Personal Leadership: A Guide To Becoming An Effective Leader
Generally, good leaders lead from the front using a consistent approach and clearly-defined workplace philosophies.
This not only keeps their motivation and productivity levels high but it also encourages their work peers to follow suit.
After all, inspiring people through teamwork that encourages learning and growth, rather than squeezing them with authoritarian ideologies, is a much more effective way to lead.
But leading others really begins with leading yourself. If you canât lead yourself in the direction that you want, then leading others will be exponentially more channeling.
Thatâs where personal leadership comes in.
In this article, Iâm going to break down what personal leadership is and why itâs so important to your own personal and professional development.
What Is Personal Leadership?
While the term âleadershipâ implies that youâre actively leading others, it can also apply to your general life. Personal leadership is all about taking responsibility for the many aspects of your life and leading them in a direction that benefits you and your workplace relationships.
Itâs about making good decisions, one moment after another so that you can reach your personal and professional goals.
So in order to foster the relationships in your life and to improve your own professional development, a strong set of personal leadership skills is critical.
Why Is Personal Leadership Important?
By using personal leadership, you are able to take responsibility for your own life choices, have a positive impact on others around you, and present yourself as a role model that leads from the front.
So how does this look in day-to-day life?
These are the main ways in which personal leadership can make you a better person all around:
It helps you define your character. Having a firm grasp on what defines your character will help your coworkers understand who you are and what is important to you. This will help your teamâs productivity, motivation, and effectiveness. They will appreciate what you expect from them and better understand how to achieve their workplace tasks.
It makes you consistent with your progress. If you arenât consistent in your habits and actions, then youâre setting yourself up for failure before you even begin. To avoid this, bring consistency into your routine to stay constructive and productive.
It improves your ability to collaborate. By staying committed to your goals, whether professionally or personally, you are better able to remain clear-headed when working with others. This allows you to set aside any personal preferences or biases that may otherwise get in the way of progress.
How To Develop Personal Leadership
Personal leadership skills are incredibly valuable in both the workplace and at home, but only if youâre clear in what you want to achieve. Just like a car can never reach its destination if the destination is not defined, you will never reach your goals if you donât know what you want.
Personal leadership in your own life begins with deep self-reflection about what you want in your life. This is an ongoing process that will help you to navigate challenges and change in the long run. If youâre not quite ready to dive in to this work yet (or just need some inspiration), read up on leadership to discover what strong self-direction can achieve in your life.
When youâre ready to get to work, these steps will guide you toward strong personal leadership:
1. Determine What You Value Most
To cultivate personal leadership skills, itâs important to understand what you value most and what qualities you consider a good leader should possess.
By determining these aspects of your character, your strengths and interests will become more clear to you. Focus mostly on the specific values you believe a good leader has up their sleeves and allow these to influence your workplace decisions.
If it helps, make yourself a list of your past failures and achievements. This will make your shortfalls more clear, will help to realize your strengths, and assist in focusing your priorities.
2. Determine What Your Long-Term Goals Are
In order to further bolster your personal leadership skills, you must also determine any goals, long-term or short-term, that you want to achieve.
Write these goals down, consider how you are going to tackle them and determine the skills and steps you need to take in order to achieve them.
3. Determine Whatâs Important To You
Once you have determined your values and have clearly set out what your goals are and how you are going to achieve them, it is then time to determine whatâs most important to you on a personal level.
Sure, you can tick the professional boxes and develop leadership skills, but it is also important to understand what makes you tick as a person. So understanding where your passions lie and what excites you to jump out of bed in the morning will ultimately help keep you motivated.
How To Show Personal Leadership
To help you further cultivate and bring personal leadership into your professional and personal life, here are some things you can begin doing right now:
Be clear in your vision: Having a tight game plan, personal mission statement, or well set out goal is essential to improving and maintaining personal leadership. It will help in removing unwanted distractions, concentrate your focus on whatâs important, and help boost productivity and motivation.
Cultivate a spiritual approach: While spirituality can be a rather abstract ideology, we donât necessarily have to understand it in order for it to benefit our lives. For instance, fostering a perspective of honoring forces greater than ourselves, basing our beliefs around collectivism rather than individualism, and bringing compassion and empathy into our daily outlook will benefit just about every aspect of our lives.
Foster self-discipline: Flexing your self-discipline muscle isnât easy but it is incredibly important to achieving just about anything in your life. It will not only enhance your own personal growth but also strengthen your ability to lead others in a worthwhile way.
Be as honest as you possibly can: Being honest and truthful will build respect and trust in your decisions and opinions from your peers. Putting up your hand and admitting you were wrong is much more admirable than being caught out being untruthful and dishonest.
Be open to communication: Your ability to communicate openly with your peers in a sincere and straightforward manner is an essential leadership skill. Continually honing open communication will help to boost coworker trust, workplace efficiency, and even shed a positive light on your character. The power of a leader with good communication skills can never be underestimated.
Final Thoughts
Leaders cannot be in control of everything. Leaders are constantly hit with unexpected circumstances and events that they have no control over or any way of foreseeing.
So it is important to understand that there are certain aspects of your character and leadership skills that you can control. Understanding this will help you negotiate whatever life decides to throw at you, both personally and professionally.