7 New Self-Leadership Skills To Develop In Your Team! (and Yourself?)

Are you a team leader or manager? Then you know it is your job to influence your people in a way that benefits them and the organization. And you probably also know that the most influential people are the ones who people look up to, the ones who have “figured it out.” The best leaders are the ones who have figured themselves out; they have understood the power of self-leadership.

A person develops self-leadership by having a high degree of self-efficacy and self-autonomy. Self-leadership is about governing oneself and being accountable for decisions and actions.

In this article, I’ll delve deep into how you can develop self-leadership by becoming self-sufficient and self-autonomous. By the end of this article, you’ll have a firm grasp of the various self-leadership skills that will positively transform your attitude at work.

How To Develop Self-Leadership Skills?

You develop self-leadership skills by adopting positive strategies regarding how you behave to reach your goals, reward yourself when you get them, and construct your thought patterns and attitudes to overcome the challenges toward those goals.

In more abstract words, you develop your self-leadership skills by adopting the meta-cognitive ability to be aware of yourself both as a thinker and a doer. The doer does what the thinker thinks. The old saying about the mind is a terrible master, but a good servant holds true in this case. People who show a high degree of self-leadership apply this axiom to their advantage.

Based on that premise, self-leadership is more about managing your thinking, i.e., strategizing and organizing your goals on an abstract level. And self-management is more related to how you do things, i.e., how you control your behavior to reach those goals.

Though self-leadership is a natural character trait among many people (those are usually referred to as natural leaders), anyone can foster these traits through learning and practice. Managing oneself effectively is a prerequisite in the current job market, especially with the rise of the gig economy and remote working.

Managing oneself effectively is a prerequisite in the contemporary job market, especially with the rise of the gig economy and remote working.

So, let’s define what is meant by self-leadership and self-management and the skills associated with these complementary qualities.

What Is Self-Leadership?

Self-leadership is the ability to be self-efficient and self-autonomous, i.e., leading yourself by strategizing and organizing your conduct constructively. Self-leadership is also partly associated with the way you motivate and incentivize yourself along the way.

Self-leadership is an umbrella term encompassing an array of character traits. Being able to steer yourself toward your career goals successfully without any external help shows that you have a high level of self-leadership, meaning you have the character traits that leaders have.

Leaders often lead with their ideas and attitudes, at least true leaders. A positive, rational mindset is a prerequisite for being a good leader, especially when looking to improve your internal and external outcomes.

Leaders often lead with their ideas and attitudes, at least true leaders.

What Is Self-Management?

On the other hand, self-management is more about managing your behavior (or the outcomes of your thinking) to ensure that you’re on the right path toward your goals. Self-management allows you to monitor your conduct to ensure that you steer yourself in the right direction.

Self-management and self-control are almost synonymous in this context.

An effective leader must be an excellent manager to ensure that everything is going in the right direction, which requires a positive mindset. A manager is focused on the measurable and quantitative aspects of work. A manager is fearless in ensuring everything goes as it should by providing negative feedback. A manager has to be realistic and result-oriented.

When managing yourself, you must be realistic with the available resources, distribute them wisely, and build highly effective structures.

7 Self-Leadership/Management Skills

Now that I have provided a macro-level explanation of how you can think about self-leadership and self-management, i.e., as two complementary characteristics that work synergistically, let me dive into the micro-level, where I explain some of the skills that would greatly benefit your leadership if you acquire them.

Here are 7 of the most important skills for developing self-leadership:

1. Goal Setting

Setting goals is no easy task because one has to be realistic. The difference between having a goal and having a dream is that one is realistic, and the other is in the realm of fantasy. While there’s nothing wrong with having big dreams, when it comes to setting career goals, one has to be as realistic as possible.

Self-leadership is about setting realistic goals that can be reached by implementing concrete steps. While good leaders have a romantic side that dreams big, they’re also aware that wild dreams many times can only be achieved by setting small, realistic, and measurable goals.

There is an important caveat though, trying to predict what is possible in the future (i.e., setting realistic goals) is impossible, so most people I meet aim too low.

This is the wrong way to go about it, a good goal should invoke a sense of fear, anxiety, and doubt. That’s how you know it’s a goal worthy of your time; if you know you’ll reach your goals, your aiming too low.

When you want to learn how to set goals that push you beyond what you thought was possible, reach out to me here and lets find out if we should work together,

2. Decision Making

Being decisive is a character trait that all influential leaders have. Someone with high self-leadership competencies rarely struggles with making a decision.

Aside from making data-driven decisions that often turn out to be right, natural leaders are blessed with an intuitive sense of what to do and what not to do.

Since having such an intuitive ability to make the right decisions isn’t something we all have, making data-driven decisions is the skill one must acquire. In the book thinking fast and slow by Daniel Kahnemann, they show how the brain works in two systems, one slow and highly cognitive and one fast and intuitive.

They also explain how bad we leaders are at understanding what situations require what system to avoid making bad decisions. Its one of my favorite books, all categories; you can find a copy of thinking fast and slow here (amazon.com)

3. Composure

Leaders are very good at controlling their emotional state and being calm even when everyone else is freaking out or too excited. Having a rational mindset that keeps emotions in check, especially in your professional life, is one of the essential qualities you must acquire to develop self-leadership.

There are two aspects to composure: one is cognitive, and the other is physical. The cognitive element involves thinking patterns and conceptual frameworks that facilitate problem-solving and stress management. The physical aspect is how you manage stress on a physical level, which is often related to breath control (tone of voice and facial expressions).

All in all, a leader is someone who can control themselves and stay rational even though there are things that trigger strong emotional responses. This was especially true for me during my time in the bomb disposal teams, but it is equally valuable in business.

If you are like me, you are very interested in how you can use your body to influence your mind. Then this is the book for you; Unbeatable Mind by former navy seal commander Mark Divine.

4. Adaptability

While having a strong conceptual framework that you can always rely on to reach your goals is highly recommended, being stuck in one way of doing things is quite limiting, primarily when novelty arises.

I believe that strong SOPs (standard operating procedures) should be the foundation of your life, business, and anything you take on. It makes everyday tasks much more efficient and allows for a predictable outcome over and over again.

But you must not forget that the “S” is for standard, not “all the time” this means that if the situation changes, you need to step aside from the SOP and think differently.

That’s why the most successful leaders are often people who learn how to adapt and overcome.

There’s always a progress-oriented mindset that shapes leaders. Leaders who can adapt, understand and implement ideas are the ones capable of conquering uncharted territories. This is very important, especially in the case of managing small businesses.

5. Self-Motivation and Constructive Thinking

Being positive, even optimistic, is a character trait that all good leaders have. The glass-half-full mentality is almost always more motivating in the long run. As long as it’s coupled with reasoning (i.e., the opposite of naive optimism), being positive and thinking constructively (as opposed to deconstructively) is useful.

For example, instead of looking at the problems that might arise along the way, which might impact their motivation negatively, good leaders are confident in their ability to solve problems when they arise.

Great leaders and entrepreneurs see opportunity everywhere!

6. Time/Resource Management

Time is money, and money is resources. Having a good grasp on the alchemical processes that this axiom summarizes, i.e., being able to translate this formula into the concrete world, is a necessary skill.

Self-leadership is often about transforming time into resources and money with minimum waste.

The more you pay attention to how these variables convert from one state to another, the more you’re able to manage them.

Delegation and outsourcing of everything that isn’t vital that you do is a great start; many small business owner I meet seem to think they need to do all the work, be in charge of every aspect and have a saying in each decision.

Delegation and outsourcing of everything that isn’t vital that you do is a great start;

This sooner or later leads to the drainage of resources and loss of trust from the people you work with.

7. Critical Thinking

Being a critical thinker is a must ( I once again recommend you check out the book Thinking Fast and Slow). A critical thinker transcends biased ways of thinking and emotionally influenced decisions. Good leaders know when to take things at their face value and when they need to think critically about their decisions, goals, reactions, and strategies.

Also, critical thinking is about being open-minded and flexible in one’s thoughts. Having a rigid mentality (my way or the highway kind of mentality) that claims to have all the answers is the opposite of critical thinking.

Critical thinking is about being curious, about thinking that “maybe they know something I don’t know.”

Critical thinking is about being curious, about thinking that “maybe they know something I don’t know.”

What Are the Self-Leadership Strategies You Must Follow?

As I’ve mentioned at the beginning of this article, developing self-leadership is about fostering positive behavior-focused, natural reward, and constructive thought strategies.

Let’s briefly dive into the three strategies.

Behavior-Focused Strategies

These strategies are mainly about self-observation, self-goal setting, self-reward/punishment, and self-cueing. Developing these behavioral strategies encourages you to steer yourself correctly while navigating your way toward success and avoiding failure. After all, what’s the point in leading oneself if the goal isn’t personal achievement and success?

Self-observation allows you to have an accurate image of yourself, your competencies, and your points of weakness. Having such a high level of self-awareness allows you to identify the behavioral patterns that serve you and those that don’t. This is necessary because that’s how you know what you can achieve.
Self-goal setting allows you to challenge yourself and overcome the obstacles in your way. As I’ve said before, setting goals has to always be a rational process that accounts for what’s realistically achievable and what’s not.
Self-reward/punishment are very important. Leaders don’t need external incentives or external feedback. They derive their sense of accomplishment and failure from within. Self-rewarding strategies can be as simple as enjoying a vacation as a result of good outcomes.
In the case of self-punishment, it can be working 50 hours + a week for a month or two to compensate for a failure. Both positive feedback and negative feedback are important to steer you toward your goals. Having a balanced, rational attitude is the key here.
Self-cueing is about little things here and there (like reminders, screensavers, notes, etc.). These are things you employ to keep yourself focused on attaining your goals.

