Ajay Singh_BLP018_Self Leadership_Sep'11

Self-Leadership: Leading Yourself to Personal Excellence

There is a person with whom you spend more time than any other, a person who has more influence over you, and more ability to interfere with or to support your growth than anyone else. This ever-present companion is your own self. 

-Dr. Pamela Butler, Clinical Psychologist

Self leadership is not about the leadership of others but it is about something more fundamental and more powerful. It is about the leadership that we exercise over ourselves. In fact, we argue that if we ever hope to be effective leaders of others, we must first be effective leaders of ourselves. This is one of the very important concept that most of the organizations are looking these days in their future Managers and SOIL as a B-school is primarily focussed in this aspect by transforming students into Leaders but not just managers. Recently we had a very wonderful session with Mr. Anil Sachdev where he covered some very important things that one need to consider and practice to become a good leader.

The very first session started with one very simple question which was “How to learn”. The answer to this simple question can actually help us realize how successful we are in our process of learning. Answer to this question can be given by again answering some basic questions which were:

·         Do I have the right attitude to learn?

·         How mindful I am while my process of learning?

·         Am I putting my best effort to learn?

While answering to these questions, I realized that how powerful these are and how can they help me to improve my learning process.

The next session dealt with INTROSPECTION. By definition, Introspection is the self-observation and reporting of conscious inner thoughts, desires and sensations. It is a conscious mental and usually purposive process relying on thinking, reasoning, and examining one’s own thoughts, feelings, and, in more spiritual cases, one’s soul. It can also be called contemplation of one’s self. Introspection may be used synonymously with self-reflection and used in a similar way. We were told to introspect ourselves by answering some questions and when I was done with answering them, I actually did introspect a lot but also got to know that I need to do this exercise on a more regular basis to get proper benefit from it. The questions were:

·         Who are the people that matter to you most in your life?

·         What are their needs that you are moved to serve?

·         How can you leverage your values and gifts to serve their needs?

The second half of day dealt with a very important concept developed by Dr. Robert Kegan.It was about “Immunity to change”. Immunity to Change is a wonderfully original approach to a familiar problem: why many crucial change efforts fail. It shows how the core problems of resistance to change stem from the critical gaps between what is required and a leader's own level of development.The process involves people answering to a series of questions and answer to each questions help them to know about the actual reasons behind the failure of their efforts to change. Some of the questions were:

·         One aspect that you wish to change that you are struggling with?

·         What do you do instead of doing that?

·         What prevents you from doing that thing?

·         What are the assumptions that are giving you the reason for this hidden competency?

·         What are your strengths to overcome these assumptions?

There were some more questions presented by Mr. Anil Sachdev which would probably help us in improving our learning. Some the notable ones which I could remember are:

·         If you want to improve a habit, whom do you think among your friend circle has already that habit?

·         What are the kinds of things I read and watch?

·         Who are the people I will consciously spent my time with them?

At the end of day, a large number of questions were put in front of us. And we were made to think for the answers which would probably help us in our process of learning. I am yet not sure of most of the answers but I am continuously looking for the appropriate answers for each of the questions so that I could judge myself and my progress in my learning journey.