To have impact on other people, we have to lead ourselves first, so today, we’re diving into why Self Leadership is key to becoming a Courageous Leader and the different elements that make up Self Leadership.
In this episode, I talk all about:
- Why Self Leadership is key to becoming a Courageous Leader
- What having Self Leadership looks like
- The role self awareness plays in helping us to have Self Leadership
- The role of self actualization in Self Leadership
Listen NOW
Scroll down for this episode’s transcript.
If you like this episode, don’t forget to share it to your IG stories and tag me @annekoopmann_leadlikeyou
Ready for more?
Register for my monthly Lead Like YOU! Newsletter
Join the Lead Like You! Facebook Community here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/leadlikeyou
Connect with me
Follow me on Instagram: @annekoopmann_leadlikeyou
Find me on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/annekoopmannleadlikeyou
Let’s connect on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/annekoopmann
Check out my website: www.annekoopmann.com
Leave a review
If you enjoyed this episode, please let me know by leaving a 5 star review on iTunes. I really appreciate it and it helps others to find us and listen too!
Watch Episode on YouTube
Transcript
[00:01:00] hi, and welcome back to my YouTube channel. I’m Anne Koopmann ,a leadership coach, facilitator lecturer, speaker, and host of the Lead Like YOU! Podcast. I help emerging leaders and small business owners to step up and become courageous leaders. I want to empower you to lead with confidence, vulnerability, your strengths and emotional intelligence.
[00:01:24] Today, we’re going to talk about why self leadership is key to become a courageous leader.
[00:01:30] if you like what you see and you don’t want to miss any future episodes, make sure you hit that subscribe button and also the notification bell. So you will hear firsthand when the next video goes live. All right. Let’s dive straight in.
[00:01:43] . Before we dive into Self leadership. let’s talk a bit about what it means to be a courageous leader. Brené Brown defines it as someone who leans into difficult conversations, who shows up with vulnerability and shows up, even if things are uncertain and [00:02:00] challenging. And vulnerability is about stepping up, even if we make mistakes, owning up to our mistakes, asking for help and being true to ourselves.
[00:02:11] And leadership can be really difficult because often we do not have control of the outcomes and leadership comes with failures and it comes with big challenges. We have to manage a lot of different people and circumstances along the way. And that can be very difficult.
[00:02:27] We often think that leadership is just about managing other people and getting them to do certain things and to move up the leadership ladder. However, leadership is way more complex than that . Because for us to have impact on other people, we have to lead ourselves first, no matter if you’re an emerging leader, experienced leader or a small business owner, you have to start by leading and understanding who you are.
[00:02:52] You have to practice that ongoingly to really be able to have a big impact and influence the people that you lead.
[00:02:59] I define [00:03:00] Self-Leadership as knowing and understanding ourselves, being able to understand our emotions and triggers our strengths and what motivates and drives us; But also the impact we have on the people that we lead and how we motivate ourselves, when things get tough, when things are uncertain and things are challenging.
[00:03:20] So let’s go into more detail on how you can develop your self leadership.
[00:03:26] let’s start with self awareness. And here I want to distinguish between internal self awareness and external self-awareness. Internal self awareness means that you learn to become aware and tune in to your thoughts and your emotions.
[00:03:41] It’s really important to understand what triggers your emotions. And then what are the thoughts that are coming out of that? And then how do these thoughts impact your behaviors and actions? Because only when you know that, are you able to then self control and control your behaviors and how you come across to others?
[00:04:00] [00:03:59] So really leaning in and understanding why did I behave in this way? What happened? What triggered me to feel angry, threatened, frustrated, starting to be more mindful, more still, and really tuning into who we are and what we feel.
[00:04:16] Another important part to internally self awareness is really reflecting on our strengths.
[00:04:20] What are we naturally really, really good at? Because that would build our trust in our own abilities and our confidence. It will help us to beat this imposter syndrome that we so often talk about. And that’s kind of the fear of being found out as a fraud and that we don’t have what it takes. So really tuning into our strengths and reflecting on what are the things that we’re good at and what are the things we have already achieved in the past.
[00:04:46] And then lastly, a big part of internal self awareness is to understand what is our leadership brand? What are our values? What’s our mission. What’s our vision. [00:05:00] And what is our purpose? Why are we here? What’s the big, why? What is something that we believe? Because to lead, you need to get others to believe in what you believe. To inspire them.