Natural Reward Strategies

These strategies are concerned with creating situations where you derive enjoyment from work. You never have to work a single day when you enjoy your work. This old cliche summarizes this idea very briefly. You derive a sense of purpose and alignment with yourself when you find certain tasks to be naturally rewarding. There are two strategies for deriving natural rewards:

The first strategy (positive) is concerned with finding a sense of enjoyment in your tasks that energize you to perform better.
The second strategy (negative) is concerned with reframing the less enjoyable aspects of your work in a more positive light and focusing more on the things that you find to be naturally rewarding.

Constructive Thought Pattern Strategies

These strategies are concerned with the mental constructions and habitual thought patterns that develop your self-leadership/management. These include identifying and eliminating negative cognitive patterns that hinder you from achieving self-autonomy and self-efficacy.

Replacing dysfunctional/irrational beliefs and assumptions is the first step toward building constructive thought patterns. By identifying the self-imposed limitations that could be eliminated merely by changing the way you think, you advance in your journey tremendously because you open a new horizon that you were just blocking because of dysfunctional/irrational beliefs.
Self-talk should always be framed in a positive, optimistic way that doesn’t impose any unnecessary limitations on yourself. Positive self-talk is a motivating force that should be reckoned with.
Mental imagery allows you to envision how you achieve your goals with success. You’re more likely to be successful in achieving goals when you use the power of mental imagery. You can visualize yourself involved in the process of making the right decisions and taking the correct course of action that leads you to success.

How To Manage a Team of Leaders?

In a flat hierarchical business structure where everyone must show a degree of self-autonomy and self-efficacy without having to resort to (or be monitored by) a manager or an officer, self-leadership is the most valuable asset that must be fostered in the team.

Even if you’re the by-default leader of such a team, you’re not actually leading anyone, per se. Your team has to lead itself by itself, i.e., each individual member is their own boss.

Build a Good Team

Building a good team is very important, especially if you’re a start-up that hasn’t achieved significant success yet. When each team member knows exactly what they have to do and what they have to deliver without the need to impose anything on them, you know you have a good team.

There’s a sense of certainty that everyone is equally capable of self-leadership with minimal external help – creating a positive environment/vibe where everyone performs for the whole team’s good.

Foster Self-Leadership as an Ideal Mindset (Set a Good Example)

Even when you have a junior team of people who are still not fully capable of self-leadership/management, it’s simple to implement that attitude by sowing the good seeds. The way you do that is by setting a good example.

You foster self-leadership skills in your team by showing everyone how they can be just as autonomous and self-efficient as you and encourage them when they show those traits.

I highly recommend you check out Self-Regulation Theory (SRT) for more information on this subject. Basically, the theory is about how we regulate ourselves on multiple levels to achieve positive outcomes, namely self-leadership and everything good that comes with it career-wise.

Four components are involved with (SRT):

Standards of desirable behavior
Motivation to meet those standards
Monitoring the situations and thought patterns that precede violating the standards
Willpower and internal strength have control over the urges to break the standards

Final Words

So, there you have it! By now, you’re well-equipped on a cognitive level about what you should do to develop self-leadership and thrive in your career.

However, this knowledge is nothing if it’s not applied. Your task right now is to think of how you can start implementing these strategies with yourself and your team.

6 Self-Leadership Strategies for Business Success (For Leaders)

Dr. Jordan Peterson famously said, “Set your house in order before criticizing the world,” and Gandhi articulated beautifully, “If you want to change the world, start with yourself.” To lead others effectively (and create the change we wish to see), we must first succeed in leading ourselves. This is the essence of self-leadership, but how does it impact your leadership and business?

Self-leadership is the practice of understanding who you are today and who you want to be in the future, then bridging that gap through self-discipline and self-development. It applies to both individuals and business teams. Any good leader must begin by mastering the art of leading themselves.

As you continue reading, you will learn more about self-leadership and its core elements. I will also cover why self-leadership is essential for leaders and how business teams (especially small teams) can benefit from this critical practice.

The 6 Core Elements of Self-Leadership For Managers and Leaders

In simple terms, self-leadership is the art of leading yourself by directing your thoughts and behavior toward achieving your goals.

In simple terms, self-leadership is the art of leading yourself by directing your thoughts and behavior toward achieving your goals.

I choose the word art with intention; self-leadership, like any other leadership theory, is about human behavior. Although general human behavior can be predicted relatively well (thanks to big data and AI), individuals’ behaviors are incredibly intricate and can’t be understood through simple algorithms.

We do not fully understand what makes great leaders great, but we do know what makes terrible leaders truly terrible: a lack of self-understanding and the inability to build trust with their followers.

Without self-awareness, you don’t know where you are, and if you don’t know where you are, how will you find the best route to where you want to be?

Self-awareness is like creating a map; the more you explore your surroundings, the more detailed the map gets, and once it is good enough, you can start moving effectively toward your goals.

Self-awareness is like creating a map; the more you explore your surroundings, the more detailed the map gets, and once it is good enough, you can start moving effectively toward your goals.

Self-leaders make successful business leaders because they employ their self-awareness and discipline toward setting and meeting their targets. Furthermore, they prioritize their personal development and growth journey to help them improve daily.

“Great leaders never stop improving their map, so their navigation improves with time.”

Here is a funny and invigorating TEDx talk by leadership advisor and award-winning lecturer Lars Sudmann, showing lessons from the golden age of leadership and sharing his strategies on self-leadership to develop yourself into a “Utopia leader.”

Great leadership starts with self-leadership.

Core elements of Self-Leadership to become an awesome leader

The following six principles are the foundations for self-leadership:

1. Self-Discovery (Reflection)

Understanding who you are is the beginning of self-leadership. Self-discovery involves having an objective and thorough introspection into your individuality.

The goal is to understand how you interact with the world and why.

The process of self-discovery involves the following key steps:

Taking time to reflect and examine your thoughts and actions as if you were watching yourself from an external perspective. Don’t value what you see, hear, and feel. Instead, focus on gathering as many truths about yourself as you can.
Assess your values and core beliefs and how they influence your decision-making. Look at what you do, different from what you want to do. You are your actions, not your words!
Identify your passions and interests or the things that you love to do. Everything that gets you emotional is worth looking into. Anger and frustration are excellent indicators of an underlying drive; tap into that energy.
Study your behavioral and emotional patterns. Feedback from others is a great tool; ask for feedback from people you like, or dislike and anyone who can give you a helpful answer.
Evaluate your talents and skills or the things you’re good at. Ensure that other people’s opinions matter; if your trusted friends say you are particularly good at something, listen to them. They may be correct.
Explore and expand your map to know exactly where you want to go. Clearly articulate the hopes and dreams that you have for your business and your life. But don’t take it too seriously; allow your goals to develop as you live and learn.

Self-discovery helps business teams to direct their strengths and talents into making their enterprises thrive. It also helps team leaders to assign roles to each member according to what they excel at.

Self-aware team members are an asset to any business team. They are introspective and take personal responsibility for their shortcomings. They also take on responsibilities that align with their skills and competence, helping them succeed and avoid failure.

When team members are self-aware, the leader can easily assign roles.

2. Self-Acceptance

Self-acceptance is acknowledging and accepting all your traits, however good or bad you might think of them.

Self-acceptance is acknowledging and accepting ALL your traits, whatever you might think of them.

Self-acceptance or contentment only comes when perfection is an illusion, which only exists as an idea and is never found in reality. Consider a circle; the perfect circle can not be created; it’s only a matter of how close we look until we find its flaws.

Everyone is prone to making mistakes, and exercising self-compassion when we fail is vital to becoming better. Instead of seeing your “mistakes” as wrong or right, look at them as a scientist goes about an experiment.

The experiment only fails if the method is defective, but failure is never based on the outcome; the good scientist aims to learn, not prove they are correct. Every experiment comes with lessons, whether the hypothesis is proven correct or not.

Self-acceptance also means prioritizing your journey, letting go of unfavorable comparisons, and appreciating other people even when they outdo us. This may mean avoiding people who cultivate negativity and unhealthy competition.

In business and leadership, Self-Acceptance paves the way for growth. It helps you identify mistakes faster and accept the insights of other team members because you realize that you still need to figure out everything.

3. Setting Personal Goals

Setting clearly defined targets for your goal gives you focus and motivation. Unfortunately, sometimes we can become too ambitious when setting goals and demotivate when we do not achieve them.

There are several okay models to help you set personal goals. I really like and recommend the SMARTER model; it is updated from the old SMART system. It is more effective since it works on the premise that the future is uncertain and unpredictable, so we aim high.

Learning how to set personal goals is crucial to self-management and leadership. Self-leaders who have mastered the skill of personal goal-setting work well in a team because they continually and structurally develop as leaders, becoming more and more efficient as they learn how to lead.

For team leaders, goal setting is a crucial skill. The team may consistently miss their targets because they set unaligned or unattainable goals. With a solid goal-setting skillset, teams can work toward targets directly related to the bigger picture.

