How can managers and employees lead themselves?
Working from home, hybrid working, flatter or even temporary hierarchies, and an increasingly complex world are the new challenges companies are currently facing. Employees and managers who exhibit self-leadership skills are more likely to respond well to this new situation.
This means being in touch with ourselves and engaging in regular self-reflection in which we examine our own thoughts, feelings and behaviour from the outside. Why do certain situations and topics cause me to react the way I do? What happens to my thinking under stress? Which paths do I choose to achieve my goals? What does success mean to me? Questions like these help us to recognise how we have been leading ourselves so far. They allow us to decide whether and how we want to develop our self-leadership skills.
Self-leadership requires a certain commitment to self-development – this is always voluntary.
Our six mindset model is very useful here. What’s more, it can also provide you with the impetus to commit to self-development. A brief overview of the mindsets and their characteristics can be found here >>
Recognising the mindsets we choose to adopt is often the first step on the journey. Completing 12 sentence stems with your own honest answers can be helpful >> (Currently available in German)
What impedes or prevents development?
The social environment, repressed feelings, lack of role models, or ignorance (only pretending to have understood something) are just some of the factors that stand in the way of development.
What enables development?
Resolve and commitment, a positive error culture, safe spaces, supervision or collegial counselling and positive reference experiences are all conducive to self-development. Everything that is meaningful to us, that makes demands on us and that we can see as a positive challenge, promotes our individual development.
Seeing yourself more and more in a creating role and consciously putting yourself in this role again and again enhances your ability to lead yourself.
Collaboration and cooperation with others thus becomes more effortless and productive – even and especially in difficult situations. The capacity for co-creation and agility expands – not least because we can better manage our emotions – in our private lives and at work.
