Self-leadership: the secret weapon of productivity

Self-leadership: the secret weapon of productivity… and not only, I might add, is the title of the article I am proposing today.

What is self-leadership

I call self-leadership the ability of a person to self-organise according to one or more objectives or projects. Up to this point, I could perhaps have spoken of self-organisation. But there is more. In self-leadership, in order to sustainably achieve objectives, there are at least an effectiveness and an efficiency component.

Indeed, it is not very attractive to organise oneself to achieve a goal in an inefficient or ineffective way. In that case, we would be wasting resources, time, mental and physical energy and so on.

The person with self-leadership has a correct perception of himself, his limits and his potential. Therefore, he/she is able to control the elements necessary to achieve goals with the least consumption of energy, resources and time.

Is that all?

If you ask yourself this question, the best case scenario is that you have never had to work in a team, or you have a strong self-leadership. In this case, you might consider it a natural, taken-for-granted gift. But I doubt that this is the case: it would be a bit ‘inhuman’, i.e. it would most likely not belong to the human experience.

Otherwise, I fear that you have never been responsible for the resources invested in a project, having to meet deadlines and struggling with limited resources. Or, that your well-being or an important goal has never depended on excellent teamwork.

If, on the other hand, you are a person who has responsibilities or expectations with respect to the achievement of goals, there are other questions you will ask yourself. For example.

How does one develop self-leadership?

This is a good question for a leader, entrepreneur or in any case a person who has a team of collaborators.

Self-leadership consists of a set of personal qualities that can be developed to some extent. An important means of doing this is certainly training. Better still would be to speak of ‘education’. This concept evokes the ‘bringing out’ of people the best of what they have within; it is much more than training.

Educating means first of all being able to see in people what talents they possess, giving them confidence and the means to express it. A true leader is one who makes people flourish, makes them express the talents they have, even to the point of surpassing him/her.

So I need leadership first?

That’s right: in order to have a team of self-leadership equipped elements, you need a leader: you!

It is amazing to see how many so-called leaders in the corporate world or organisations prevent employees from developing self-leadership. Even when people would be innately gifted with it. I have experienced this first-hand as a consultant.

I have also experienced as an entrepreneur and employer how challenging it is to work with people endowed with that quality. But I have also experienced how much relief it gives you to have employees around you that you can trust. Because they will also allow you to delegate important parts of your work. And they will complete it, as well as and sometimes better than you would have done.

The leader’s self-leadership

It sounds like a tongue-twister, but it is at the core of quite a few problems that occur in organisations: many ‘leaders’ lack self-leadership. They only look to others and only expect performance from others, as if people were machines.

But the good leader must possess the quality of self-leadership to be able to demand, and get, the best from his team. This means that he must be able to see himself as on a map: the territory represented by the situation or problem in front of him. Himself as the pawn in the centre, receiving stimuli and responding with emotions, thoughts, actions or reactions.

Consequently, he must know how to read himself, understanding his interactions with the context and managing them, whether emotional, mental or bodily. This strategic and tactical knowledge of oneself in relation to the context will allow one to act in the best way to achieve the desired objectives.

Obviously, a leader endowed with this quality will be the one who manages to put people in the most appropriate place so that they make the best contribution to the team. And they achieve the objectives.

To lead is first of all to involve

I know that you have probably been wondering for a couple of paragraphs what qualities make up self-leadership. But I am here to help you, not to give you easy answers to the wrong questions. Taking time to explore and reflect on important issues is a basic character of the true leader!

A great leader, a today’s Napoleon or Gandhi, one who leads a team to success, is first and foremost one who involves. Involving people in an enterprise means making them feel that your goals are also theirs. Once upon a time, the leader did this by promising to share the spoils of war. Now other methods are needed, it will be obvious to you.

To motivate you must be able to understand the Basic Needs that move people, and make sure that working with you satisfies them. I have capitalised and bolded the terms because I understand them in the scientific sense set out in my book Sustainable Leadership.

Listening first

Let’s name one quality of a good leader at this point! Knowing how to listen is fundamental. First of all, listening well allows you to acquire accurate and in-depth information. So, if you as a leader demonstrate to your co-workers how to listen, they can also learn to do so. It is the first step of self-leadership.

This means that when you give them instructions, or ask them for help, to do something or bring you some information, what you say will come through clearly. There will be no waste of time due to that haste and superficiality in listening (or reading) that causes so much waste in organisations.

Most people listen ‘half way’. They hear you, but in the meantime they are thinking about their own business, or what they might answer you, or they draw conclusions before they have heard everything and assimilated and processed it. Some, and they are the most irritating, while you are talking think about how to tell you what they think on the subject, without taking any account of what you have said.

Empathic listening to know

The ability to listen empathetically is the basis of the set of qualities we call emotional intelligence. This is an essential leadership skill, necessary to decode one’s own and others’ emotions and then know what to do with them. Also necessary perhaps for a peaceful and fulfilling life, but that is another matter. In any case, knowing how to listen to your people empirically also allows you to get to know them better.

There are various tests to assess people’s characteristics and to look for the right role in the team for each person. Systemic constellations are also a formidable tool for putting everyone in their best place: I have tried it with my collaborators with the help of my friend and colleague Antonio D’Este and it works incredibly well.