4. Self-Discipline

Self-discipline or self-control is the ability to resist momentary pleasures that derail you from achieving your goals and instead invest yourself in building healthy patterns. It means putting in the hard work even when it’s hard.

It means saying no to one marshmallow today so that you can have two marshmallows tomorrow. Follow-up studies of “The Stanford Marshmallow experiment” indicated that those who were able to forfeit instant gratification for delayed gratification had an improvement in positive life outcomes.

For many entrepreneurs, setting goals is exciting because they can envision their desired outcomes. However, when push comes to shove and work demands more and more, they feel defeated and lose sight of the bigger picture.

Developing self-discipline is hard because it means leaving your comfort zone, and your body and mind will not enjoy that. However, remembering the study above, it is paramount for leaders to develop the skill of delayed gratification.

5. Self Evaluation

Habitual evaluation of how far you have come is essential to self-leadership. It helps you see and understand your progress, allowing you to adjust course and speed toward your goals.

Self-evaluation also helps you see whether your current strategies are working and identify improvement areas.

To have an effective self-evaluation, you must remain honest and objective while showing compassion toward yourself where you need to improve. Remember the discussion about the scientist above?

I use morning and night journaling to measure my progress; here are some examples that I ask myself every morning:

Here are some of the follow-up questions I ask myself before going to bed:

As you can see, a mix of quantitative and qualitative questions is asked, and the answers are automatically published in a few graphs and a spreadsheet that I review weekly and monthly.

The absolute numbers don’t matter, but the trends over time indicate where I am headed.

Reach out to me here if you want a copy that you can modify for your needs.

Getting feedback from others is another great way to gain insight, but it needs to come from people you trust and who want to see you achieve your goals.

As a team leader, self-evaluation helps you check whether you are still on track toward the desired end state and how you can help yourself or others to improve themselves. It also serves as a reminder of the bigger picture and the team’s decisiveness to get there.

6. Self Growth

Self-leaders never stop growing because they recognize that there is always room for improvement.

Self-growth or personal development means acquiring any or all of the following:

New Skills
New Knowledge
Different Habits
Different Attitudes
New Goals

Self-growth also takes us out of our comfort zone by trying to change and improve the status quo. It is a continuous process that never ends. The goal is to improve a bit every day, not to reach the end goal of perfection. Since as we mentioned earlier, perfection doesn’t exist in the real world.

Within business teams, members who are invested in self-growth are more productive. They are also eager to learn because they acknowledge that it is vital to becoming a better person.

Team leaders who value self-growth continually grow in their knowledge and skills as leaders. They also become better managers of the talents and resources available.

How Business Teams Can Benefit From Self Leadership

Just as individuals benefit significantly from self-leadership, so do business teams and their leaders.

Below are some benefits of self-leadership to business teams and their leaders:

Creates a Culture of Personal Responsibility

A common challenge that prevents teams from successfully meeting their targets is the social loafing phenomenon, which explains that teammates put less effort into teamwork than they would when working alone.

Read more on the social loafing effect and how it is also impacting your team.

On the contrary, team members who are self-leaders take personal responsibility for the team’s success. They exercise self-discipline in all their roles and are committed to a culture of personal excellence. This, of course, helps the team meet its goals.

My last team was just like this, and being the leader was pure excitement!

Self-Leaders Are Team Players

Self-leaders make great team players because they understand they cannot win alone. They appreciate the insights and skills that other team members bring. Other teammates, in turn, feel valued, which nurtures trust and team satisfaction.

Also, self-leaders are mindful and reflective, making them empathetic team members. They also actively listen to others’ feedback, promoting effective team communication.

Self Leaders Are Problem Solvers

Self-leadership cultivates critical thinking and introspection. It also helps team members to be objective when tackling issues because they willingly take accountability and learn from their mistakes.

Self-leaders focus less on passing blame in a crisis and more on identifying the root causes. They acknowledge that problems exist to equip the team with more knowledge and skills for future success.

Self Leaders Have Mastered Their Emotions (High Emotional Intelligence)

In business, many situations can push you to the edge, emotions-wise. You may be grappling with uncooperative teammates stalling the group’s progress or managing heightened emotions resulting from misunderstandings among the teammates.

In such situations, we must exercise self-control and decide calmly and soberly (especially if we are the team leader). Self-leadership will be one of your best tools.

Self-leadership promotes self-control and mastering your own emotions despite turbulent or stressful surroundings. Self-leaders have learned how to silence negative thoughts and calm, strong feelings when dealing with challenging situations, and this helps them thrive.

Self-leaders Are Eager To Learn

Every team can benefit from members who are always seeking to grow their skills and knowledge.

Self-leaders acknowledge that growth comes from constantly learning. This is important for business teams because it helps them stay updated with significant developments. Team members can also feel more confident and motivated to take on challenges because they are more knowledgeable.

Self Leadership Promotes Group Satisfaction

Self-leaders go through a reflective process of self-discovery, which helps them identify what makes them tick. This is important in business teams because it allows one to determine precisely how they can be of the most value to the group.

When people do what they love, they tend to excel at it. This makes them feel fulfilled as part of the larger team. It also motivates them to work harder and be more productive for the team to meet its goals.

Group satisfaction is a crucial ingredient to group productivity and effectiveness. When people feel happy as part of a team, they are more motivated to achieve common goals.

Self Leaders Are Empathetic Team Leaders

Self-leaders extend compassion toward their teams because they acknowledge their humanity and know we all make mistakes sooner or later. They see opportunity in other people and encourage them that growth is achievable.

Empathetic leaders aren’t weak leaders. Instead, empathy is an asset that helps leaders see their team members’ emotional needs and provide the support they need to thrive.

Empathy among team members also cultures feelings of connectedness. It helps the team bond better, allowing them to work better together (and be more productive).

There is a line though, and crossing it is detrimental to mental health as well as performance. Be empathic and kind but always respect your own needs and boundaries.

Self Leaders Are Flexible and Dynamic

Self-leaders acknowledge that change is an unchangeable part of life (bad pun intended ;)). Coupled with the eagerness to learn, they welcome new ideas and keep up with developments in their line of business as a part of self-growth.

They appreciate that there is always something new to learn and a better way to do things. They view innovation as a tool to help them achieve their goals.

This attribute is fundamental in business teams because it helps the members identify innovations that would steer them further toward achieving their goals. They also learn to be open to change even when it doesn’t favor them and work out how to keep up with the developments.

Change is inevitable; the question is whether or not you are going to adapt!

Change is inevitable, the question is whether or not you are going to adapt!

Core Element	Definition	Importance/Impact
*1. Self-Discovery*	Introspection into one’s individuality to understand how one interacts with the world and why.	Helps understand values, beliefs, passions, talents, and skills, leading to self-awareness and effective role assignment in a team.
*2. Self-Acceptance*	Acknowledging and accepting all traits, including shortcomings, and exercising self-compassion to become better.	Helps let go of unfavorable comparisons, prioritize growth, appreciate others, and foster a positive attitude conducive to growth in business and leadership.
*3. Setting Personal Goals*	Setting clearly defined targets using models like SMARTER to gain focus and motivation.	Helps in self-management and leadership and cultivates a culture of high ambition and an attitude of never settling.
*4. Self-Discipline*	The art of managing oneself, including setting boundaries, self-discipline, self-motivation, and time management skills.	Helps in creating a culture of accountability, self-reliance, and effective leadership that inspires and motivates team members to achieve their goals.
*5. Self Evaluation*	Intrinsic drive and passion for a goal that fuels action towards achieving it.	Helps overcome obstacles, setbacks, and failures, leading to increased resilience and grit, essential traits for success in business and leadership.
*6. Self Growth*	Continuous self-development and growth through learning, feedback, and reflection.	Helps keep up with changing trends, and acquire new skills and knowledge, leading to enhanced effectiveness, innovation, and adaptability in business and leadership.

The 6 Core Elements of Self-Leadership For Managers and Leaders

Conclusion

Self-leadership is taking charge of your mind and actions and directing them toward achieving your goals. It is an essential trait in business and life.

Self-management is the essence of self-leadership. A core part of this is personal growth and development, with daily improvement being the end goal.

As a self-leader, you must acknowledge that you aren’t perfect, and that’s okay. Instead, you can attain your desired end by forming the right attitudes and behaviors.

7 Most Impactful Rules of Self-Management

Are you a leader or aspiring to be one? Do you want to build an effective small business team? If so, then self-management is vital.

All leaders should follow the seven fundamental rules of self-management: know yourself, set clear goals, delegate tasks, stay organized, take breaks, be flexible, be proactive, and keep your mental health in check.

Self-management is usually defined in two separate ways: it can be used to describe how we manage the external world around us, or it can be used to describe how we manage our internal thoughts and emotions.

In this article we will focus on self managing the external world but if you want to learn more about how to manage your emotions, click here!

Keep reading to learn more about these essential self-management tips for leaders!

1. Know Yourself

Identify Your External Motivators and Stressors

Knowing yourself is crucial to self-management. It involves being aware of what brings you joy, what motivates you to work hard, and what drains your energy.

For example, taking a regular break from work or rewarding yourself with small treats after meeting small goals can help keep you focused and motivated. In tandem, avoiding specific pressures or tasks that cause stress should reduce feelings of overwhelm.

I usually work according to something I call the “30 + 10”. This means I will work entirely focused for 30 minutes. Then I will do something I enjoy for 10 minutes; usually, the treat is watching a youtube video or going for a walk. The key is that it needs to be something you truly like, not something that someone else thinks is good for you.

