LEADERSHIP by Jodi Standke The leader you manage first Maria built her company on clarity, discipline, and high standards. As CEO, she was known for decisive thinking and a steady presence. Her team trusted her and the results (growth) followed. But over time, something shifted. The pressure increased. Growth demanded more. Decisions stacked up. Without realizing it, Maria began operating differently. She moved faster, pushed harder, and expected more of herself and everyone around her. She still knew what great leadership looked like. She had coached it, modeled it, and built her culture around it. But she had quietly stopped practicing it. Her patience shortened, her listening decreased, her reactions sharpened and everyone felt it. With the slow style shift in leadership and the market shifts, performance plateaued. The team was still coming to work but now they were not engaged, creative or giving any extra effort. For Maria, despite working harder and longer, things weren’t moving forward. What changed wasn’t the strategy. It was the leader. This is where many high-performing leaders get stuck. Once they reach a certain level, they stop thinking of themselves as something that needs to be actively managed. But self-management is not something you graduate from, ever. Rather, it is the quiet discipline that sustains performance. Self-managed leaders drive organizational performance In my work with founders and CEOs, one pattern is consistent: the organization rarely outperforms the leader’s level of self-management. In one of my most recent articles I discussed the power of self-managed teams. Now I see the team activity doesn’t matter if the leader is not self-managing. When leaders are clear, grounded, and intentional, their organizations tend to be focused and aligned. It’s when leaders are reactive, overloaded, or disconnected from themselves, that shows up everywhere including decision-making, quality control, communication, culture, and ultimately growth and profit. Self-managed leaders understand something critical, their internal state is not separate from performance, it is the key that drives it. Self-managed leaders know it is not enough to manage strategy, people, and execution; they know the key is managing their own thinking, their energy, their reactions, in general how they are showing up. The good news is wherever you are on the self-managing scale, you can shift you immediately! It starts with a simple question. A practical exercise in self-management A reliable exercise to check in on or shift your self-management is to return to awareness. This is where many leaders skip ahead. They try to “fix” behaviors without first understanding what is actually below the surface driving them. Instead, I encourage leaders to pause and move through a simple four-step exercise: Step 1: Who am I as a leader? Take a notebook. Write the question at the top of the page: Who am I? Then write anything that comes to mind, everything. The good, bad, the questions, the wonderings…no one will read it but you. Get your thoughts out of your head and onto paper. This is important. Writing helps move your thinking into a more embodied awareness beyond just using your intellectual understanding. Step 2: Identify what serves and what doesn’t Review your list and ask: ■ Which of these are most appropriate for the leader I want to be? ■ Which are least appropriate or showing up more than I intend? This is not about judgment. It’s about accuracy, truth and reality. High-performing leaders don’t ignore their tendencies; they become aware of them to choose how to respond. Step 3: Define the leaders you respect Next, write down the characteristics of leaders you most respect. Be specific. For example, you might note: clear communicator, calm under pressure, holds boundaries, listens deeply, decisive without being reactive. Next, compare this list to your own notes about you. Again, write down your responses to these next questions: Where are you aligned? Where are you out of alignment? Who do I want to be? How do I want to show up? Any noted gap is where your growth lives. And all gaps can be closed if desired. Step 4: Decide what to start, stop, and continue The most important step is to take your awareness and move it into action. Do that with these questions: ■ What will you start doing? ■ What will you stop doing? ■ What will you continue doing? Then ask one final question, How will I bring this into my daily leadership? Take your insights from theory into daily practice. In your next meeting, in your next decision, in your next moment of pressure. In our example about Maria, she didn’t need a new strategy at her business stage, she needed to reconnect with how she was showing up. Through this work, she became aware of how far she had drifted from the leader she intended to be. Not because she lacked knowledge or capability, just simply because she had stopped managing herself. Once she began shifting herself, something amazing showed up. Her people and her organization began shifting. The most effective leaders keep focusing on their self-management. If you want your teams to practice self-management, it starts with you. So, let me ask you, how well are you self-managing? JODI STANDKE leads her company, Talon Performance, and is a member of the Enterprising Women Advisory Board. Connect with her at www. talonperformancegroup.com. enterprising Women 91
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