Self-Mastery is the essence of true leadership.
Some of my clients in leadership positions are constantly faced with challenges of doubts, glass ceiling, guilt, getting stuck, or being unfulfilled.
They often don’t know what they really want for themselves or simply don’t have a personal vision.
Although they are looked up to as valuable leaders in their organizations, they feel lonely or even empty in their private lives. Why so?
Last week I talked about the evolution of leadership where self-leadership is prior to leadership for others.
If you’re a leader who’s already in the second phase or as I call it, the leader-for-others phase, you are required to have self-mastery or at least be working on it.
Without being a leader for yourself, you will have the tendency to seek validation from others because there is no self-awareness or inner strength.
Leaders with no self-mastery tend not to listen to themselves. In fact, other people’s opinions matter more to them because they know what others like but do not know what they
want (or they don’t allow themselves).
We can’t give anything to others if we don’t have them for ourselves. For example, you can’t give money, love, time, or respect to others if you don’t have money, time, or respect for yourself.
If you don’t know who you are or what you want in life, it is challenging to support others to find theirs.
This doesn’t mean leaders don’t care about self-mastery.
Sometimes, we embark on our leadership journeys because of circumstances and opportunities we didn’t expect. It then becomes a responsibility that we never find time or motivation to work on.
There is too much work and we are too busy with our lives, aren’t we?
When I started my coaching journey, my mentors told me to allocate 30% of my time and money to my self-growth as a professional duty.
It means if I’m not growing, I can’t support my clients to grow.
The same goes for leadership. If we are not leaders of ourselves first, we can’t serve others. It only becomes an illusion or a wish.
Leadership without self-leadership is like building houses for all your neighbors but never building your own. Homeless. The worst is we don’t even know what a good house is in reality as we never lived in one. A sad story.
Let’s embrace our full potential as a leader by mastering ourselves and facing our own challenges first before committing to serve others.