It might seem strange to “waste” so much time out of the hour, but I have noticed that my production goes up because those 30 minutes are high quality.

Knowing yourself is crucial to successful self-management; once you understand which stimuli have the most favorable outcome, it’s easier to create routines and habits that put your mind at ease and increase productivity.

Once you understand which stimuli have the most favorable outcome, it’s easier to create routines and habits that increase productivity.

The key to this is to remember that team members are different, and not everyone will be motivated by the same things; recognizing what drives them forward can help create a clear vision that sets you and your team up for success. For more information about identify your team members’ unique motivators, click here!

2. Set Clear Goals

Stay Organized

Goals allow individuals and their team members to stay focused and motivated. People often need a specific and achievable target to progress with their projects or tasks.

The benefits of having predetermined objectives are:

Numerous tasks can be planned more effectively.
There will be a greater sense of accomplishment when individual and team goals have been met.
Progress can be easily tracked as you take your project from inception to completion.

The absolute most important factor when trying to become more effective is to figure out what is the most impactful thing I need to do. Specifically: which 5% of my total tasks add up to 80% of my actual progress? This is the key to prioritizing goals so energy is used efficiently and effectively.

Which 5% of my total tasks amount to 80% of my actual progress?

Once you understand your high-value targets, you start hunting them like a lion after its prey.

Leading by example is a great way to manage expectations. When a leader is organized, prioritizes tasks, and tracks their progress, fellow team members will soon see the benefit and follow along.

3. Track Progress

Identify Targets and Milestones

Staying organized and keeping track of progress are essential tools to have in any self-management strategy. It is easy to become overwhelmed and reach one’s limits if not managed correctly in daily life and tasks. Therefore, having a plan and tracking progress can help you manage stress, boost your motivation, keep you prepared for changes, and allow you to reach goals with less effort.

Additionally, identifying broader goals and then breaking them down into key milestones can energize your team members. You will have smaller wins to celebrate on your way to achieving the overarching objectives of a project.

As mentioned before, these milestones should be prioritized based on your most important goals. But they should also be identified based on your and your team members’ motivations. Identifying the small wins that truly matter to yourself and your team members is key to fostering self-efficacy and passion.

4. Delegate Tasks

Provide Clear Instructions

Successful leaders need to understand that they cannot do everything by themselves. Therefore, the delegation of tasks is crucial to maintain efficiency and progress.

It is necessary to provide clear instructions when assigning tasks to ensure they are adequately accomplished. For example, it can be helpful to clarify precisely which resources can be used, how each task should take shape, and what the outcome should look like.

However, stay away from telling your people how to do things. Instead, focus on the what and when.

Remember, you are not a puppeteer. Focus on the *what* and *when*. Avoid the *how.*

Taking the time to ensure your goals are properly understood can save considerable time in the long run. But on the other hand, individuals feel included when they are trusted with tasks.

A great tip to make sure they have understood the task is for your employees to repeat back to you what you have said in their own words. Remember to ask them if they have any questions.

Stay away from telling your people how to do things. Focus on the what and when.

Once you are confident that they understand, then you start asking them questions about the task. Once you have finished these three steps, you can be pretty certain that your team has understood what you want to get done.

5. Encourage Recovery

Preemptively – Not After Burnout

It’s easy to become overwhelmed with constantly being on the go, but taking the time to step away and relax will produce massive benefits.

As I mentioned above, doing something refreshing, like going for a walk or taking a coffee break, can be incredibly helpful in allowing us to step back and reevaluate our short-term and long-term goals. In addition, taking breaks helps ease stress while allowing us the opportunity to refocus our energy on achieving essential objectives.

I probably don’t have to mention that there are basically a gazillion health benefits as well.

Learning to recover when needed is an integral part of any self-management plan!

In the military, we say recovery is a task! This means recovery should be planned, prioritized, and allocated resources, just like any other assignment.

Recover should be planned, prioritized, and allocated resources.

6. Be Flexible and Proactive

Plans Change

It’s essential to recognize that plans ALWAYS change, sometimes just a little, but often significantly. You have probably heard the old saying the plan only survives until the first contact with the enemy. This is true in war as it is in business.

A plan is nothing, planning is everything.

It’s important to be agile enough to accept and work with the changes instead of being set on a course and inflexible when things change.

This can be especially difficult when trying to complete tasks or achieve goals, but taking unexpected changes into account and adjusting accordingly will result in a much more successful project overall.

A really good leader will have anticipated most of the changes and will have put contingency plans in place beforehand.

Learning to be proactive instead of reactive is crucial to managing a team and setting an example. Thinking ahead and planning for potential problems can prevent them from happening. Even if they do occur, you will be better prepared than if you had done nothing to anticipate them.

It is also essential to keep in mind that being proactive means taking steps that could reduce the severity of any problem encountered and may even help improve future processes or projects.

If you want to learn more about leadership in crisis, this article might interest you: Leadership in Crisis, Who Do You Need to Become?

Acting proactively does not mean predicting the future with absolute accuracy but rather having a flexible contingency plan to deal with highly likely scenarios efficiently, allowing the business to get back on track as quickly as possible.

8. Optimize Your Health

Mental and Physical

We often find ourselves so consumed with pursuing success that we forget to take care of our health. We must remember that managing our stress levels and getting sufficient recovery is the basis of performance.

Taking the occasional break can be beneficial, as it will allow us to come back to work with a fresh perspective and perhaps new ideas. So even when life feels busy, set aside time every day to wind down and get eight hours of sleep—trust me, your future self will thank you.

The best leaders are physically fit, mentally fit and take care of themselves in a way that optimizes performance.

Do your strength training, go out running, train your mental capacity, and get mentally tough because life is coming right at us!

8 Proven Ways To Build Interest and Engagement on a Team!

I have seen it many times, maybe so have you? People on our team have “disconnected” from work; they no longer feel interested in their daily tasks and projects. This doesn’t predict well for their productivity or the company’s success. So how can you rebuild interest in a team?

You can build interest in a team by offering support to your team members, taking the time to learn who your team members are as people, encouraging a spirit of creativity, and paying your employees what they are worth.

In this article, I’ll share how I did to regain interest in some of the teams I have led and how you can too, and at the end, you’ll find a short team assessment to measure the motivation of your team.

1. Provide Support and Encouragement

Team members can’t achieve their goals if they don’t feel like they’re getting the support they require. This will also stimulate their interest in the work.

Lack of the right support is one of the reasons I left my old job in the Army, I put so much energy and time into making my team as excellent of a bomb disposal force as I could, but in the end, the company couldn’t support the team at the level we needed.

We, as a team, had outrun our chain of command, we started stagnating in our skill development, and it was time to do something different.

Even if you don’t have the financial means, always try to be available to your team members so that you can guide them. It’s also good to check in with them regularly to see if they’re on board with the work or require any additional support.

This way of operating carried us through four deployments, and we became the first team to stick together for this long since the unit was formed.

Here are some ways to support and encourage your team members:

Have regular one-on-one meetings where you try to understand their inner drives and motivations and use this knowledge to find tasks that align.
Review their work regularly, and focus on understanding their struggles and how you can help.
Let them help you choose what tasks should be prioritized.
Set specific targets and action steps for achieving them together.

2. Pay Attention to Their Lives Outside of the Workplace

If you only speak to your team members about work-related issues, they can feel like they’re not seen on an individual level. Show you care about your team members’ lives. This will help them feel appreciated and seen while encouraging them to be more engaged.

Show you care about your team members’ lives. This will help them feel appreciated and seen while encouraging them to be more engaged.

The key here is that you must truly care for your people for this to work; don’t think you can fake your way through this. People can spot fake considerations in an instance. In another post, I share a story where my boss told me, “Gabriel, I don’t care about you …”. If you want to know how that impacted our entire workplace and the lessons I learned, then you can read it here.

If you don't care, don't ask, then at least you'll be authentic!

Here are ways in which you can show you care:

Ask your team members how their families are doing. Learn their family members’ names so you can make conversations more personal in the future.
Ask them about how they would like to spend their free time and if they could do anything. This type of question will help you to see what motivates your team members.
Find common interests and hang out with your team on the weekends. This has the potential of closing the gap between manager and employee, allowing you to get a more honest picture of the business and make some new awesome friends!

3. Allow Team Members To Be Creative

If your team members have a chance to brainstorm creatively and come up with new solutions to problems, this will encourage them to feel engaged in the work they have to do.

Put yourself in their shoes: if you’re encouraged to come up with an idea for a project, and it gets the green light, you’ll feel more invested in the project. This is the type of interest you want to enhance in your workplace.

Mrs. Creativity is best friends with Mr. Failure, so make sure your workplace has reached a decent level of psychological safety before you encourage people to take risks.

Mrs. Creativity is best friends with Mr. Failure, so make sure your workplace has reached a decent level of psychological safety before you encourage people to take risks.

Here's an article on how to assess your team's level of psychological safety.

It’s also a good idea to encourage your team members to take on projects that are outside of their daily roles. This can encourage increased interest in the job overall.

4. Provide Training for Your Team

Your team members can’t be interested in the team or work well if they’re feeling overwhelmed by their roles and responsibilities. This is why providing training for them is a good idea.

You can also communicate with your team members to find out what their career goals and aspirations are. Getting training can help them achieve these dreams while also benefiting their overall productivity.

