…the practice of intentionally influencing your thinking, feeling and behaviors to achieve your objective.
Self-leaders have a drive for autonomy, can make decisions, are more creative and persist, even in the face of adversity.
Some of the intentional behaviours that characterise Self-leadership are; self-awareness, self-goal setting, self-motivation, positive self-talk, assertive communication and the ability to receive and act on feedback.
Becoming a Self-leader and maintaining Self-leadership is a self-development activity; but organizations that encourage Self-leadership reap the benefit.
Mac Davis sang, “Oh Lord it’s hard to be humble when you’re perfect in every way,” and whilst the song is tongue-in-cheek it speaks to a challenge faced by today’s leaders. To get to the top you have to be very good at what you do and let the right people see and hear about your competency; you have to have healthy self-esteem to handle the knocks and the naysayers and this leads to a healthy dose of self-belief. So by the time you get to a leadership position you view of the world is likely to be that you are better than those who have not yet made it and this is seen as arrogance (an attitude of superiority or an overbearing manner) and arrogance can be the kiss of death for a leader as it generates resentment and enemies.
So how can a leader be humble when he/she has to be so good?
Research (Tangney 2002) identifies a number of key features of humility: Continue Reading »
I just had a conversation with an American who had visited London and he said, “The people there were great”. How often have you heard this or said this about people from somewhere else? Lots of times I think. So why is it so surprising that when we visit somewhere else, a difference country or culture, we discover that the people there are great?
I think it has to do with our tribal mentality, it somehow serves us to think of “The Others” as different and therefore inferior to our tribe. And yet when we meet people one-to-one we discover that, whether they live in a high-rise in Manhattan or a yurt in Outer Mongolia, people are interesting and generous and have a sense of humour. Continue Reading »
I was recently inteviewed about Self-leadership on Singaore’s 938Live radio program. I have saved 3 audio files here so you can listen as a Podcast.
What is Self-leadership?
Self-leadership is about intentionally influencing yourself to achieve your objectives. Self-leaders have the drive for autonomy and so can make thier own descions. Self-leadership Part 1
US President, John F. Kennedy, once said, “Leadership and Learning are indispensible to each other”, which sets a frame that an effective leader does not know it all but is open to new information and perspective. Consider the possibility that everything we know today about our world emerged because people were curious. They formulated a question or series of questions about something that sparked their interest or deeply concerned them, which lead them to learn something new. It is my experience in developing leaders that the best leaders ask the best questions. Continue Reading »
I have been asked to speak on building an International Speaking Business, which is a topic I know a bit about if you consider the stamps in my passport over the last couple of years. So if you are in Melbourne, Australia at the begining of April and want to talk about the business of speaking or possilbly engaging me for your organisation for leadership development then contact me through the website.
If you want to visit my speaking bureau website feel free to browse and check out the view videos at www.andrew-bryant.com.
Modern organisations strive to develop their leaders to gain a competitive advantage; and smart companies are changing from the traditional management style of command-and-control to a model of self-leadership and shared-leadership. This is particularly important with knowledge workers in virtual teams or in flatter, matrix organisations.
Self-leaders have a drive for autonomy, are more creative and persist, even in the face of adversity. Shared-leadership allows team members to influence peers, superiors and sub-ordinates with the objective to lead one another to innovation and the achievement of high performance objectives.
In this video, inspirational speaker, Andrew Bryant shares a contingent model for developing leaders with self-leadership.
Self-leadership is grounded in Cognitive Learning Theory (CLT), which states that we influence our world and our world influences us. The amount we influence depends on our perception of our own effectiveness or potential effectiveness; “I can do it” or “I can learn to do it”. CLT is also shows that we learn by observing others and by visualising successful outcomes.
The feed-forward and feed-back loops between our selves and the world explains how we program effective or limiting behaviours. Continue Reading »
This blog is a draft from my new book on self-leadership with Dr. Ana Kazan.
“Why should we not calmly and patiently review our own thoughts, and thoroughly examine and see what these appearances in us really are?”- Plato
Self-leadership begins with self-observation, which means noticing our thoughts, feelings and behaviours. Self-observation is like checking the instruments of an airplane to ensure it is flying level and on course. By checking in on ourselves we can make adjustments which allow us to be more purposeful and effective. Continue Reading »