Self-Leadership: Where Leadership Starts

It’s a topic I care about deeply because, hey, that’s where everything starts, in our inner world. And that’s where we can grow, change and create wonderful things, and awful ones too.

A few years ago I wrote and taught a course, "Leading Yourself“ at the International Business Management department of HEG, Geneva. The students would soon be entering the working world, and the university wanted them to be equipped not only academically but also with a solid grounding in leadership, which I thought was very forward-thinking. So I had my inward-focused course, and a dear colleague taught a course on leadership, with a focus on leading others.

My students were a bit apprehensive on the first day because they thought they would have to become stricter with themselves, more disciplined, correct their “weaknesses”, behave “better” and so on

They quickly discovered that developing self-leadership does not involve sombre introspection and self-criticism. On the contrary, they embarked on a journey of discovery where they embraced their strengths, understood how emotions worked, anchored their motivation in their values and learned how to be highly effective in the achievement of their goals.

All in all, it was a light and distinctly empowering process which enabled them to be more aware of themselves and how they affected others. They saw more clearly the mindsets and behaviours that didn’t work for them and learned to gradually replace these. Quite the opposite of deficit-oriented approaches that just add stress and hinder learning.

Still today, long after graduation, some students write to me saying that the course helped them face the challenges of the workplace and position themselves for leadership roles. You can imagine how delighted I am that they made good use of their learning.   

These are the same conversations that I’ve been having for 20 years with my coaching clients and course participants, because self-leadership is an integral part of leadership development.

It seems to me that supporting people with leadership responsibilities, influence and power to become more self-aware, more grounded and more capable of flourishing is not some soft or self-indulgent exercise in personal development. It's where leadership starts, and it's a key determinant in creating better workplaces.