Your team members are more likely to be interested and invested in their work if they are able to find ways to follow their own interests and pursue their career ambitions within their career.

Your team members are more likely to be interested and invested in their work if they are able to find ways to follow their own interests and pursue their career ambitions within their career.

5. Ensure Your Team Members’ Salaries Are Competitive

Leading your team with passion and compassion is incredibly important, but these should never take the place of paying your employees what they deserve for the work they do. Their salaries need to be aligned with what employees in other companies are earning.

This is connected to increased engagement. If your employees aren’t getting what they feel they deserve, this will sooner or later cause them to leave their jobs.

A study found that 26% of employees who felt engaged in their work would leave their jobs for a company that offered them a 5% increase in their salaries. Even if your employees are interested in the work and committed to their jobs, money is an essential factor in determining whether or not they stay in the company.

26% of employees who felt engaged in their work would leave their jobs for a company that offered them a 5% increase in their salaries.

6. Communicate The Company’s Vision

A big mistake I see is that companies say something like, “our vision is to be the biggest online retailer for banana protectors” (google it, it’s pretty cool). Firstly, most employees don’t give a crap because they won’t get any benefits from it.

Secondly, they most likely will change jobs in the next five years anyways unless you do this.

To actually make your team members feel interested in their work and be more productive, you should communicate your (and the company’s) purpose.

This has the effect of including your team members on an emotional level, but only if they find that purpose meaningful! This is why one of your main priorities as a team leader is to understand your people’s inner drive and find links between that and the tasks you are giving them.

Sometimes finding this connection can be really difficult, but most of the time, there are opportunities.

To help you better communicate your purpose with your team members, ask yourself questions such as the following:

What information do my team members need to know about the project we’re working on that will connect with them emotionally?
How can I use their inner drive to make them feel more interested and engaged in completing it?
What issues do they have with the current purpose? Can I reframe it in a way that aligns with them?
How can I support them in the long run, and not just today?

7. Share News About the Company

If you’re privileged to information about the company, such as when it comes to its successes and failures, it’s a good idea to pass this on to your team members. It will help them to feel more engaged because it includes them.

We all want to see the impact of our actions, so letting someone know what happens with their report or completed task is another great way of improving engagement.

Also, if they feel engaged in a project, they will be even more invested if they know what still needs to be done as well as how their efforts have been effective. When they experience success, this is a good opportunity for you to praise their efforts, especially since feeling appreciated in the workplace is connected to higher levels of engagement.

Feeling appreciated in the workplace is connected to higher levels of engagement.

8. Expect and Encourage Feedback

One of the biggest ways in which you can help team members feel more interested and engaged is to let them share their opinions. Be open to feedback! Communicating with them about their feelings and concerns can help them feel acknowledged, respected, and valuable to the company.

Create a culture where it is expected for everyone to voice their opinions; not all of the ideas will be followed up, but that’s okay. The idea is to create a place where people feel comfortable being uncomfortable.

You can gain feedback from your team members by:

1-on-1 discussions are the most powerful feedback tool; it allows one to ask follow-up questions and really understand the issue or question.
Having feedback group sessions in which team members can express what they think regarding certain tasks and goals.

This team level of support can go a long way even if the upper management is lacking with their resources; on my team, I maximized our confidence in the team’s ability to solve problems without external help.

Ways to Build Interest and Engagement on a Team	Explanation
1. Provide Support and Encouragement	Team members need to feel supported to achieve their goals and be interested in the work.
2. Pay Attention to Their Lives Outside of the Workplace	Showing you care about your team members’ lives will make them feel appreciated and encourage them to be more engaged.
3. Allow Team Members To Be Creative	Encouraging team members to brainstorm creatively and come up with new solutions to problems will make them more invested in the project.
*4. Provide Training for Your Team*	Providing training can help team members achieve their career goals while also benefiting their productivity.
*5. Ensure Your Team Members’ Salaries Are Competitive*	Paying your employees what they deserve for the work they do will increase engagement and prevent them from leaving their jobs.
*6. Communicate Your (and the Company’s) Purpose*	Sharing the purpose of the work can make team members feel emotionally invested and interested in their work.
*7. Share News About the Company*	Sharing information about the company’s successes and failures can help team members feel more engaged and included.
*8. Expect and Encourage Feedback*	Creating a culture where feedback is expected and encouraged can help team members feel acknowledged, respected, and valuable to the company.

8 ways to build interest and engagement on a team

Here’s an interesting video from TEDx on how feedback from others can make you a better leader:

TEDx Talk about feedback

When team members feel that they are being heard by their superiors, their investment in the company skyrockets. A study found that 92% of employees who were highly engaged in their work felt heard in their workplace, so the two are definitely connected.

When team members feel that they are being heard by their superiors, their investment in the company skyrockets.

5 Signs Your Team Is Lacking Motivation and Engagement

There are some common signs that your team is lacking motivation and engagement, both of which negatively affect their productivity and job satisfaction. You should keep an eye out for the following:

Your team isn’t taking the initiative. Does it feel like your team just goes through the motions of completing a task? To encourage their creativity, let them brainstorm new ways of doing things.
Your team isn’t interested in learning. If it seems like your team members aren’t interested in adopting new strategies or workflows, the issue could be that they’re not being supported. Consider coaching or online courses that could help them to feel inspired to tackle new things.
Your team’s spare time is dull. When speaking to your team members about what they do in their spare time, if they don’t seem to do much or they cite job stress as the reason why they’re sleeping all weekend, this is a red flag of a lack of recovery. Be open to feedback about their work so you can see what’s troubling them and how it can be improved.
Your team is expressing excessive negative thoughts. Negativity and bitterness in your team are signs of dissatisfaction in the workplace. This warrants a meeting in which team members can talk freely about what they’re experiencing so they can get their mojo back.
Your team lacks participation. If your team members don’t give you much feedback in meetings, they could be feeling apathetic, or perhaps they’re not seeing the big picture of why their job is important. Now’s the time to talk to them about your and the company’s purpose and help them to align their purpose by discovering what drives them.

Conclusion

Building interest in your team members is important to help them become more productive. You can do this in the following ways:

Provide support to your team members.
Build relationships with your team members.
Allow creativity.
Communicate the company’s vision.

Build Psychological Safety That Actually Matters! (Army Perspective)

At Sancus Leadership, forging unbreakable trust has always been the main component when building long-term teams and developing talents. But it wasn’t until recently that we realized why this approach was so successful. Through the lens of performance, we can now clearly articulate why it is so important for team leaders to focus on psychological safety.

Building psychological/emotional safety on your team is the number one strategy managers can use to provide security to their employees and give them a reason to stay. It involves creating the right conditions so employees can express themselves freely without fearing being penalized.

Emotional and psychological safety originated in different contexts but are habitually used as synonyms when applied to the work context. I will use these terms similarly to discuss how we (and you?) promote emotional safety in the workplace and why doing so is important.

The Importance of Psychological/Emotional Safety for Teams?

Emotional and Psychological Safety in a team is important.

It’s been said over the centuries that “two heads are better than one” when accomplishing work.

A recent study at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania confirmed that teams are faster and more efficient than individuals when accomplishing complex tasks.

To be effective, teams in the workplace must meet certain characteristics. According to a Google study, psychological/emotional safety is the most important of the features of effective teams.

Here’s why.

It provides freedom and security: Psychological safety gives employees the certainty that they will not be humiliated, sidelined, or punished when they share their ideas, challenge others’ ideas, or make mistakes.
It enhances creativity: When employees feel safe to share their opinions, they are more likely to put forth ideas that develop new and more creative ways of achieving company goals.
It promotes communication among team members: Freedom, trust, respect, confidence, and a sense of security are all qualities in a psychologically safe team. They are preconditions for open communication among team members.
It encourages a sense of belonging: When employees can freely contribute, they build a sense of “our company/organization.” As a result, they are more engaged and happier with their work, and employee turnover is minimized.
It smooths decision-making processes: Psychologically safe teams facilitate open and free brainstorming forums, allowing members to air their views openly. Teams can then weigh and evaluate these views and make faster and more viable decisions.

Why is emotional and psychological safety important?

In a nutshell, emotional and psychological safety makes team members feel they are an active part of the process, which leads to achieving company goals. Therefore, managers should structurally build emotional/psychological safety in the workplace.

Managers should structurally build emotional/psychological safety in the workplace.

12 Steps to Promote Emotional Safety in the Workplace!

It’s essential for business managers and organizational leaders to bear in mind that psychologically and emotionally safe teams do not happen automatically. For this reason, managers and leaders have to work hand in hand with their employees to create teams where every employee feels psychologically/emotionally safe.

Promote emotional safety in the workplace by recognizing individuals, encouraging risk-taking, and “framing the work.” Managers should allow employees to make mistakes, value their opinions, and reward their input.

Here’s how you can use these and other strategies to create psychological/emotional safety on your team.

1. Be Intentional About Promoting Emotionally Safety

The Managers and leaders I have met who are consciously aware of the critical role of emotional safety in teams are likelier to promote it. They tend to build psychologically safe “cultures” through a structured approach instead of a more relaxed “hippie” way ;).

This appears to make employees feel protected and have greater reasons to stay in their job.

Being intentional about promoting an emotionally safe workplace culture involves the following.

