Self-leadership: what it is, what skills it encompasses and how to develop it.

We explain the components of self-leadership and look at steps to follow to improve it.

Often, when we talk about psychological factors that can make us earn more with less, we talk about the importance of leadership. A good leader is able to get the best out of a team, to take advantage of the potential of each person and make them enter into a work dynamic in which everyone complements each other. However, we often forget an element as or more important than this. This is self-leadership.

At the end of the day, in order to create some order around a project, it is necessary first of all to order oneself, to make sure that the actions we take really fit with our medium and long-term objectives, and that there are no inconsistencies between what we say we want to do and what we are actually doing. Throughout this article we will see what exactly self-leadership is and how we can enhance and develop this quality.

What is self-leadership?

Self-leadership is the set of psychological skills that support self-control, the ability not to fall into distractions and the monitoring of one's own actions according to their degree. of one's own actions according to their degree of compatibility with medium and long-term goals, in accordance with one's own estimated capabilities.

Thus, it can be said that self-leadership is made up of psychological processes responsible for ensuring that we have the maximum possibilities of achieving medium and long-term goals, bearing in mind that there will always be a certain degree of uncertainty in what the future holds, and that we have limited resources to achieve what we want. Knowing how to make decisions in an appropriate manner, and using what we have in an intelligent way, are two key elements of self-leadership.

On the other hand, self-leadership is related to self-efficacy and self-concept, since in order to be able to to make our projects come to fruition We must be realistic and not aspire to unreasonable goals; but it is also related to the strategies necessary to know how to channel our efforts well, so that we do not put ourselves in our own way. Among these strategies we find, for example, those that allow us to prioritize tasks and focus our attention.

Components of self-leadership

Visit the elements that make up self-leadershipThe following are among the elements that make up self-leadership.

1. Detailed thinking on the objective

These skills are those that allow us to formulate as concretely as possible a goal to be reached. They are, mainly, three:

• Imagination of the objective by degrees of complexity (from abstract to complete).
• Assessment of the internal coherence of the objective.
• Assessment of the implications of the goal for third parties (imagine who it harms and who it benefits).

2. Situation assessment and planning skills

These are the skills that allow a good diagnosis of the present moment and that make it possible to obtain an x-ray of those elements relevant to the development of a project to be thought of in the medium or long term. Fundamentally, they are the following:

• Evaluation of one's own strengths and weaknesses.
• Imagination of different future situations
• Analysis of the degree of uncertainty.
• Prioritization and sequencing of the actions to be taken.

3. Attention and monitoring skills

These skills are those that have to do with the implementation of the plan and with the focusing of cognitive resources on the implementation and monitoring of the plan. There are three types of self-leadership skills:

• Delay of gratification.
• Ability to focus attention..
• Ability to compare goals and results.

How to improve this mental capacity?

As with many other psychological phenomena, it is possible to train this set of skills and improve them with practice. Below you can read some tips and tips and steps to follow to improve in self-leadership.

1. Create hierarchies of facts when analyzing the present

When creating plans and subdividing objectives, it is important to ensure that everything forms a hierarchy, from the most concrete to the most abstract (or vice versa). In this way it will be much easier to get used to analyzing situations and to include in our "mental map" of the present everything that is relevant.

A good way to do this is to first carry out a SWOT analysis to obtain a description of the present. In each of its categories it is possible to order elements according to their degree of specificity and importance, placing the more specific ones within other broader ones. Thus, for the same hierarchical category, it will be easier to detect elements that play in favor and elements that play against, which will then help to know whether a plan is viable or not, and in the case of being viable, which aspects must be solved with greater priority and which must be strengthened to take advantage of them.

2. Get into the habit of creating detailed plans and deadlines.

Establishing a time by which specific tasks must be completed is a good way to avoid getting distracted, prioritize well and organize available resources. Make a Gantt chart afterwards, to move from the "snapshot" of time 0 to the visualization of how a plan or project may unfold over time.

This creation of deadlines should be detailed, so that every day there is something determined to be done in a specific number of hours. Otherwise, there is a risk of leaving everything to the last minute, which has negative repercussions in every way.

3. Seek allies and delegate

In some projects it is possible to collaborate with third parties and delegate tasks, and in all of them it is necessary first of all to ask yourself if it is possible to do this, to at least consider the possibility. In this way, the more strategic actions can be handled by oneself, while those that are more technical or procedural can be carried out by someone else. In this way, a dynamic is generated in which there is no unnecessary interference between the performance of tasks and the performance of other tasks..

4. Create adequate work spaces

This is an aspect of self-leadership that is often neglected, since it is sometimes assumed that knowing how to manage one's own helm is a task that has to do with introspection and "internal" management of one's own self. This, however, is a myth, because when it comes to working, the differentiation between oneself and the environment is simply a mirage..

Therefore, everything possible must be done to ensure that the environment in which we work offers all the comforts that it is reasonable to achieve. For example, eliminating distractions is a step that is often forgotten, but it helps a lot.

5. Lead a healthy lifestyle

It may seem silly, but following the logic of the previous advice, it is necessary to do everything possible to ensure that our interaction with the environment, whether through diet or exercise, puts us in the best possible frame of mind for work. Of course, it is also necessary to sleep well.

Conclusion: being our own leader to develop exciting projects

The idea that underlies everything we have seen is that in order to make the most of what we have, it is necessary first of all to know how to manage our own time, resources and efforts. This is not something that can be achieved simply by accumulating assets to work with, but rather by developing a number of skills that will enable us to make the most of what we have. We need to develop a number of skills that will allow us to maximize our chances of success. and which, moreover, are generalizable to any initiative that we are going to have. The expressions of self-leadership that we show by creating our own business, for example, will probably also be noticeable when we train in a new field of knowledge, or when we become parents.

In short, it is good to know that more can be done with less, if we have the predisposition to adopt this philosophy and the appropriate knowledge of our own capabilities.