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 sometimes lack self awareness in daily activities at home.
Sometimes I don't close the door or jar lid tightly and my mom used to complain about it. Sometimes I misheard what someone said. I would like to improve my focus but sometimes I don't know how.
@Aileen1114117
Some ideas to improve focus is by focusing on 1 task at a time and only taking on what you can handle and avoiding distractions. It is great that you want to work on self-awareness as sometimes we can overlook simple tasks ❤️ You are doing great
I think it's more executive dysfunction than laziness or procrastination, but this is something I struggle with a lot. I can start to work through this by bringing it up in therapy :o
@WarmLightXO
Therapy is great! It can really help us process and organise our thoughts and feelings! I hope all goes well with bringing it up 😄
@WarmLightXO
Talking about things helps so much <3
@Heather225
Q: Share one area where you scored low on your self-awareness check-in and one thing you will do to improve?
A: I didn’t really understand the question, I do know that I need to improve on decision making and my communication on some spots. I could start by taking less hard decisions myself and then trying to make harder ones myself and in this way making progress
- lena
@kenzolena
It is always okay to ask for support, especially with more complicated decisions. ❤️
@kenzolena
Thanks for sharing, Lena.☺️
@Heather225
1) I think I need to improve on my decision-making. I can improve this skill by not overthinking my options and focusing on weighing out the positives and negatives of complicated decisions and by going with my initial thoughts for simple decisions. I can also improve my decision-making skills by thinking about the impact of the decision.
@CalmWaves3939
Great answer!
@CalmWaves3939
yes, me too!
@Heather225
1. Share one area where you scored low on your self-awareness check-in and one thing you will do to improve?
One area where I scored low was being certain. I tend to look at others to follow their rules and often have a hard time coming up with my own rules.
@usefulSummer3139
I would try to improve by not second-guessing myself too much.
@usefulSummer3139
that's a great tip.
@Heather225
1. Share one area where you scored low on your self-awareness check-in and one thing you will do to improve?
I think I would have to work on improving my decision-making ability. To improve that ability, I would have to come up with a good strategy and focus on how it would affect everything.
2. Please reply to 3 of your peers in this thread! done
@Helpingheart23 good job answering the question. Decision making is a really important skill
@Heather225
1. 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 ability to see things with a growth mindset, which makes me reduce the chance of seeing the best opportunities there are. To improve, I would be aware of my cycle of thoughts and reframe them to see and make actions for the better.
@blissfulForest7074
Wonderful idea to practice catching your trail of thoughts. The growth mindset is also something that I have to still adapt to myself having been raised to where people still had negative thoughts on mistakes.
@blissfulForest7074
Very important
@Heather225
1. Share one area where you scored low on your self-awareness check-in and one thing you will do to improve?
I have to work on my resilience , I have always wished I could stay calm in the face of disaster.
I have found out kickboxing can make a great impact on most of the emotional areas at least for me .
@niceworldmnd
Amazing you got this
@niceworldmnd
That’s a really cool idea to let out the emotional steam and practicing the resilience.
I’ve also found exercising to be helpful in those similar ways like tracking through the moments I feel that I can’t anymore and just keep going and when I see how much better I look and have an easier time with the workouts it makes it worth all that effort.
@niceworldmnd Your self awareness and honesty is a huge strength, and identifying an improvement needed in resiliency is definitely important for a Leader. There's many responsibilities as a Leader and there are times conflict arises. We have to know how to deescalate and ground ourselves back to calmness.
@Heather225
Share one area where you scored low on your self-awareness check-in and one thing you will do to improve?
I know I'm not great at communicating with others in real life. I find it challenging to make requests, ask or interact and that's due to my social anxiety. I think a good leader, is someone who can communicate well with their team.
I've been working on improving that for a long time. 7Cups has great impact actually, and it helps me interact with others more comfortably since it's a judgment-free space. I also want to work with my therapist on that.
@Here4good74
Congratulations on this huge step and should be proud of making the effort to communicate better and even doing this course shows how much of an impact you’re making.
I get that feeling as well in terms of having a hard time to ask for things in real life so volunteering in online organizations like this and having online classes helped me a lot to leverage my strengths and learn when I need to adapt to weaknesses like phone calls and taking initiative to reach to someone.
@Here4good74 I can completely relate to your response! I've had challenges with my social anxiety and 7 Cups has completely helped me with handling my calmly and communicating efficiently. It's truly a safe space
@Here4good74
Communicating with others is a challenge but I'm sure you'll be fine. You've done a lot for this community. Deep respect! ❤️
@Here4good74 We are similar in this Jane. I know how anxious we can get, or how it feels as we sail in the same boat. I agree that cups can be a really good place to start the change and I a glad you have found it helpful. I hope you are able to communicate better in the future
@Here4good74 communication is key! the ability to communicate with others comes very effective
@Heather225
1. Share one area where you scored low on your self-awareness check-in and one thing you will do to improve?
One area where I scored low on my self-awareness check-in is advocating myself because that’s what I noticed being the biggest difference between people who have inspired me and how I am. To self advocate in a way that’s stern but also with understanding and kindness gets difficult and especially around people who normally wouldn’t care.
So one thing I’ll do to improve is to practice advocating myself by always firstly seeing where the person comes from and then briefly sharing my views and foundations for thinking and deciding to do things certain ways.
@Mari228 I really enjoyed reading your response, you showed a thorough understanding of the exercise and I can tell this a genuine improvement you want to make for yourself and as a Leader
@Mari228
What you described is a problem I think I need to look at too. You're doing good, anyways!
@Mari228 still cheering for you! :D
@Mari228
Great Insight