IT Leadership

No matter if you work at a large corporation, small startup, or anything in between, leadership skills are greatly valued. Even if you don’t have any direct reports, demonstrating the ability to lead can help you to secure a promotion or take on more meaningful work.

Before you can lead others, though, it’s critical that you learn to lead yourself first. In this article, we’ll discuss the importance of self-leadership and the strategies that you can use to improve your own self-leadership skills. We’ll also talk about how you can set and achieve meaningful goals for yourself with the help of these techniques.

Let’s get to it!

The Bases of Self-Leadership

Before we get too far, let’s make sure that we’re on the same page with our terminology.

Self-leadership is the ability to guide yourself toward actions and behaviors that will help you to meet your goals and objectives. To do this, you’ll need to be proactive and encourage yourself to take initiative whenever possible. You’ll also need to learn to say no to distractions that could steer you away from your goals.

In other words, self-leadership is all about taking control of your own life and your personal and professional development. It’s about making sure that you’re growing in the ways that you want to grow and achieving the things that you want to achieve.

This is critically important for anyone who wants to one day lead a team or organization. If you can’t demonstrate these skills in yourself, why should anyone else trust you to guide them toward their own personal goals?

If you want to strengthen your self-leadership, there are a few critical strategies that you should employ.

The Three Keys to Self-Leadership

Self-leadership doesn’t just happen naturally for most people. Like any skill, it takes practice and patience to develop.

Over my own years of developing self-leadership skills, I’ve identified three major keys to mastering the art. These keys are:

1. Know Yourself

To lead yourself, you need to have a deep understanding of who you are, what drives you, and what your goals are. This involves a lot of self-reflection and exploration. You’ll need to consider your values, your passions, and your motivations.

I cannot emphasize this enough: reflection is a massively important habit for personal growth and development. This goes beyond the surface-level thinking that most people do daily. Instead, it’s a deliberate, deep examination of your thoughts, feelings, and experiences. It’s thinking about your thinking, if you will.

The root word of reflection is flex, as in flexible. This is exactly what you’re trying to cultivate through reflection: the ability to flex your mind and think in new ways about your life, goals, and experiences.

If you want to strengthen your self-awareness, reflection is the way to do it. There are many ways to reflect, too, so find what works for you. This could be journalling, meditation, gentle movement practices like yoga, or even just taking a long walk.

Set aside some time each day or each week to contemplate your thoughts and feelings. Delve deep. Ask yourself some hard questions, and don’t be afraid to really dig in. The deeper you go, the more you’ll learn about yourself, and the easier it will be to lead yourself effectively.

2. Set Meaningful Goals

Once you have a deeper understanding of yourself, setting meaningful goals for yourself will be easier. You’ll have a better understanding of the direction that you want to take.

There are a few key steps to setting meaningful goals, no matter what those goals may be. Let’s break these down:

Set SMART goals: This acronym stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound. If you’re unfamiliar with this concept, it’s a fantastic framework for setting meaningful goals. Here’s what each letter means:

Specific: Your goal should be clear and well-defined. There’s no room for vagueness here. “I want to get better at my job” is not specific. “I want to take on more challenging work and seek promotion to a higher salary tier in the next two years” is much more specific.

Measurable: You should be able to measure your progress toward your goal. This means that you should be able to quantify it in some way. This helps you to stay on track and see advancement.

Achievable: Your goal should be ambitious, but it also needs to be something that you can realistically achieve with some hard work. You don’t want to set yourself up for failure, but you also don’t want to make it too easy on yourself.

Relevant: Your goal should matter to you and align with your values and longer-term plans. This ties back into the idea of understanding yourself and your desires before you set goals for yourself. If you’re setting goals that other people want for you, they won’t be relevant to your personal growth.

Time-bound: Your goal should have a deadline. Period. Without a deadline, it’s far too easy for the goal to get pushed to the wayside when things get busy. If you’ve ever made a New Year’s Resolution (and then promptly broken it), you’ve seen the power of a time-bound goal.

Break your goals into chunks: Once you have your meaningful goals written down, it’s helpful to break these goals into smaller chunks or milestones. This makes the journey feel more manageable and allows you to celebrate your progress along the way.

Give yourself deadlines: We’ve already discussed the importance of time-bound goals, but it bears repeating. Every milestone you set for yourself should have a deadline. And, again, this is about more than just staying on track. Meeting a deadline can be a great motivator, so use this to your advantage.

Write it down: This is a psychology-backed tactic that you should absolutely employ in your goal-setting routine. Write down your goals and your milestones, and make sure that you write down the deadline for each milestone.

3. Hold Yourself Accountable

Once you’ve set your goals and established your milestones, the final step is to hold yourself accountable. You alone are responsible for making sure that you achieve what you set out to do.

This can be a bit of a bummer sometimes. It’s easy to blame external factors or other people when things don’t go as planned. However, by taking accountability, you’re giving yourself power. You’re allowing yourself to learn from mistakes, adjust your strategies, and keep growing.

Holding yourself accountable can be challenging, though. Here are a few strategies to make it a bit easier:

Find an accountability partner: Pick someone that you trust and ask them to hold you accountable. This could be a friend, a family member, or even a colleague. Make sure that this person is someone who will be comfortable giving you a gentle nudge when needed.

Use habit tracking apps: There are many apps available that are designed to help you build good habits and stick to your goals. These can be very helpful, especially if you’re having trouble getting started.

Set up periodic reminders: Another technological aid, reminders on your phone or desktop can help to keep your goals top of mind. Set reminders for the same time every day, and make sure that they have a meaningful message to help trigger your behavior.

Use a planner: If you’re a pen-and-paper kind of person, a planner can be a great help in keeping you on track. Even if you’re not, grabbing a planner can be helpful. You can use it to record your goals and milestones, track your progress, and make notes about what’s working for you and what isn’t.

Practice self-discipline: This one can be tough, but it’s essential. Self-discipline will help you to stay focused on your goals, even when things get tough. It will also help you to avoid distractions and stay on track.

Wrapping It Up

Leading yourself is essential before you lead a team. By deepening your understanding of yourself and your goals, you’ll be able to grow in the ways that you want to grow and achieve what you want to achieve.

The three keys to self-leadership are knowing yourself, setting meaningful goals, and holding yourself accountable. Work on these strategies, and you’ll be well on your way to becoming an expert at leading yourself.

Just remember: there’s no rush. This is a journey, and it’s meant to be enjoyed. The more you can savor the process, the more fulfilling your personal and professional life will become.