The hardest person you’ll ever lead is you.
Is that a familiar phrase?
Leadership is a funny thing. It’s not about telling others what to do. In fact, if that’s your notion of leadership, your approach is fundamentally flawed. There’s an opportunity to rethink things here.
Leadership isn’t just about leading others. It begins with leading you. It’s about taking control of your own life. I mean, let’s face it, if you can’t even lead yourself, how can you expect to lead others?
I’ve been trying to embrace the art of personal leadership for a while now, and let me tell you, it’s been a real journey. The most consistent challenge I encounter is my own will. I mean, when the schedule gets busy tasks like self-care and goal-review fall off my task list faster than… well, let’s just agree that they fall off… fast.
I used to tell myself I was a really consistent person. But, the truth is, my consistency comes down to comfortable ruts I can find myself contentedly stuck in. Ruts that don’t stretch or challenge me. Ruts that allow me to hide from the harder challenges that could produce greater growth.
Running is a great example. I love running. This was my form of fitness and stress relief for years.
But my rut mentality got in the way.
Every health goal I set over the years somehow always came back to running enough to get to a certain fitness level. Though I would wholeheartedly agree that other forms of exercise like weight training or yoga could help… even improve my running. It was easier just to stick with running and call it good.
Until the knee went out. Then it’s not good any longer. Not good at all.
Ruts are such a good disguise. They can lead you to believe you’re making progress… moving the ‘ball down the field’. And though they can produce progress out of mere consistency, they can also give a false sense of accomplishment. Leading you to believe you can make more progress than you actually can.
It’s like riding the A train expecting it to get you to B route destinations. You can ride that train all day long and never reach the destinations you desire. You have to switch trains.
As this career change journey progresses, I’ve had to force myself to break out of some ruts and lean into the things that are less comfortable for me. Things like…
Networking
Though I LOVE connecting with people, my purpose for connecting has been from a place of learning more about them and how we might leverage resources to help each other. It either felt mutually beneficial OR like I was helping them. Not the other way around. Networking was the result of connecting with those that reach out to me… not those to which I pursue. I find this side of connecting with others to be more vulnerable than I care to be. And it can be an energy drain.
Incremental Change
I love the idea of big, bold leaps. Though I can agree that a football goal is earned one first down at a time, I’m enamored with the hail mary finger-tip catch that puts you in the end zone in one fell swoop. The truth is, the hail mary is the most unlikely scenario here. This really is all about consistent first-downs earned a few yards at a time.
So, I’m learning to coach myself through toward the mental focus needed to keep fighting for one. more. yard.
Taking Care of Me
I can be very guilty of forsaking all else in order to reach a goal. And I run great risk of repeating that trend now. My tendency to over-focus on a goal can lead to me ignoring other important things in my life. Like self-care. Since beginning this career change journey, I’ve consumed my workout time with submitting resumes, writing cover letters and creating connections with potential leads.
Unfortunately, this doesn’t help with my stress management. So, this past week, I’ve refocused on daily exercise to ensure that I’m still taking care of me in the process.
The truth is, personal leadership & development is the precursor to team leadership & development. And I want to be a leader worth following. So, I’ll continue to refocus on these steps to get out (and stay out) of my rut.
