Taking Control of Change: The Key to Improving Results

For organizations to survive and thrive in the new economy, employees at all levels need to develop and practice the qualities of Personal Leadership. Personal Leadership is essential to success.

How do we define success?  The aim of all human life is to be happy and the ingredients of happiness are the things we all have in common. We want to be healthy, have good relationships, meaningful work, financial independence, a feeling of growth and peace of mind.

The results of success are self-esteem (feeling good and valuable and important to yourself), self-respect and personal pride. This improves our ability to get along with others, our performance and our overall productivity.

There are four major qualities of Personal Leadership.  The first is vision.  Your vision is based on values and virtues.  Leaders know who they are and what they stand for.  The second quality of leadership is courage.  Leaders have the ability to face their fears and act in spite of them.  The third quality of leadership is realism.  Realism is the ability to see the world as it is, not as you wish it were. The essence of realism is integrity.  The fourth quality of leadership is responsibility. Responsibility means self-reliance. Leaders volunteer for responsibility.

There are seven rules for Personal Leadership:

1) Your life only gets better when you get better.

2) It doesn’t matter where you are coming from, only where you are going.

3) Anything worth doing is worth doing poorly at first.

4) You can learn anything you need to learn and achieve any goal you can set for yourself.

5) You are only as free as your options.

6) Within every difficulty you face is the seed of an equal or greater opportunity.

7) The only real limits on what you can do are self-imposed.

Imagine if employees developed and practiced the qualities of Personal Leadership.  Productivity would improve and, importantly, the need for costly and disruptive terminations could be reduced.  Think about it!

Post Written By: Barry Chapman, Senior Partner, TwoGreySuits