Being friendly with all your employees irrespective of their race, gender, qualifications, or rank (you don’t have to like them, but it is in your interest to respect them).
Promoting free and open communication (even if you dislike what they say).
Forging trust and respect among team members (learn how to forge unbreakable trust here).
Being aware of employee life situations.
Making awareness of emotional safety a part of induction and ongoing training initiatives.

2. Recognize Individualism

Every employee is a unique individual, and creating a team does not imply killing individualism. In fact, psychological/emotional safety supports the freedom to be oneself in a team.

Managers and organizational leaders need to create a work environment and managing style where every employee feels at home regardless of their personality, credentials, or rank. In short, managers and leaders must create an equitably safe work environment free of partiality or arbitrary employee discrimination.

Every time we hire someone new, we make sure to emphasize that “we hired you for who you are.” We didn’t hire them to replace someone or fill someone’s shoes. This allows the individual to bring out all their strengths and weaknesses instead of trying to fit in and play a role.

Every time we hire someone new, we make sure to emphasize that “we hired you for who you are“.

3. Encourage and Train Risk-Taking

“Mistakes are human” is one of the sayings we hear often. It simply means that it is normal to make mistakes.

Being able to make mistakes without the fear of being penalized is a core tenet of the concept of psychological safety. It is also key in creating emotionally safe teams characterized by interpersonal risk-taking.

The Google study about building the perfect team mentioned earlier in this article established that teams that made mistakes and took risks delivered better outcomes.

This discovery tells managers and leaders that employees will feel more secure in suggesting and trying new ideas if the work environment assures them it’s safe to make mistakes. Besides, we all know new ideas are at the heart of innovation and creativity in the workplace.

Coming from a military background in bomb disposal, something I often see lacking in a civilian team’s skillset is the ability to do a threat analysis quickly and effectively. Without this skill, individuals take either no risk at all or unnecessary and irresponsible risks.

Without this skill, individuals take either no risk at all or unnecessary and irresponsible risk.

Both ways present a problem for the team when trying to be high performing and reach its goals.

With only a short team discussion, you can clarify what risk tolerance is accepted and allow your team to work within those boundaries.

When you want to learn more about threat assessment for small teams so you can start innovating and bring in more money, I invite you to book a free call with me here.

4. Make Opinions Count

If there’s a context where people will prove true the saying “once bitten, twice shy,” it is when an opinion is turned down without being given a chance. No employee will want to air their opinions when they have been turned down repeatedly.

At my old command, we would regularly have “brainstorming” sessions aimed at solving everyday tasks; the commander would always start by saying, “There are no bad ideas,” but at the same time would also physically react in a sense that made us see he didn’t like what he heard.

This quickly turned into a very unproductive meeting where people eventually stopped saying anything other than what they knew would be appreciated by the commander. This meant that rarely was there a new and bold idea. Instead, it was all the same old with, at best, a new label.

The point here is that small team leadership is about actions more than words, and for your body to align with your speaking, you must truly believe in what you are saying. Otherwise, people will see you are faking it and call you out.

Fake it till you make it is your death sentence as a leader (pun intended ;)).

Fake it till you make it is your death sentence as a leader.

Unfortunately, my workplace was not the only one with this issue; employee opinions don’t seem to get a good hearing. According to Gallup, only 3 in 10 US employees feel strongly that their opinions at work count.

Employers can make their employees feel that their opinions are valued by doing the following.

Promoting open dialogue during meetings and other formal or informal employee gatherings.
Directly asking for feedback and ideas from employees.
Endorsing good and feasible opinions, refining those that need improvement, and giving reasons why an idea is not adopted.
Establishing feedback loops so employees can partake in decision-making processes.

5. Lead the Way

It might be easy to encourage employees to feel free and participate in teams. But when it comes to emotional safety, leading by example works better than words.

In her book, “The Fearless Organization” (available on Amazon.com), the pioneer of ‘team psychological safety’ Dr. Amy Edmondson, mentions three core leadership behaviors. She states that managing and leading teams can use these behaviors to support psychological safety in teams. Acknowledging your own fallibility is one of these behaviors, which indicates to employees that you do not feel pressured to be perfect all the time. This kind of honesty serves as an example to your employees.

You must show your employees that you feel safe to ask for help, put ideas on the table for scrutiny, ask questions, and admit uncertainty and mistakes. By doing so, you communicate to them that they can be and do the same.

6. Frame the Work

According to Dr. Amy Edmondson, framing work implies two crucial roles among managers and leaders.

Consistently reminding employees of the importance of their work and the large numbers of people that rely on it.
Retelling employees that the success of work is uncertain and that its success depends on each one of them.

Through these methods, managing and leading teams can indicate that the employee is a core determinant of work success. It also recognizes that the employee’s contribution is significant and a subtle invitation to do their best.

But once again, you must truly believe in this yourselves before you try to influence someone else. I guess Michael Jackson was right (that’s a reference to the song “Man in the Mirror” ;))

7. Recognize and Reward Employee Input

One of the most successful ways of making people feel emotionally safe at work is to thank them when they give opinions, suggest improvements, or point out mistakes.

Doing this strongly communicates that their employers appreciate their contribution, however minimal it might seem. In consequence, employees will bring their best selves to work.

Gratitude from leaders and managers also has a domino effect because it triggers a sense of worth and satisfaction. In fact, research has confirmed that gratitude enhances employee well-being, minimizes stress, boosts motivation, and strengthens resilience.

What I have found during my twelve years as a leader is that you want to be a scientist rather than a cheerleader; what do I mean by that?

A cheerleader screams “great job” or “let’s go” and makes you feel excited at the moment, but doesn’t do much for improved performance in the long run. and often, the value of “hurray” gets deflated and loses its value.

Scientists have a different approach; they identify exactly what leads to success and articulate that in a way that can be repeated.

I want your feedback to be like the scientist’s; make sure you are super specific about exactly what they did that you not only appreciated but also know contributed to the team’s success.

You will soon notice that your team feels valued and does more of the things you want, and wastes less time.

At Sancus Leadership we have learned a lot from the book Thinking Fast and Slow, it has changed how we give feedback, and allowed us to quickly build a culture where everyone knows what's important and what's not. When you want to do the same book a call with me here.

8. Work as a Scientist Testing a Hypothesis

If work is presented in a structure cut in stone that must necessarily lead to a specified outcome, then employees will feel like robot executors of the work.

Instead, work should be presented as a learning and testing experience where employees can be creative. That way, they won’t feel threatened if they make mistakes, and the output has better chances for greater quality.

Maybe it’s because I have always secretly wanted to be a scientist, but I keep coming back to the idea of seeing work as a way to test ideas.

A scientist never fails as long as the process is sound; the outcome is merely the response to the question that was asked. Sometimes it aligns with what we were hoping for; sometimes, the response is negative, but the lesson is always there.

Sometimes it aligns with what we were hoping for, sometimes the response is negative, but the lesson is always there.

So next time you try something new on your team, put on the white robe and run the experiment, get the lesson, and improve the process. It’s as simple as that.

Redefine what failing and winning mean on your team!

9. Use Constructive and Influential Language

When communicating with your employees, the choice of words can strengthen or weaken their willingness to be themselves. For example, instead of saying a newcomer employee cannot take up a task, you should consider saying the employee has not performed the task yet.

Putting it that way will give the employee the impression that you believe in their capacity to perform the task once they are acquainted with the new work environment. As a result, hopefully, the employee will be bold in sharing or challenging ideas around the task.

Doing that can help them prove they can accomplish the task despite being new to the place; it puts them in a position where they can become a winner.

10. The Biggest Unknown Mistake

When I attended officer training school, I was fortunate enough to get to know a candidate called Hank. Hank was a very peculiar person; he had many interesting (most of my colleagues used the word “weird”) perspectives.

Hank was ten years older than me (he still is, I guess ;)), an Afghanistan war veteran with many years of experience with life in the army. He told me a few words which I have tried to honor throughout my career.

Never ever give your subordinates an impossible task!

Never ever give your subordinates an impossible task!

So what is the impossible task?

There are three reasons why a task can be deemed impossible, the competency of the individual, the complexity of the task, or the complexity of the situation.

Your role as a leader is to NEVER give your people a task they will most definitely fail trying to accomplish. This will leave them feeling incompetent and like a failure, even though it is actually your fault as the leader.

I actually made this exact mistake yesterday; I delegated a task to my virtual assistant without giving her enough training and information to succeed. I gave her an impossible task!

I own this mistake, and I´m now working on a new SOP (standard operating procedure) that will be much more specific and in detail so she is able to succeed.

When your people fail to miss the mark, I challenge you to ask yourself the question; Did I delegate the impossible task?

11. Show Concern for Employees as Persons

It’s not rare to find managers who consider their employees solely as tools who put their professional expertise into accomplishing company goals.

Actually, this is exactly what my old commander told me when he introduced himself to the company, “Gabriel, I don’t care about you as a person. I care about you as a function of the armed forces.”

Well, at least he was honest…

After those words, everything he said felt fake and manipulative; there was no genuine care for us as human beings. In the corridors, employees started questioning the motives behind his decisions, and one of the golden rules of leadership was broken. Trust.

I truly encourage you to learn why trust is the core premise of every effective team by reading this article.

Nonetheless, more and more managers have realized that appreciating employees in their entire human experience enhances their motivation and engagement at work.

An employee with a boss who enquires about their well-being or family (because they truly care) will feel that they are appreciated for who they are holistically, not just as workers. As a result, they will be free to express themselves at work without the fear of being judged for who they are beyond their work.