But beyond tests and other methods, listening empathetically, actively and sincerely to people is what allows you to get to know them. Each of us inevitably acts to fulfil one or more of our Basic Needs. These are survival, well-being, identity and freedom. I will spare you the theory here, which you can always find in my book. Obviously they decline in various ways, but their satisfaction IS our fundamental motivation.

Building relationships

Here is another quality of the leader and, you will not be surprised at this point, of self-leadership. Yes, because in order to be able to achieve goals effectively and efficiently, you have to know how to build relationships.

So, for you as the leader, the advice is to build human, real relationships with the people in your team. I don’t advise you to show interest in them. I’m asking you to be interested in them. One of the things that made Adriano’s Olivetti great was the crazy level of innovation. Do you know what one of his secrets was? He was interested in every person he came into contact with. He knew that from any human being can come an idea, a useful contribution.

And he knew how to motivate collaborators: he involved them, then listened to them. Already two great leadership qualities. Unlike the somewhat old-fashioned paternalism of his father Camillo, Adriano genuinely cared about his employees feeling good and feeling that the good of the company was also their own. Plus he believed that, to be a valuable collaborator, personality counted more than professional experience. That is why he wanted to get to know people, not their CVs.

There is no success without collaboration

Even if you played an individual sport, you would not win the Olympics alone. If you ever put that medal around your neck, you would have had a coach, athletic trainer, nutritionist, doctors, physiotherapists, maybe a yoga teacher, other athletes to train yourself against…

The human being is a social being, and is made to collaborate. An important quality of self-leadership is being able to perceive one’s limits, embrace them and make use of the potential that is there.

This is counter-intuitive to those who see the leader, even of themselves, as a person with a big ego, rising above the masses. Far from it. A humble awareness of one’s limits with a total commitment to one’s talents is far more effective than believing oneself to be a superman. That is why it is also necessary to know one’s strengths, not just one’s limits, in order to be able to put them to good use.

A person with self-leadership is invaluable in a team, because she is the one who will instinctively place herself in the most effective role in order for the team to achieve its goals. She will never be the one who causes conflict in order to highlight herself individually. The objective is the priority, and must be pursued effectively and efficiently, together.

A greater purpose

For some years now, it has become fashionable to talk about purpose, somehow hollowing the word. A word that means a lot, alas. Indeed purpose is simply the reason for which an organisation exists. Set aside fashion, let’s be less of a stickler and do more of the facts.

The purpose for which an organisation exists must be broader than shareholder profit if you want employees to be motivated. The desire to work for the betterment of community conditions is innate in human beings. It is unconsciously so even today, in the age of violence and individualism exalted 24/7 by the media.

In the theory of Basic Needs that I expound in my book, I explain how one of the organisation’s needs is to satisfy at least one of its stakeholders and never to harm any of them. Here again I do not bore you with the theory and refer you, if you wish, to the book. This is necessary for the organisation to have social legitimacy to exist (i.e. license to operate).

Like the Blues Brothers

Remember Jake’s iconic line after attending mass in the movie The Blues Brothers: ‘we are on a mission from God’? Well, like the character of Rev . Cleophus James played by James Brown in the film, in order to induce an attitude of self-leadership in your co-workers you too must inspire them with a highly positive mission… well, even somehow more soberly, if you prefer!

Put another way, for employees to be well motivated to work hard for the organisation to achieve its goals, it must be clear how they contribute to the collective well-being. As well as to that of the shareholders, which in itself is by no means considered negative.

If you can convey your values (and they must be true!) to people and make them understand the benefits to the community of achieving your goals, you will see miracles. There is no KPI that can produce more results than people who are motivated to do their best in the service of the organisation’s goals.

Helping the development of self-leadership

In conclusion, self-leadership is the ability to put one’s best at the service of achieving a goal. The same applies to an individual, personal or collective goal.

As a team or company leader, you can do a lot to help develop such skill in your people. You can start with a healthy culture of error, for example. Allow people to try new ways, to push themselves beyond the known to improve processes or products. By trying new things you make mistakes, but you learn. Many of the most innovative and successful companies have a healthy culture of error.

Another key element is giving good and useful feedback. Every team leader must know how to give constructive and reinforcing feedback to his or her people, helping them in the elements of self-leadership. For example, in the correct perception of oneself, one’s limits, potentials, mistakes AND successes. I point this out because ‘leaders’ often take their employees’ successes for granted instead of emphasising them, strengthening their sense of self-efficacy and self-esteem.

If you want to try the CASE® Method for strengthening self-leadership

The subject, you will have realised, is very broad and this article was intended to give you some food for thought and some basics.

In addition to the book I mentioned, Sustainable Leadership, where you can find many examples in addition to the theory, the application of the CASE® Method can help you develop self-leadership: both yours and that of your colleagues.

We can do this through personal counselling as well as through training and, as I told you at the beginning, education. And in many other ways, of which you are certainly best suited.

Write to me at federico@federicofioretto.biz if you would like to take advantage of a free initial consultation to frame your situation and see what we can do for you and your organisation.

Good Life to you!