Personal Leadership

The Foundation of 21st Century Leadership

Leadership development doesn't work because it fails to address the totality of who and what we are as human beings. It fails to recognise the profound depths of our inner worlds and the power and responsibility that go with what we think and feel. It fails to respect the causal nature of the mind, whilst mistakenly looking for the levers of change in the outer world of effects. And in its analysis and reduction of the objective brain, it overlooks the realities of the subjective mind. — Chris Pearce, Why Leadership Development Is Still Stuck In the Dark Ages, Forbes, November 19, 2018

It is not enough to focus on what a leader is or does. The real challenge is how to lead as a person in the 21st Century. How do we transform ourselves as leaders? What competencies and capabilities do we bring to the world of work?  

In his Forbes article, Pearce identifies three steps at the heart of leadership development: 

  1. Leaders need to master personal leadership before they lead anyone else
  2. Personal leadership requires Self-Awareness
  3. Self-Awareness is observation of your inner dynamics, in the moment

Personal Leadership

It's the ability to successfully lead yourself through the events, circumstances, vicissitudes and adversities of life. It is facilitated by: Purpose, Integrity, Clarity, Focus and Energy.

Self-Awareness

It involves moment-to-moment consciousness of our inner dynamics - our cognitive and feeling worlds, and beyond. It arms us with the ability to take charge of, and accept responsibility for, our emotions, should we choose, and our decisions and actions as we live our lives and do our work. 

Let's begin with self-exploration: 

  • What are your personal values?
  • How do your values shape your aspirations - success driven by values not by desires?
  • How do your aspirations form your life principles - your ethical foundations?
  • How do your ethics lead to your decisions and actions - leading responsibly? 

Our values are so much an intrinsic part of our lives and behaviour that we are often unaware of them – or, at least, we are unable to think about them clearly and articulately.

Yet our values, along with other factors, clearly determine our choices, as can be proved by presenting individuals with equally “reasonable” alternative possibilities and comparing the choices they make. Some will choose one course, others another, and each will feel that his or her election is the rational one.

A personal value system:

  • influences a leader/manager’s perceptions. 
  • influences a leader/manager’s decisions and solutions to problems. 
  • influences the way in which a leader/manager looks at other individuals and groups of individuals; thus, it influences personal relationships. 
  • influences the perception of individual and organizational success as well as their achievement. 
  • sets the limits for the determination of what is and what is not ethical behaviour by a leader/manager. 
  • influences the extent to which a leader/manager will accept or will resist organizational pressures. 

Leadership Challenge

A quick leadership development exercise:

Before you lead anyone else, can you name your own values clearly enough to predict your own decisions?

  • Spend ten minutes this week writing down three values you believe drive your choices.
  • Then test them against a recent decision you made. Did they hold?
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