12. Promote Employee Self-Awareness

Self-awareness describes a person’s ability to focus on their feelings and thoughts and determine their alignment with reality. People adept in self-awareness are more conscious of themselves and fit better in teams.

When employees are self-aware, they can establish if their thoughts and feelings impact their contribution to teams negatively or positively. For example, a self-aware employee is more conscious about their emotional responses to challenges. Such an employee is less likely to respond to a challenge on their idea with an angry outburst.

Managers can help employees become more self-aware by encouraging the use of simple tools such as journaling. They can also utilize more complex self-awareness tools like the Emergenetics Profile.

As a suggestion, the above strategies for promoting psychological/emotional safety on workplace teams may require creative adapting. Customizing these strategies will help fit them into the specific working context of your company or organization.

Steps	Description
1. Be Intentional About Promoting Emotionally Safety	Be intentional about promoting emotional safety by building a psychologically safe “culture” through a structured approach, promoting free and open communication, forging trust and respect among team members, being aware of employee life situations, and making awareness of emotional safety a part of induction and ongoing training initiatives.
2. Recognize Individualism	Recognize individualism by creating a work environment and managing style where every employee feels at home regardless of their personality, credentials, or rank.
3. Encourage and Train Risk-Taking	Encourage and train risk-taking by promoting an environment where mistakes can be made without the fear of being penalized.
4. Make Opinions Count	Make opinions count by listening to and valuing employees’ opinions, suggestions, and feedback.
5. Lead the Way	Lead by example and demonstrate vulnerability by showing employees that it is safe to ask for help, put ideas on the table for scrutiny, ask questions, and admit uncertainty and mistakes.
6. Frame the Work	Recognize and reward employee input by thanking employees when they give opinions, suggest improvements, or point out mistakes.
7. Recognize and Reward Employee Input	Present work as a learning and testing experience where employees can be creative instead of a rigid structure that must lead to a specified outcome.
8. Work as a Scientist Testing a Hypothesis	Use constructive and influential language by choosing words that strengthen employees’ willingness to be themselves.
9. Use Constructive and Influential Language	Avoid giving tasks that employees will most definitely fail at, which can leave them feeling incompetent and like failure.
10. The Biggest Unknown Mistake	Show concern for employees as persons by considering their well-being and family, not just as workers.
11. Show Concern for Employees as Persons	Promote employee self-awareness by encouraging the use of simple tools such as journaling and more complex self-awareness tools.
12. Promote Employee Self-Awareness	Forge unbreakable trust among team members by building connections and being transparent about goals, values, and expectations.

12 steps to promoting emotional safety in the workplace

How To Know if Your Employees Feel Emotionally Safe

Make your employees feel emotionally safe.

Once managers and leaders have made an effort to promote emotional/psychological safety on their teams, they should also observe the team’s physical and verbal reactions in order to understand if employees feel psychologically safe.

Here are some indicators your employees feel emotionally safe in working teams:

Employees share views and opinions that are “outside” the box and challenging.
Employees use clear and respectful language to communicate with leaders and team members to their faces and when they are not around.
Team members are willing to risk being offensive in order to present an idea.
Team members are free to offer both negative and positive feedback when solicited.
Employees welcome critique as a learning opportunity that improves work strategies and outcomes.
Team members use multiple mediums to offer opinions and feedback.
Employees share with the team when they have made a mistake.

Overall, emotionally safe employees are more motivated and engaged because they identify with team and company goals and invest part of themselves in realizing them.

Indicators that your employees are emotionally safe — How to know your employees are emotionally safe

Final Thoughts

Building psychological/emotional safety on teams is a commitment that managers and leaders seeking success in the companies must embrace.

Building emotional safety involves appreciating employees as individual team members with the capacity to contribute ideas and opinions and the right to be heard without prejudice.

If your employees are happy and free to share ideas and are not afraid to make mistakes or challenge others’ ideas, you’ve successfully built an emotionally safe team.

Self-Management Guide: From Unaware to Self-Aware Leadership

My success as a team leader has come down to one essential ingredient, having people around me willing to risk being offensive in the pursuit of giving me honest and precise feedback on how I appear to them. Much of our strengths as leaders stem from a deep understanding of ourselves and the ability to use that understanding to be a better person and leader.

Self-management is the ability to control one’s reactions, thoughts, and emotions and is highly beneficial in effective leadership. It can only be achieved through self-awareness, a deeply introspective process that entails the evaluation of one’s strengths, weaknesses, and patterns of behavior.

While self-aware leadership is crucial in effective leadership, it is also helpful in maintaining mental health, building meaningful interpersonal relationships, and personal growth. It may entail a long, arduous process, but it’s definitely worth the work. Read on to learn more about self-awareness and self-management in leadership.

Can You Self-Manage Without Self-Awareness?

You can’t self-manage without self-awareness. Self-awareness is the foundation of self-management because it requires the reflective process of looking into yourself and analyzing how you feel or behave the way you do and why.

Trying to self-manage without working on self-awareness is much like trying to drive a car without first learning how to drive. You may be able to turn the engine on and even go a few miles, but you won’t be able to do so without crashing into other cars, a building, or people in the process.

You may be able to do self-management techniques, but you won’t do them for very long or effectively. Unless you understand yourself, no self-management technique will be effective.

How Do You Move From Self-Awareness to Self-Management?

To move from self-awareness to self-management, you have to use the understanding of your behavior, tendencies, emotions, and thoughts to impact how you interact with the world around you.

Self-awareness most often leads to improved self-management, but only if you draw the correct conclusions from the “data” you have gathered by being self-aware.

Here are ways by which you can make that transition faster and more accurate:

Reflect on your thoughts and emotions. Ask yourself why you did, felt, or thought something. This will enable you to understand your inner thoughts and tendencies better.
Apply what you learn about yourself. If, for example, you realize that you have a short fuse and are prone to lash out, set strategies to help you calm down before facing your team or making a decision. My favorite is to delay my response for 12h; often, I find myself pleased I didn’t go with my feeling in the moment.
Use feedback from others. You won’t be able to see everything. Ask for feedback routinely and act on it; become a scientist, try out new behaviors, and see if you like the outcome; if you do, then keep it; if you don’t, throw it out. Remember to ask the people you don’t like as well (I hate this part, but it has been very beneficial to my development as a leader). Chances are they have some great insights. Criticism can hurt, but we need it to grow.

How To Develop Self-Management

To be an effective leader means being able to master yourself and respond to both inner struggles and external factors in such a way that will build up, not tear down. I have seen plenty of leaders who have broken down, lashed out at others, or completely shut down in the face of a crisis; maybe so have you?

Developing self-management takes incredible commitment and a deep level of introspection. You must be self-aware, discover your strengths and weaknesses, motivate yourself, ensure that tasks are aligned with your goals, and maintain a habit of self-evaluation.

The following are some ways I have used to improve my self-management; I recommend you try some of them out:

Discover Your Strengths and Weaknesses

Self-awareness requires knowledge of your own identity. If you want to be self-aware, you must be comfortable asking yourself questions like “Who am I?” or “Why do I do what I do?”

These probing questions help us understand our identity and what motivates us, where we find purpose and meaning, and how we feel most fulfilled.

You would think these would be beneficial only in maintaining self-esteem, but that’s not the case. Knowing who you are—and who you are not—enables you to take on roles and tasks that you know you’re built for. You no longer have to force yourself to fit a mold that wasn’t made for you and makes you feel insufficient or not good enough.

I once ran a 100-mile mountain marathon in the cold winter of Sweden; I wanted to see how far I could go and where my limit was. After 34 hours of consecutive running, I finished the race fatigued, in pain, and physically broken down. I had just finished my first-ever ultra marathon.

But I never found the answer to my question. The problem with succeeding is that it doesn’t tell you much about your limits, only about what you can do.

This is when I fully understood the power of failing; failing gives you more answers than succeeding. I tell you this to show you how important it is to take risks, fail, and learn from them.

Part of understanding your identity is knowing your strengths and weaknesses. In a team setting, this helps you figure out where you fit in. If project management is your strong suit and keeping members motivated is a weakness, focus your energy on doing what you know, you’ll succeed at and delegate tasks where others will.

Keep Yourself Motivated

Managing a team is hard work. Sometimes, there will be more downs than ups, and through these changing seasons, you have to be able to motivate yourself as well as your team to keep going or to do better.

This would be even harder if self-motivation depended on some kind of inspiration. While inspiration is great, it’s often fleeting.

What you need is something more stable, in fact, something that you can almost command. To develop self-motivation, remind yourself of the value that your work brings to yourself and your team. Figure out what drives you and put it front and center of your work routine.

What motivates you depends entirely on you. It can be short-term, like a promotion, or long-term, such as building a name in your chosen industry or line of work. It can even be an intrins ic motivation, such as the positive feeling you get because you love what you’re doing.

The most successful team leaders I have met tend to use all of those motivators in synergy. This gives them an almost endless source of energy toward their goals.

Understanding what makes you go the extra mile is crucial, especially when you’re leading a team through times of crisis.

When you’re motivated and driven, your passion will naturally rub off on those around you, creating an environment where people expect themselves to perform at their 100 percent without being forced to.

Set Risky and Well-Aligned Goals

Ask yourself: “What do I want to accomplish? Who do I want to become?”

