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What is the single most important thing a leader needs to understand or do in order to be successful?
It’s not managing others well, nor any of the other aspects of leadership. It’s about managing oneself, being a leader to oneself.
Leadership skills are like the walls of a house. They really are important and they really are worth building up, but they are only as strong and as valuable as the foundation upon which they are built.
Self-management is the foundation upon which a leader’s effectiveness is built. As Daniel Goleman said, “The key to focus is not filtering out distractions but seeing what matters.”
Samuel Rima, in Leading from the Inside Out, states, “The way in which a leader conducts his personal life does, in fact, have a profound impact on his ability to exercise effective public leadership. There is a direct correlation between self-leadership and public leadership.”
Almost without exception, when leaders experience the type of failure that removes them from leadership, poor self-management (either moral, ethical, or relational collapse) is a significant factor
Self-management is inherently about you—about your priorities, your decisions, your life—and it’s ultimately your responsibility. We should want to be effective self-managers so that we can be successful leaders at home, at the office, and in our churches. We want to manage ourselves well in order to put others first and be leaders worth following.
Six Choices for a No-Regrets Life
The late Joe Aldrich, a university president, says, “When you get to the end of your life and there are nothing but memories to look back on, are you going to be full of regret and remorse—or the opposite?”
A Spanish proverb tells us, “What the fool does in the end, the wise man does in the beginning.”
1. Will you establish Strategic Clarity?
Things which matter most must never be at the mercy of things which matter the least. As Peter Drucker said, “There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.”
Getting your priorities right is a big part of managing yourself for the future you want. As Andy Stanley says, “We don’t drift in good directions. We discipline and prioritize ourselves there.”
Advice: Think before you do. Always. Install a system called 5/20/60/300. Dedicate:
5 minutes a day
20 minutes a week
60 minutes a month
300 hundred minutes (a half day) per year
…to focused reflection on sorting the noise from the priorities.
2. Will you make your contribution to the world?
Stephen Covey said, “You can retire from a job, but don’t ever retire from making extremely meaningful contributions in life.”
Advice: If you’ve become too self-oriented in your work, find a cause that benefits others and lights a spark within you, and begin working there. Give back. Invest your skills and passion in something that doesn’t have you at the center.
3. Will you keep your life in balance?
Balance is the ability to juggle the assignments and opportunities of life. And what are these? Assignments are things we have no control over or cannot say no to. Opportunities are options that present themselves along the way—alternatives we can accept or decline.
Two things to keep in mind when pursuing balance in life and work: (1) Balance is not a one-time achievement and (2) Balance is not the ability to do everything for everybody all the time. It’s a skill for achieving the optimal, not the maximal.
One leadership guru says, “Most people struggle with life balance simply because they haven’t paid the price to decide what is really important to them.”
Advice: Take a Sabbath rest each week. Turn off your cell phone and move away from the computer. Slow down and rest.
4. Will you nurture quality relationships?
As Anthony Robbins says, “The quality of your life is the quality of your relationships.”
In the last fifty years or so, the use of individualistic words and phrases in books has significantly increased, while the use of communal words and phrases as decreased.
We are better—better individuals, better workers, better parents, better citizens—when we live in community. When we live in isolation, and our focus and energies are solely on ourselves, we are simply less.
5. Will you pursue spiritual vitality?
Teilhard de Chardin, French philosopher and Jesuit priest, put it this way, “We are not human beings having spiritual experience; we are spiritual beings having a human experience.” One essential to successful self-management, leading to a life that yields satisfaction rather than regret, has got to be recognizing and cultivating your spirituality.
Both qualities—your leadership and your spirituality—are not only compatible but can mutually reinforce one another. Don’t ignore your spiritual side. Don’t be afraid of it either. Cultivate it and let it thrive.
Advice: Read through the book of Proverbs. Try to identify as many personalities and kinds of people in it as you can. Use this exercise to expand your understanding and skill in leading different kinds of people.
6. Will you be a steward of your finances?
In 2012, Forbes ran an article titled, “How Much Money Do You Really Need to Be Happy?” The article makes the point that, once you have the basic necessities of life covered, the amount of money you make doesn’t have much to do with your level of happiness. People who made $55,000 annually were only 9 percent more content than people who made $25,000 a year.
A 2008 LiveScience study found that people who gave away a portion their bonuses were happier than people who spent those bonuses on themselves. Loosen your grip on your money. Generous giving transforms the giver. It changes the way we view ourselves, the way we view others, and what we hold dearly…all for the better.
When rightly conceived, financial giving is simply one aspect of a generous lifestyle, a lifestyle that looks at time, talents, and resources as tools to better the lives of those around us. When we start to think like this, we can give generously regardless of what is (or isn’t) in our bank accounts.
Conclusion
Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Jesuits, urged his followers to practice the daily examen. That is, at night before going bed, they were to think back over their day, be grateful for good things that had occurred, and think about how to improve where they had made mistakes. It was a key part of Jesuits’ self-management. We should be similarly self-aware and self-directive regarding our choices. Start by leading yourself.
May these tips help you be one of those who builds a remarkable legacy (and not one who sadly crumbles)…as you shoot for the stars…