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Learn to Lead Yourself

If you can’t lead yourself, you can’t lead.

I know we like to pretend otherwise. But why? Because it’s hard!

You are totally responsible for what happens when you lead yourself. No playing victim, no blame or reasons why things are the way they are, and no excuses for getting the results you don’t want.

Results matter. A lot.

Teams get stuck. Leaders get stuck. We all get stuck—it’s a fact of doing business. 

Ineffective problem solving, strained relationships, inability to resolve conflicts, and lack of trust slow everyone down. 

I’ve noticed that people often have trouble asking for help. Sometimes they sit on projects for weeks because they didn’t want to ask for support. There are many reasons people fear requesting assistance, primary among them is not wanting to seem weak, needy, or incompetent. Any of these ring a bell?

When we don’t get the results we like, most of us have been conditioned to blame something outside of ourselves. It is all part of the universal blame game that happens every single day. Employees blame bosses and bosses blame employees. Notice how often others blame the additional workload, the challenging client, the unreliable partner, or the unresponsive co-worker. A commonly blamed reason for poor results is not having enough resources. 

Every day we are faced with a wide variety of obstacles and challenges. That’s not going to change. We have to change. Learning to lead yourself is the most important thing you will ever do. If you can’t lead yourself, you will never be able to lead others. 

Want some insight and guidance? Tune into this week’s episode of the Getting Results podcast E65: Leading Yourself during Difficult Times.

Check it out: It’s available on Apple PodcastsGoogle PodcastSpotify, and others.