Getting Strategic About Self-Leadership Skills

Since flipping the calendar to a new year, we’ve looked at just how important self-awareness and self-leadership can be for each of us - especially when we’re in a role where we carry the responsibility of leading others! We also looked at some tools we can use to really understand why we do what we do, even in the most tense circumstances, so we can develop strategies for leading ourselves as effectively as we possibly can. And if we develop those strategies well, sooner or later the steps we’re taking turn into skills we can rely on for a solid foundation as we continue moving forward on our leadership journeys!

I’ll emphasize it again here; the most effective tool I’ve ever found that’s provided me with the kind of self-awareness I could use to lead myself more effectively, intentionally develop my emotional intelligence, and even build my daily/weekly routines around has been a scientifically validated DISC Leadership Assessment - and more specifically, understanding how to apply the results from that assessment into basically every aspect of what I do! When I learned exactly how I was wired to behave and communicate, whether everything was going smoothly or I was under extreme amounts of stress, I was able to start tailoring almost everything I did to match my unique style blend. Doing that not only helped me manage some of my most intense responses and reactions under stress (the whole emotional intelligence thing…), it helped me build systems into my routine that matched my internal needs so that I’d get a higher level of fulfillment along the way!

Moving forward here, I’m going to share some basic tips I believe anyone can apply to develop a higher level of self-awareness - and in turn, a more effective approach to self-leadership - even without having access to the results of one of the assessments that’s helped me so much… That said, an individual who’s serious about dialing this in to their exact behavioral style so they can get exceptional results would be much better served by reaching out to me directly so we can work through that one on one. Since I couldn’t possibly do that for everyone who will have access to these messages, I at least want to be able to provide a solid starting point!

Before we dive in though, let me circle back to a few statistics Travis Bradberry shared in Emotional Intelligence 2.0 that emphasize why everything I’ve shared to this point, as well as what we’ll be working though as we wrap this up, matters to each and every one of us:

• “Your EQ is the foundation for a host of critical skills EQ is so critical to success that it accounts for 58 percent of performance in all types of jobs.”

• “75% of long-term job success depends on people skills, while only 25% on technical knowledge!”

• “Self-Awareness is your ability to accurately perceive your own emotions in the moment and understand your tendencies across situations.”

• “Only 36% of the people we tested are able to accurately identify their emotions as they happen.”

If we’re willing to take advantage of the right tools, in any industry, we can be far more effective and achieve significantly better results than the majority of our competition. What we’ll be looking at through the next few posts will serve as a starting point for that, but taking the extra steps to learn and apply these things based on our own unique behavioral style blend can be what helps us move from above average to extraordinary!