Steps to Effective Personal Leadership

Oftentimes, I have been posed with the question, what actually is personal leadership? This is because when the word “Leadership” is mentioned, a lot of persons turn all defensive, saying they aren’t Leaders or that they don’t want to be Leaders. However, unknown to these persons, everyone as Myles Munroe will say, is designed to be a Leader. The choice of going on to becoming Leaders is now left with each individual.

Personally, I like to say that everyone is a Leader because in our day to day running of things, in one way or the other, we take the leads, either for ourselves or for others. And when we take the lead, we are simply leading. That is why I define leadership as simply taking the initiative for a desired change or result.

It was in the quest to differentiate these two forms of leadership I highlighted above that the term “Personal Leadership” was introduced to mean the Leadership of oneself.

So, having made that point, I believe you now understand why I pointed out earlier that everyone is a Leader. Because you lead yourself and I lead myself.

What is Personal Leadership and why is it important?

Personal Leadership could be said to be the ability to effectively control and determine your life’s actions and inactions. It is all about leading or living a better life from the inside out.
That is to say, personal Leadership focuses on your potentials and how to develop them. According to J. D. Meler, author of Getting Results the Agile Way, “Success is an inside job”.

Personal Leadership is so important that Peter Drucker stated that it is the only Leadership that will matter in the 21st century. This is why most recruiting firms and Establishments now focus more on Soft Skills than Hard Skills and these skills are not possible to be developed except through a commitment to Personal Leadership.

You see why you should be bothered about the subject of Personal Leadership and how you can start to lead yourself. Almost everything that you want to be or want to achieve will require a significant amount of personal leadership from you.

Steps to Personal Leadership

There are three basic steps to Personal Leadership I would be sharing. These are Self-discovery, Self-improvement and Self-deployment. Let’s discuss these points in details.

1. Self-discovery

Self-discovery is the beginning of your journey towards Personal Leadership. This is because just as you can’t lead who you don’t know, you can lead yourself without first knowing yourself. When it comes to self-discovery, there are few steps to discovering yourself.

• Discover your Purpose

As an individual, your journey towards self-discovery starts with you first discovering the Purpose for your life. Your purpose refers to your perceived reason for existence. A life without purpose is a life void of direction and meaning. Purpose gives meaning to your life. It gives direction to all you do and all you are as an individual.

So, more than anything else seek to discover your purpose. Everything about your life depends greatly on that discovery.

• Understand your strengths and understand your weaknesses.

Don’t be among the many that erroneously assume they have no weakness.  Every individual has a certain degree of strength and weakness. So, you must discover and know them.
Your strength could be speaking…
Your weakness could be procrastination…
Understand what they are, know them and be aware of them.

• Understand your Temperament.

Although this is similar to the second point, I chose to separate it in order to emphasize it. Every individual has at least one Temperament and according to Tim Lahaye, there are basically four Temperaments – melancholy, phlegmatic, sanguine and choleric.

Every individual has a mixture of any two of the four basic temperaments, with the predominant referred to as the primary while the less predominant is referred to as the secondary.

To learn more about Temperament, I recommend you read up “Why you act the way you do” by Tim Lahaye.

            2. Self-Improvement

After you have begun the journey of personal Leadership in self-discovery, the next step is what I call Self Improvement. At this point, having understood and clarified your life’s purpose and also having known your temperament, strengths and weaknesses, you diligently work on making yourself better.

You do this basically by acquiring more knowledge or information through books, attending workshops, seminars and symposiums. You also do these through training and by connecting with Mentors. It does not matter how old you are today, you can start off and end well tomorrow.

You are never too young to eat so you are never too young to start paying the price of self-improvement. It is hard work… Start putting in the works today that your future self will be grateful you did.

Just before you go further, I have a task for you…

---

List out on a sheet of paper or in your phone’s “Note App”, all the strengths you know about yourself which you’ve noticed or which others told you you possess. Underneath the strengths, list out the weaknesses you have noticed in yourself or which others have told you about yourself.

How can you improve on your strengths immediately??? What can you do immediately or who do you know that could help you overcome some or all of the weaknesses you’ve listed???

---

             3. Self-deployment

This is simply giving yourself to the application of what you have discovered and developed in yourself. Application is important in the Personal Leadership journey. You can not lead yourself effectively unless you are one that is committed to applying the things you have learnt in the course of improving yourself.

You may know how to sing but no one will know about it unless you have sung. You are a writer because you write not because you know how to write. Self-deployment is very much important to your continued growth and improvement. In fact, it is how effectively you apply the things you know that we can say whether or not you are leading yourself effectively.

So, decide today to deploy yourself in areas of interest. Take up voluntary assignments in your workplace, home country or abroad. Intern in an organisation. Work full time or part-time. Start off your own blog, podcast or even your own youtube channel. By whatever means or way, deploy yourself. 

Closing thoughts…

The subject of Personal Leadership is very broad and is unending and I believe I have been able to add value to you. I close with the following:

Your life is too serious for you not to be serious about it. Be one that is actively involved in the outcome of his or her life and not just one that passively sits and watches things go.

Bonus:

Check this post to discover how you can create a plan for your Personal Growth. Also, download my latest book, 27 over 27, and find out 27 wisdom lessons from the past 27 years of my life.