness.
Self-awareness is key to leading yourself in the right direction. But, leading yourself is not easy. Just being self-aware isn't enough. It's igniting the spark but not enough to catch the fire. To catch the fire, you need to be persistent with your practice, which is regular reflection. Be consistent with monitoring your efforts and holding yourself accountable.
You can't effectively lead others until you know how to lead yourself. That happens through Self-Observant Leadership: when you deeply understand your identity, compare it to your reputation (how others experience you) and then make meaning of the observations, and choose to adapt.
Exercise:
1. Share one area where you scored low on your self-awareness check-in and one thing you will do to improve?
2. Please reply to 3 of your peers in this thread!
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I scored lower on confidence as compared to the person in my mind I think of as a good leader. To improve that, I will just have to gain more experience.
@sereneButton43
I'm sure you'll become more confident soon! I'm pretty sure you have it already...š You'll build confident with trusting yourself. So I guess first thing would be to trust.
@Heather225
Share one area where you scored low on your self-awareness check-in and one thing you will do to improve?
I scored low on āboundaries and timetablesā.
Sometimes due to anxiety or deadlines, I tend to mix up the boundaries and give a certain task the priority over everything, even my own personal health
Prospective Course of Action: I will compartmentalize my workload according to its need and state of urgency and give an adequate amount of time to each.
@Prachi9876
I'm sure you'll be able to achieve this. Setting up boundaries can be hard, but once you get the hang of it you'll find it actually improving the quality of your life š
@Heather225
1. Share one area where you scored low on your self-awareness check-in and one thing you will do to improve?
Adding new things to my knowledge on a specific area (Learning new things) - I found that I'm constantly looking to learn new things and improve on a specific area (specific knowledge base), but with all other activities in my day It seems as if this is always coming last (and iām pretty much drained of all energy by then). I'm constantly trying to improve myself in this area and try to manage my other work to keep some time to learn something new. With new strategies I've learnt through this course so far I'm hoping to make some progress.
@bubblingBreeze14
its great that you are trying to improving yourself by learning new things
@bubblingBreeze14
It's impressive that you are working on yourself.
@Heather225
Hello everyone ššššš
1. Share one area where you scored low on your self-awareness check-in and one thing you will do to improve?
I want to believe in myself more and have balanced well-being. It is important to recognise that you cannot be positive all the time, it's okay to accept and trust in the flow of life's journey. There will be ups and downs in this journey.
@courageousheart96 Yes! We should indeed believe in ourselves!
@Heather225
1. Share one area where you scored low on your self-awareness check-in and one thing you will do to improve?
Under my self-awareness I lacked in time management and following the deadlines. To improve this side I will need to create a better track of my week tasks and prevent myself from getting engage in unnecessary tasks and conflicts.
I scored low on my communication skills, since I sometimes have trouble having direct conversations with others, resolving conflicts effectively, and expressing confidence in myself and in my responses. This is especially true when I have 1-1 chats with members. To improve these skills, I will do more mock chats to prepare myself for 1-1 chats and ask for feedback afterwards so that I can understand how I can enhance my conversations.
@Nerdtastic01
Your plans for improvement sound amazing and I hope they are going really well for you :) Practising mock chats and gaining feedback sound like great ways to build confidence and enhance your skills in talking directly with people.
@Heather225
Share one area where you scored low on your self-awareness check-in and one thing you will do to improve.
I scored low on my communication skills. I will focus on implementing right strategies to showcase my soft skills.
@caringHope1976
That sounds like a good idea, I hope working on your communication skills goes really well and helps you to become great at leading a team :)
@caringHope1976
I wish you the best in improving communication. It's a challenging one, but I know you can do it! Good luck hope!
@Heather225
Hello, I do not know if I understand well but I would say that I need to be more sure of myself and be somewhat stronger in character in terms of being a leader, there are many people who confuse kindness with weakness,
@Crystaldancer
That's a really good point, being more confident in your skills as a leader can help you to be a lot more assertive and confident to share your ideas and lead a team well :)
@Izzy274
good reply
@Crystaldancer
agree with you
1. Share one area where you scored low on your self-awareness check-in and one thing you will do to improve?
I think that somewhere I scored low is communicating in large groups, or presenting my ideas to a large group of people. To improve, I think the main thing I need to do is practice. To do this I need to put myself out there more and build up to trying bigger things and building on my skills. First, I can start by making an effort to speak to everyone when Iām in a group, and then gradually I can develop these skills along with my confidence to help me communicate better with a large group of people. Also having more open discussions with a group will help me to see how they interact with others well so I can build on my own skills through observing others.
@Heather225
I need to improve on is decision making! The people I wrote down have very good decision-making skills, and I know that as a manager I need to improve greatly. Another thing I can improve on is Independence. I'm very much a follower, and I think that as a manager it doesn't look the best to be asking my crew questions
@yourfriend5
Hi there! I also have the same issue. I need to work on my decision-making as well (I tend to be indecisive sometimes haha), and work on my independence, as I do have a tendency to be a follower rather than a leader.