These questions will help drive you in the right direction and set your priorities straight. It can also help you figure out whether what you want to do is worth pursuing or not.

A goal worthy of your time should invoke a sense of fear, anxiety, and doubt. If not, you are aiming way too low!

Observing the feelings that arise when you think about the goal will help determine if your tasks align with your purpose. Does it feel right? Does it align with who you want to be?

You can also do the New York Times test; if your goal was published in the newspaper, how would you feel? Proud or ashamed?

Many people find themselves unmotivated and frustrated because they feel like however hard they work, their efforts never seem to be enough. The key is chopping those huge goals down to smaller day-to-day tasks that can be ticked off your to-do list.

This way, you’ll see just how much you’re able to accomplish and keep yourself focused on what needs to be done.

You may find that you’ve taken on far too much work that turns out to be completely unnecessary, which will then give you the opportunity to realign, drop what you must, and focus on what will help you achieve your goal.

Evaluate Yourself

Developing self-management takes commitment, not just because it’s not natural in most of us but also because it requires a great deal of self-reflection and evaluation.

If you want to grow in this aspect, you have to be unafraid to look deep into yourself and ask hard questions, like “Why do I blow up in front of my team so often?” or “Why does this person make me so mad?”

Self-evaluation can be a vast, vague concept, making it sound intimidating to do. But in essence, all it is is analyzing your feelings and actions in relation to how you lead or manage a team.

Here are tips on how evaluation can be done:

Set a time. Set a regular schedule and stick to it. It shouldn’t be any random time or whenever you feel like doing it, or else you’ll hardly ever do it.
Write down your thoughts. Create a structure for your evaluation and ensure that you can look back at how you’ve done in the past to see your progress by recording your evaluation in a journal. Send me an email, and I will respond with a copy of the google forms journal I use.
Organize your evaluation. Every person is complex, so to ensure that your evaluation has focus, make sure that you specify which aspects of yourself you’re evaluating, whether that be interpersonal relationships or leadership style.
Be honest with yourself. It’s natural to want to justify every negative thing we notice in ourselves. But in order to improve, we have to be honest in the way we assess ourselves.
Be patient with your progress. There may be specific areas that you struggle with the most or where you feel like you don’t make any progress. Be patient with the process instead of dwelling on any feelings of frustration.
Be respectful to yourself. As much as it’s important to be honest (especially about the things you need to work on), it’s also important to be kind to yourself. Be as gracious to yourself as you try to be to others. Start with being kind to you. Treat yourself as someone you like.

Take Care of Yourself

Self-aware leadership is not all about managing yourself in order to be a great leader to others. It also means being in a good mental state, so you get to enjoy your life and become at peace with yourself.

Many people focus so much on being self-aware leaders in service of others they neglect how much it’s also about benefiting themselves. Great leaders are never martyrs; great leaders make sure they are equally valuable to the team as everyone else.

Studies have shown that people who don’t speak up for themselves and always put others’ needs before their own tend to become bitter.

You can’t be a good, productive leader unless you’re in a good state. It’s hard and almost impossible to put on a healthy attitude when deep inside, you’re bitter, angry, and unhappy. What’s inside will eventually boil over.

Your team is expecting you to operate at high capacity in service of them and the goal, so don’t forget to take care of your well-being.

Here are ways you can prioritize your well-being and take care of yourself:

Take a break when you need to. There will surely be days when you need to push yourself to perform, even when all you want is to sleep for days. But you have to listen to your body and rest when you know that your mental health is being sacrificed.
Take care of your health. Exercise every day, eat your veggies and protein, and get 7-8 hours of sleep. It sounds pretty basic, but most people neglect to do these, and they pay for it by performing poorly, getting seriously ill, or burning out.
Develop your relationships. No one is an island. So true. You need people who will lend an ear when you need to vent about a stressful situation at work. A good support system will see you through many crises.
Make time for leisure. Work should not be your everything. Do things that you genuinely enjoy, and that add positive excitement to your life!

What Are Some Examples of Effective Self-Management Techniques?

Self-management is hard work and takes a lot of discipline, but it all starts with self-awareness. A self-aware person will be observant of how they spend their time. This will allow them to employ a series of self-management strategies or techniques.

Some examples of effective self-management techniques are time management, stress management, and critical decision-making. These include focusing on one task at a time, understanding your emotions, and relying on data for making decisions.

These self-management techniques will help you become a happier, more effective leader.

Time Management

They say you can’t actually manage time; you can only be wise with how you spend it. And part of being wise with your time is making sure that you don’t waste it.

A simple way to do that is to plan your “must dos” and schedule them the first thing in the morning —including those that you do outside of work or for leisure.

Every morning I journal my three “must dos” for the day, and I start picking them off one by one. I don’t do anything else until I have finished them; after all, they are the most important tasks of the day.

This means that if I get interrupted by an emergency or for some reason I can’t continue, at least I will have spent “the most of my time” on “the most important tasks.”

One very common mistake that people make is multitasking so much. It may sound counterproductive, but often, focusing on one task at a time will actually make you perform better.

Actually, the brain can’t do two things at a time; it can only switch between tasks faster or slower. This switching has a “reset cost.” Every time you restart to finish that email, your brain has to go back and remember what the email was about; this takes time and reduces efficiency.

Stress Management

Know your triggers and give yourself time to manage your emotions before they escalate. If you need to take a break or take things slowly, then allow yourself to do that.

Most of us wait until we can’t handle the stress anymore. The better thing to do is work in such a way as to avoid as much stress as possible.

A great tip is to have someone or something reminding you to do a “check-up” from time to time during the day. A check-up is a quick pause where you rate your stress level on a scale from 1-10; you then give a few seconds of thought to your inner dialogue and realign those thought patterns with a more useful mindset if needed.

The reminder can be anything from a randomly set alarm clock or wearing your watch on the other wrist, and every time you notice it, you do a check-up.

Decision-Making

Problem-solving and decision-making skills are necessary for an effective leader. These can be developed by using reliable data and critical thinking when making a decision. Instead of making blind guesses, use logical thinking and consider the pros and cons of each option.

It is worth developing the skill of knowing when to make intuitive decisions and when you need to stop and think. A book that changed my life and especially my decisions making process is thinking fast and slow by Daniel Kahneman!

The main focus of this book is to explore how our decisions making process as humans are inaccurate and significantly flawed. But also how we can improve it by being self-aware and understanding the sign of a complex decision-making environment.

Conclusion

Self-management takes a lot of determination and hard work, but it is absolutely crucial if you want to be an effective leader who is able to influence a team—not coerce them—to keep working on themselves too.

Recent Posts

How To Develop Self-Leadership Skills?

What Is Self-Leadership?

What Is Self-Management?

7 Self-Leadership/Management Skills

1. Goal Setting

2. Decision Making

3. Composure

4. Adaptability

5. Self-Motivation and Constructive Thinking

6. Time/Resource Management

7. Critical Thinking

What Are the Self-Leadership Strategies You Must Follow?

Behavior-Focused Strategies

Natural Reward Strategies

Constructive Thought Pattern Strategies

How To Manage a Team of Leaders?

Build a Good Team

Foster Self-Leadership as an Ideal Mindset (Set a Good Example)

Final Words

The 6 Core Elements of Self-Leadership For Managers and Leaders

1. Self-Discovery (Reflection)

2. Self-Acceptance

3. Setting Personal Goals

4. Self-Discipline

5. Self Evaluation

6. Self Growth

How Business Teams Can Benefit From Self Leadership

Creates a Culture of Personal Responsibility

Self-Leaders Are Team Players

Self Leaders Are Problem Solvers

Self Leaders Have Mastered Their Emotions (High Emotional Intelligence)

Self-leaders Are Eager To Learn

Self Leadership Promotes Group Satisfaction

Self Leaders Are Empathetic Team Leaders

Self Leaders Are Flexible and Dynamic

Conclusion

1. Know Yourself

2. Set Clear Goals

3. Track Progress

4. Delegate Tasks

5. Encourage Recovery

6. Be Flexible and Proactive

8. Optimize Your Health

1. Provide Support and Encouragement

2. Pay Attention to Their Lives Outside of the Workplace

3. Allow Team Members To Be Creative

4. Provide Training for Your Team

5. Ensure Your Team Members’ Salaries Are Competitive

6. Communicate The Company’s Vision

7. Share News About the Company

8. Expect and Encourage Feedback

5 Signs Your Team Is Lacking Motivation and Engagement

Conclusion

The Importance of Psychological/Emotional Safety for Teams?

12 Steps to Promote Emotional Safety in the Workplace!

1. Be Intentional About Promoting Emotionally Safety

2. Recognize Individualism

3. Encourage and Train Risk-Taking

4. Make Opinions Count

5. Lead the Way

6. Frame the Work

7. Recognize and Reward Employee Input

8. Work as a Scientist Testing a Hypothesis

9. Use Constructive and Influential Language

10. The Biggest Unknown Mistake

11. Show Concern for Employees as Persons

12. Promote Employee Self-Awareness

How To Know if Your Employees Feel Emotionally Safe

Final Thoughts

Can You Self-Manage Without Self-Awareness?

How Do You Move From Self-Awareness to Self-Management?

How To Develop Self-Management

Discover Your Strengths and Weaknesses

Keep Yourself Motivated

Set Risky and Well-Aligned Goals

Evaluate Yourself

Take Care of Yourself

What Are Some Examples of Effective Self-Management Techniques?

Time Management