There are four concepts that define self leadership:
Find out more below and in Laurie's book, Betting on You: How to Put Yourself First and (Finally) Take Control of Your Career.
If you're a self leader, you know that a job worth doing is a job worth doing well. You are competent. You show up, and you have confidence in your ability to deliver. You may not have all the answers,;you may have to hire people who are smarter than you, but you know, at the end of the day, that you can figure this stuff out. You are resilient. Resilience is a buzzword that was thrown around with COVID. But resilience means that you've made a choice. It's a mindset, that you're not going to be pulled under by these crazy waves of chaos. Resilience is the choice to choose your attitude and say things are chaotic but I'm emotionally regulated, I'm mature, and I have some perspective.
This is the state of feeling comfortable, healthy and happy. Nobody has ever done anything great in this world on four hours asleep. They have not changed the course of humanity while eating lunch from their toddler's plate. Well being is essential to us. It makes our brains operate. It improves our cognitive functioning. And it certainly helps our organizations and the people around us perform.
There are three pillars of well being physical, emotional, and financial. Physical well being is more than just a lack of disease. And, financial wellbeing a direct correlation to physical and emotional well being. If you're constantly worried about money, your health outcomes, your mental health outcomes are terrible.
Learning this is a testament to your own intellectual curiosity. One shortcut to learning to find more mentors. Mentors are everywhere and you really don't need to know them, but you really need them in your life.
Self leaders take risks, but they take smart risks. Practice the pre-mortem. It is taught at Stanford, Harvard, University of Michigan. It goes like this: you think about the thing you want in this world, but you're afraid to get it because you don't want to fail. For some of you that might be going after capital, or it might be interviewing for a really great job that seems out of your reach, and you're like, I don't want to fail anymore. So I want you to think about that. Once you've got the scenario in your mind, set a timer for one minute, and write down all the ways that will fail
I think the most accessible example is an interview, right? Because all of us have been on interviews, we all know, when we suck, maybe we don't make great eye contact, maybe we can't tell stories, maybe we get a little too sweaty. We still believe we could do the job, but we just, we think maybe they won't see it. However you think you're going to fail write it all down. But when the timer goes off, after a minute you stop.
You don't need to belabor this. Now look at your list. That list is called a list of glitches. As you go through that list, what you've been given is a gift. You can take that list and start to tick it off and say this is real or this is fake. This is true, I need to fix this. And if you fix it, before you do that thing you want to do you give yourself a chance of success of over 30%. That iis a competitive advantage that cannot be overstated.
Wouldn't you like to have a 30% greater chance of success at getting that funding at launching your business or getting that job of having a great vacation with your family, whatever it is.
The pre mortem is what self leaders do to still step into the unknown to take that risk knowing other things are going to hit them. But it's not going to be the same dumb failure over and over again.
Because many of us have not been trained to do a post mortem. What I'm giving you is the gift of a little foresight, a little wisdom, to think about failure just for a minute just in a contained space, so that you can stop making the same mistakes over and over again, and be that self leader you've always been meant to be.
