Lead Yourself First
During one of our leadership seminars of one of the groups I belong to, the facilitator made a very humorous statement but it holds true. He said; "you wanna lead others, then lead yourself first." I have come to understand that leadership is not about staying in one corner and giving out orders for people to follow, neither is it forcing people to obey you - there are more to that. True leadership actually begins with leading yourself. Before you will be able to inspire others or influence them, or even motivate them, you have to first master your own thought and inspire yourself.
You will be surprised that a lot of leaders only want people to follow their words, but they cannot even practise what they say, so no action to emulate. No wonder they resort to applying force or coercing people to follow them and they will do so out of fear, not really because they are motivated to do so. In this present world, the true meaning of leadership has been misunderstood by many to mean titles, position, power or authority. But they forget that the true definition of leadership revolves around character, attitude, examples, and responsibilities. Imagine someone who cannot even control their own life coming to claim that they can control someone else. Or someone who cannot keep simple promises hoping to be entrusted with a much bigger responsibility.
To lead yourself, you have to build up to the point of doing the right thing even when doing it may seem to be very difficult. That is, you will rather choose to stand alone in rightness than compromise because a lot of people are doing it. You also need to learn how to build dreams, but much more importantly, how to follow through to the end. In addition, you also have to start holding yourself responsibility for the actions you take, their effects and consequences, and other choices. Then also hold yourself accountable for the things you do even if there is no one keeping an eye on you. Also remember that to be a good leader, you do not have to be told the right thing to do, you need to take the step and create the initiative.
Learning, growing, and improving are part of what also makes one a great leader, and this is the duties you owe to yourself. Also keep to your words, and take the concept of time seriously. Just to let you know; if someone cannot manage their time, then they cannot manage a whole lots of other things. As an individual, can you follow someone who does not care about time, who always arrives late to meetings, who is not coordinated, and who does not keep to their words? Obviously not. As a matter of fact, it is in your own interest that you build up yourself, because it will make people to follow you naturally.
It is worthy to note that leadership qualities, even the one you build as part of leading yourself, are not built overnight. But they are developed by constantly practising it and then working on yourself. Trust me, no one is born being extremely good, and no one is born being extremely bad. Being good or bad is a function of the choices that they had to make. In the same way, to develop your self-leadership skill, you need to make the choice and then put in the efforts to build on it - for example, waking up in the morning, staying focused throughout the day, planning your day ahead, managing time effectively, building a good character, relating well with people, etc. All these are part of what is required of you as a good leader.
It is also worth knowing that, even though the journey to self-leadership starts one day, it is a lifelong adventure. You can never learn too much to stop learning, neither can you get to a point where you feel that you do not need to develop yourself again. As you move higher in life, the demand to build up yourself becomes more. In any leadership position you find yourself; in your family, workplace, community, business, etc, always bear in mind that the ability to lead others is heavily dependent on your ability to lead yourself.
Thanks for reading
