How To Lead When You're Not the Boss | Part 3

Dear Leader,

I trust this meets you in pursuit of leadership.

You should learn to lead yourself so well that they can’t ignore you. That’s where it all starts.

Stop looking for people to follow you.

The key to leading yourself so well is to learn “Self-Management”.

Many of us put so much emphasis on decision making, goal setting, planning and too little on decision managing or execution. As a result we lose focus, lack discipline and don’t see results.

Self Leadership is about making critical decisions in major areas of our lives and managing those decisions day by day.

For example, everybody I know believes that reading is good for personal growth. Making the decision to read is not that hard but managing the decision, following through is much more difficult. It is one thing to decide to read so that you can grow, for example, but it is another to follow through with it.

Nothing will make a better impression on your Boss than your ability to manage yourself.

If your leaders above you continually expend energy trying to manage you, then you will be perceived as someone who drains time and energy. But if you manage yourself well, your boss will see you as someone who maximises opportunities and leverages personal strengths. That alone will make you the person your leaders turn to when the heat is on.

Let’s break it a bit down this week: What does it mean to manage yourself?

Few thoughts from my experience:

1. Manage your emotions: We are all going through a lot. The workplace is full of people dispensing feelings and behaviours and whether you know it or not, people are forming perceptions about you based on your behaviour which are influenced by your emotions.
   
   If you want to gain credibility with your boss, you need to know when to display your emotions and when to delete them. You need to learn to control your emotions because whatever you do affects many other people. You can’t say things the way you feel like saying it.
   
   Delaying emotions is not denying them, it is putting others ahead or first in how you handle and process them. Study a bit more about Emotional Intelligence.
   

2. Control your time: Maximising time is a very big issue for people today. Your boss has a lot on his or her plate and will always want to delegate some tasks to you and most times you are expected to put in more hours to get more work done.
   Time is valuable. You have to learn to value your time, else you will not do anything of value with it.
   

3. Manage your  priorities: Closely related to managing your time, is managing your priorities.
   
   There is a proverb that says, if you chase two rabbits, both will escape.

Priorities require discipline. 80% of the time you want to ensure you are working where you are strongest.

Jim Collins said in his book “Good to Great”:

Most of us lead busy, but undisciplined lives. We have an ever expanding “to do” list, trying to build momentum by doing, doing and doing more, and it rarely works. Those who built the good to great companies however made as much use of “stop doing” lists as the “to do” lists. They displayed a remarkable amount of discipline to unplug all sorts of extreme junk.

The biggest lesson I learnt of productivity & Priority comes from Jesus’ words in John 15:2

Every branch that doesn’t bear fruit, He takes away, and every branch that bears fruit, He prunes that it may bear more fruit.

Pruning is the act of trimming a plant. clipping, trim, trimming. cutting down to the desired size or shape. Jesus said, I will prune so that it can bear much more fruit.

The meaning of this is that reduction is the way to increase. You have to prune (reduce) things to the barest minimum if you want to become more productive.

Don’t just have “to do” lists, also have “stop doing” lists.

You must be ruthless in your judgement about what you should not do. Just because you like doing it doesn’t mean you should keep doing it.

If it is a strength, do it.

If it helps you grow, do it.

If your boss says you must handle it personally, do it.

Anything else can be delegated or is a candidate for your “stop doing” list.

How you lead yourself influence how your bosses sees you. So even if you are not the boss, you can lead yourself so well.

Until next week,

I’m rooting for you.
The Great Owete