Leadership is an inside job
Tracing the link between organizational performance and personal development
Lyndon Rego
Leadership is often celebrated as bold vision and courageous action. Yet it is also about the quiet everyday work of growing oneself and building caring relationships with colleagues. It is these subtle personal commitments of a leader that are at the root of greater success. In this article, we will trace the connection between personal or inner development, relationship management, and larger organizational engagement and performance. It starts with oneself.
Leadership is Personal
Leadership is hard to define but easy to identify. You know it when you see it. It is in attributes like boldness, courage, integrity, empathy, perseverance, humility, positivity, grit, generosity and more. These key qualities aren’t necessarily skills and they can’t really be taught, yet they can be learned and developed. When they are present in a person, these aren’t superficial attributes but are deeply embedded at the core of their being.
This idea of “being” is essential to understanding how to develop leaders. The inside scoop from those who work in leadership development is that it is an inside-out process. A leader can’t truly lead others unless they first lead themselves. Leading oneself requires one to be clear on one’s personal mission and have a commitment to pursuing those goals. Without an inner compass, an individual is at the mercy of variable external forces.
In my experience, many senior leaders lose this inner sense of direction on the way down the career track. They get side-tracked by the many diversions and detours that emerge. Over time, they find themselves far off course from what they valued or wanted for themselves. The realization of having lost one’s way can trigger a deep mid-career crisis. The once high-performing leaders can become disempowered, disengaged, and even toxic. This serves neither them nor their organizations.
Great leaders, on the other hand, have a very strong sense of mission. And, because of this steady focus, they are better able to navigate the turbulence, obstacles, and detours that the exterior world throws at them. They continually sense and correct course to stay on track with what matters most.
“Personal leadership is not a singular experience. It is, rather, the ongoing process of keeping your vision and values before you and aligning your life to be congruent with those most important things.” — Stephen Covey
Inner work is needed to develop self-awareness
As a leader who wants to steer his/her own career rather than the other way around, you need to get clear about your own values and goals. There is also much inner work to be done to understand your own mindset, beliefs, aspirations, and emotions that drive your behaviors. Developing this self-awareness is not a superficial excavation but is getting to the bedrock of real leadership.
It can seem that soul-searching is the work of philosophers and poets.
Socrates said, “To know thyself is the beginning of wisdom.”
Shakespeare wrote, “This above all: to thine own self be true.”
Yet, West Point, the premier US military academy uses a similar frame of “Be, Know, Do.” The first principle that cadets are offered is “Know Yourself and Seek Self Improvement.” The military academy sees this commitment to self-development as not a nicety, but critical to people who will likely put themselves in the line of fire and make life and death decisions. And yet, this first principle is just the starting point. Because the role of a leader is much larger than leading oneself.
Self-Awareness extends to empathy
The construct of emotional intelligence is anchored in self-awareness and social awareness — the understanding of others. There is a West African Proverb that says, ‘The good mother knows what her children will eat’. As a leader, you need to not only bring out the best in yourself, you need to be able to bring out the best in others. This requires connecting with each individual’s unique motivations and purpose.
A CEO who built a strong and high-performing culture did this by taking one-on-one walks with new hires to learn about them and also share his own journey and values. As his organization grew in size, meeting with every employee one-on-one was no longer possible for him alone. The practice of connecting with people at a personal level was emulated by managers and cascaded into the organization. It has created a culture where managers understand each of the hundreds of employees on staff and foster meaningful connections with them. They embrace helping employees grow as a primary responsibility and key to performance and retention. These development-focused and people-centered organizations are also quick to release individuals who are not a good fit, because of a mismatch in values, commitments, and actions become quickly apparent.
This focus on self-awareness and awareness of others takes time and effort and is not a quick fix, but great leaders are here to play the long game. They want to build organizations that have strong cultures that pull through challenges and grow to greater strength. A weak organization will quickly crumble when adversity arises because there is a lack of deeply-felt commitment. What earns an organization the long-term commitment of high-performing people is the draw of values and the investment the organization makes in them.
Leadership of self is linked to organizational performance
Inside every great organization is a realization that the source of leadership lies not just in company policies or processes but in the commitment of each person. A former CEO at a thriving organization I worked at would often walk the halls, stopping in cubicles and offices, talking with people about their work, asking them about their families. He used to say that at the end of the day, our most valuable resources get into their cars and drive home. He recognized the organization is fundamentally its people and that people are whole beings who have values, families, and aspirations that transcend their jobs. He was much appreciated by staff for these simple acts of personal connection.
David Brooks, the author of The Second Mountain and noted political columnist, observed that “Many of our society’s great problems flow from people feeling not seen and known.”
Gallup, the survey company, reports that “Only 13% of employees worldwide are engaged at work.” It emphasizes that: “Managers and leaders should know their people — who they are, not just what they do. Every interaction with an employee has the potential to influence his or her engagement and inspire discretionary effort. How leaders manage their employees can substantially affect engagement levels in the workplace, in turn influencing the company’s bottom line.”
The simple truth is that if you care for your people, they will bring their best to work and treat customers well in turn.
What leaders like the CEOs who I’ve profiled understand is that inside a great organization is a personal commitment to developing people, including oneself. They seek leaders who lead with purpose and recognize that the job of leaders is developing other leaders. As development is modeled by senior leaders, it cascades through the organization and becomes part of the culture. Commitment, learning, and performance, as a result, flow naturally and authentically from people, from the inside out.
About the author: Lyndon Rego is the chief catalyst for CoMetta. He previously headed the Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership at the African Leadership University and led innovation at the Center for Creative Leadership (CCL). At CCL, he initiated a global effort that extended leadership development to half-a-million people in 30 countries.
