The Four Major Leadership Competencies: Self-Leadership

Everything rises and falls on leadership. Look at any successful organization, business, or parish, and you will find leaders who make it happen. In his book Good to Great, Jim Collins empirically studied successful companies. Before the study, he determined that he would not give leadership as a reason for their success. However, after he studied the companies, he realized he just could not leave leadership out of his book. It was too crucial to their success.

In my experience, there are four major competencies and skills that make someone a great leader. I outlined them in the last blog if you want to check it out. In this blog, we are going to look at self-leadership. Fifty percent of leadership is self-leadership. Before we can lead and influence others, we must first lead ourselves. It’s vital because no one else can do it for us. We can’t delegate self-leadership.

What is self-leadership?

Andrew Bryant, in his book Self Leadership, says it is “aligning our thinking, feeling and actions towards my objectives for my life.” We can tweak that definition to give it a more Christian worldview and say, “it is aligning our thinking, feeling and actions toward God’s design for my life.”

Self-leadership means embracing that I am radically in charge of my life. God has given me free will and so I will choose to play the hero and overcome obstacles and challenges rather than play the victim.

We have to lead ourselves before we can lead others. We have to walk the talk first and then we can encourage others to follow us. This doesn’t mean we have to be perfect and get everything right, but it means we are striving to grow and embody the vision and practices we challenge others to live out. In our book Rebuilding Your Message, we note that the first person who should be changed by your preaching and teaching is the preacher.

Self-leadership gives us a moral authority to lead others. This is how Jesus gained influence. Mark’s Gospel tells us that the people were amazed at Jesus. “All were amazed and asked one another, ‘What is this? A new teaching with authority. He commands even the unclean spirits and they obey him.’” (Mark 1:27-28) The crowds saw the consistency between Jesus’ life and his teachings.

When it comes to self-leadership, we could drill down into five major areas to monitor.

One is to “know thyself.” Good leaders know their strengths and weaknesses. They know their personality. They understand what energizes them and what drains them. They know the rhythms of life that work for them so they can get the most out of themselves. They set a healthy pace for themselves. Good leaders work to remove their blind spots by being open to feedback and growing and learning. Knowing ourselves is an ongoing study that’s not about navel gazing but about understanding how God created us and has shaped us to make a difference and an impact. Knowing ourselves sets a foundation for the other skills of self-leadership

The second skill of self-leadership is managing our schedule and priorities. Everyone has 24 hours in a day. It’s amazing though that some people seem to be so much wiser in terms of how they use their time than others. It has been said we can’t really manage time, but we can manage and set priorities so that we use our time wisely and don’t just fritter away this valuable commodity. There are some basic hacks and skills in managing our time and priorities well. A few include: create an ideal week, identify the three big rocks or priorities every day, and do what is most important and most challenging first in the day (commonly called “eat that frog”). We can learn and practice those hacks but, like knowing ourselves, it is an ongoing lesson to learn as our roles and responsibilities change.

The third skill is practicing soul care. The world would call it self-care but I say soul care to remember that we under God’s care and protection. We can’t care for ourselves all on our own but we can choose to connect to God’s grace and power. Soul care means that I understand the ways in which God restores me. It means yielding to the times he “makes me lie down in green pastures.” It is an understanding of how to use down time wisely and truly re-create. I have found over the last couple of years that this is far more challenging than I had previously thought.

The fourth skill is being growth oriented or growing in holiness. It is funny how certain lessons from school stick with you. My sophomore year religion teacher defined holiness as “growing on all five levels of our being all the time.” The five levels of our being are the physical, intellectual, spiritual, social, and emotional. Rick Warren says, “Leaders are learners; the moment you stop learning, you stop leading.” We could say the moment we stop growing and making efforts to grow as human beings we stop leading and we fall behind. Staying committed to personal growth and holiness gives us authority to lead.

The fifth skill might seem surprising but it is managing money and finances. Self-leadership is about managing and aligning the resources God has given us with his design for our lives. How we handle money on a personal basis impacts our leadership. If we don’t manage it according to God’s ways and priorities, we will get out of alignment with God in other areas of life.

Take a moment to think about your own self-leadership. On the list above, where would you say you are strong? If you could improve one area, what would you improve?

Rooting for you,
Tom