Leadership Gold Part 2 of 10: Leading Yourself
February 17, 2009 by dr. lam
Most oftentimes a leader is focused on leading other people without truly realizing that the most important person to lead and also the most difficult is himself or herself. The reason that I write these blogs is as an exercise to get myself better as a leader. They are life lessons for me first. If I cannot lead myself, I will have no followers following me.
Most oftentimes, we do not work at self-improvement but look at everyone around us as needing work. Maxwell says that when we criticize someone else, that is called constructive criticism. However, when someone criticizes us we call that destructive criticism. I am certainly not perfect at taking criticism, but I am a lot better today than I was even last year and last year I was better than the year prior. Remember from the 4 agreements, “never to take anything personally”. That is very important in this case. Too often when we judge others, we judge them by THEIR actions, whereas when we judge ourselves we judge ourselves by our intentions. This two-tier system of criticism leads us to failure because we never meant anything by what we did or so we rationalize, but that person certainly should have known better. We must strive to create a harmonious congruity by how we perceive ourselves and others.
Maxwell, a former preacher, still says that he ultimately does not trust himself to lead himself. That is why he has established external accountability for his actions. That is why I wrote about accountability a couple of weeks ago and why I emphasized how I am accountable to other business leaders/owners in my EO forum group. How have you made yourself accountable? To whom? What interval?
We as leaders (and that means all of you too!) must hold ourselves to a higher level of accountability. Linda, who is my spa director, asked me last year why I have apologized to my staff for seemingly small infractions, and I explained that as a leader I hold myself to a higher level of accountability of who I am and who I should aim to be. There is no other person that can truly hold you to that level of accountability than yourself.
When we first lead ourselves, we can then have a chance at leading others around us. I have learned a lot about real-life leadership this past year and have worked even more diligently at becoming a more centered leader. By virtue of that, my patients and my staff and everyone around me has benefited. I must start with myself. You must start with yourself. We must start with ourselves. I look at my readership as part of my extended team at LFP because I would love for all of us to grow as humans in our common fraternity.
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8 Responses to “Leadership Gold Part 2 of 10: Leading Yourself”
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Uh oh. This one, thought I should ‘sit out’. I am TERRIBLE in this regard. I’m showing up to admit that. Funny, everyone who knows me thinks of me as more leader than follower, and yet I have established (almost) none of what you just so well described. It’d be easy to let myself think otherwise; I always do what I say I’ll do, honor obligations to the letter, my friends tell me they love that I am a natural encourager and I remember about them what’s most important and essential. THESE OTHER important aspects, I’ve NEVER spent time on. I am scaring myself at this moment.
I (big gulp) have bounced through life on instinct, pretty much only. Maybe not a LOL moment, but I bet someone can relate.
Don’t be scared Those who realize what their deficiencies are are far better off than those who do not. So be proud that you can see where you and all of us can improve! Congratulations!
I like how you pointed out that being a leader is first being a leader to yourself, and then people will follow you. Oftentimes, people get caught up in the mentality of, “Do what I say but not what I do.”. I like it when people actually practice what they preach. This was a great post! Great point you made about our perception of constructive and destructive criticism! It is hard taking criticism! Also, great point on having accountability too!
thanks heather for the responses. i really appreciate so very much the positive comments and thoughts. i read and respond to every response on this site because it is important to me!
best,
sml
I agree, we tend to judge others by their actions (but are often dumbfounded when others do the same to us…yes, criticizing is easy – being criticized is much harder!). This means, we are judging what we perceive to be happening – which in turn automatically means that we INTERPRET the other person’s actions – applying our own criteria, of course. How often have we made judgments – and then later been proven completely wrong?
Practising not to be overly critical – neither with someone else nor with ourselves – will make accepting others and ourselves much easier. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be accountable for our actions, but accountability and criticism are totally different things.
brilliantly put, vancouver. welcome back!
Hello!
Very Interesting post! Thank you for such interesting resource!
PS: Sorry for my bad english, I’v just started to learn this language
See you!
Your, Raiul Baztepo
hi raiul,
welcome here! and thanks for the comments. please don’t worry about your english, grammar or anything. this community is not judgmental about those kinds of things. we are embracive, warm and uplifting so i’m glad to have a new member and reader. PLEASE feel free to write positive thoughts as you see the desire to do so. i really love that!