[00:05:13] So you need to know what that is and having a sense of your values is so important because these are your guiding principles. They will help you to make decisions. They will help you to move forward in life and to relate every action to your values.
[00:05:29] And when you do that, then even when things go wrong or don’t quite go as planned, it’s much easier to overcome that because you know, that you acted based on your values and that you acted with integrity. So we know that our actions were aligned to what we truly believe.
[00:05:46] And then the second part of self awareness is the external self awareness. Now we know how we see ourselves. We know our purpose, our values, how we react and behave, but there’s still a big difference to how do other people actually see [00:06:00] us? How do we come across? How are our actions and behaviors impacting others?
[00:06:07] Are they feeling inspired? Are they feeling frustrated or irritated? Do they understand what we’re here to do? Do they understand what our vision and mission is or our purpose? It is so important that we reflect on that.
[00:06:21] Because depending who you manage, you might have to adapt your approach. Not everybody is gonna react the same way. So we really need to reflect regularly and ask for feedback to understand the impact that we have on others. Only then can we lead effectively because we need to know how other people see us.
[00:06:42] And that is key to inspiring others. We need to know how to talk and what to say, to have the impact that we desire. And again, make people believe what we believe, make people buy into our purpose and decide to follow us. And also that’s our way to build real [00:07:00] trust with the people that we lead, starting to understand who are they and how are they impacted by my actions and behaviors. And that will build the trust.
[00:07:09] And then the last part of self leadership that I want to talk about today is self actualization. Self actualization has a few different aspects to it. One is about self management and self control. You know how we talked about the internal self awareness, understanding our emotions and the triggers and how it impacts our thoughts and behaviors. Now with self control. We are actually able to interfere before things happen or get out of hand, to actually manage ourselves so that our emotions do not impact our behaviors. So that if we feeling irritated or frustrated that we can step in. And actually manage our emotions to then be in a more centered state again. That will allow us to build much stronger relationships. It will allow us to adapt to difficult situations. So managing ourselves and our emotions is key.
[00:08:00] [00:08:00] Another part of self actualization is to set ourselves goals and targets. Know what motivates you and then set yourself targets and goals so that you always have something that you’re working towards to.
[00:08:12] That is key to leading by example, but also key to really energize yourself again and again, and again. When we have goals and targets, that’s what gives us energy to keep going every day. We know why we’re getting up. We know where we want to go and how are we going to get there.
[00:08:28] And a key part of self actualization is actually taking responsibility for ourselves, for our behaviors and our actions. Nobody makes you do anything. It’s you who makes these decisions. And it’s important to also take on responsibility in every situation that we face. When we lead a team, and let’s say there’s a conflict, we always do play a certain part in it. So understanding that we take responsibility for us and our actions, our future, our situation, whatever is going to happen to us. We [00:09:00] are the ones making that decision. You have the power to change. You have the power to make a call.
[00:09:05] But you also have the responsibility to make the tough decisions when you are a leader. So taking and owning that responsibility is key for self-actualization
[00:09:14] And lastly, really important point to self-actualization is building your resilience, knowing your resilience support kit to help you handle any situation that might come your way. How do you bounce back? How do you motivate yourself? How do you pick yourself back up when things get tough?
[00:09:34] How do you manage your mental and emotional load? It’s really important because you will also be responsible to help and energize others when things get tough.
[00:09:44] So when your team is going to go through a difficult situation, you might have to quickly manage your emotional energy levels. Bounce back up and then motivate them and energize them and help them see a path forward, help them be motivated and start to see what they can do [00:10:00] to try again.
[00:10:00] So building your resilience, toolkit is key for that as well.
[00:10:04] Okay. So let’s just recap what we just talked about. So we said that self-leadership is key for courageous leadership because to lead others effectively, we first have to understand and lead and manage ourselves. So we talked about self awareness and the key there is the internal self awareness, understanding ourselves, understanding our emotions, our strengths, our areas for development, and also our vision, purpose and values. Then we talked about external self-awareness. How do we come across? What impact do we have on the people that we lead? How can we inspire and motivate others?
[00:10:44] And then lastly, self actualization. How do we manage and control ourselves? How do we keep ourselves accountable? How do we stay motivated? How are we building our own resilience?
[00:10:57] I hope you found this helpful. Let me know in the comments, [00:11:00] what resonated the most with you. if you like what you see, make sure that you subscribe and give me a like for the video and I see you again very soon.
