Episode 6: What is Self-Leadership? A Practical Guide for Overwhelmed Leaders

Hello everyone and welcome to today's episode all about self-leadership. What a selfleadership for overwhelmed leaders. We're going to be looking at why everything can feel heavy, why can we feel overwhelmed? And what we can do about it.

And when we learn what we can do about it, we'll then learn to carry less and to lead better. So, let's start off with why it is that we sometimes feel overwhelmed as leaders. You see, quite often we can take far too much on board. We might not have much autonomy because we've got managers that are applying pressure to us.

And that lack of autonomy and agency can be difficult. We might be dealing with really difficult situations that might be impacting on other people's livelihoods. HR matters that are always difficult to carry as a leader. And we also then might have just a massive workload that is sometimes what feels like not, it's not achievable.

On top of all of that, we have the our teams, our staff members, our employees, and all of what it is that they bring in their lives to the table of your organisation. And it can sometimes just be too much. And in a bed to try and keep everything ticking along nicely, often leaders take even more on. And not necessarily in a micromanaging way, but in a holding it together way.

If you are a micromanager on top of that, then you're adding a whole level of unnecessary stress that doesn't need to be there. And that's a whole different. podcast episode to follow. So if you are in that situation where you have that sense of overwhelm, what do you do?

Well, you need to start doing 3 things. You need to start on yourself inside out. You need to start being boundary and you start need to start being more intentional in your leading. So let's look at the knowing yourself more.

Where is it showing up for you and your body, your stress? Your body whispers to you when it's had enough. And it does so normally through discomfort and pain. We work in data driven environments now where we have insights on everything, but often we ignore the insights of our physical body.

Our aches and pains speak volumes to us, and we choose to ignore them. Now, if that was stats on a page or an Excel sheet telling us that our business was failing, we'd be doing something about it. Yet we ignore that data of ourselves. So start listening to your body when it's whispering or perhaps screaming at you, that it's not in a great position, that is feeling the stress and the burden.

Do you have stress headaches? Are your eyes sore? You got a stiff neck. Is your body creaking?

Is your stomach upset? Do you have heart palpitations? All of these kind of things are indicators of too much stress and that cortisol. Horrible run around about you.

So if you sense that. You as a good self-leader needs to do something intentional to change that and that might be just 5 minutes of breathing. It might be getting outside to get some fresh air. It bore it definitely is, is breaking the pattern.

Doing something different. To allow the energy in your body to flow differently, to help you regulate your emotions. Because your nervous system is dysregulated. And when you're sore, and when you're creaky and when you're angry, When you're stressed, you start to respond to people differently.

You can be short tempered. You can be angry, you can make poor decisions, and all of these things will impact on the culture that you want to create as a leader. So the 1st thing you have to do is be able to self-regulate, And particularly before you respond to anything difficult, or before you make a decision. They are crucial, because what happens next can have such a negative impact on your future leadership role.

It's really important that you learn to selfregulate. You learn to, Release the stress and release the tension so that you can do all of the leadership things you need to do, calm and collect it in confidently. I also want you to think about your values and actually what you're aligned to. When you are not aligned to your values, if there's things happening, or you're making decisions or you're not, for example, you're, Fairness is important.

It's a value for you, but you actually have been making quite unfair decisions and it's, it will it will irritate you. You will know it's wrong. It won't sit well with you. And that will contribute to how you're feeling.

And how perhaps you might be a little bit irrational or a little bit stressed. You also, if, for example, one of your values is integrity. If you are not making decisions that you feel aren't correct, That they are are misaligned to your integrity, then that's also going to impact on you. So knowing your values inside out is crucial to be able to read well as well.

Then what I'd like you to think about is putting an invisible fence round about you. Okay? And I say that lightheartedly, but being boundary is crucial as a leader. You can take on everyone else's stress and strains and workload and shit.

But actually, you're not going to achieve anything for you. It's gonna really just force you to feel even more overwhelmed. Being boundary is crucial. You need to be able to say no.

And that you do with care. You don't need to go, no, I'm not doing that. You need to say things like, thanks very much for asking me, but I know you have the capability to do this better. So I'm here to support you, but you crack on and lead on this.

Or it could be that somebody wants you to attend a meeting. Thanks very much for inviting me to the meeting. I have a colleague who's far better skilled at this, and I'm going to invite them to go and report back to me. Do not feel that you have to say yes to everything.

When you say yes to everything, you're also stopping the growth of one of your colleagues and your team. Because that experience that you're saying you could be saying yes to is something that could be crucial in their professional learning. Knowing what's yours to control, what's yours to have? What's yours to hold?

is again crucial. As a leader, everything is yours to hold. But you have people in your team who have responsibilities. If you take things on board that are theirs, Then you are stopping them learning.

And you're stopping them growing. And you're also overburdening yourself. So use the circle of control activity. Really useful too.

Be able to Google search it. To know what is yours to control. You can influence and you can support and you can help. But leave it to them to do.

Be there as the fallback, as the supporter, as the mentor, as the coach. Ask lots of curious questions, stay involved, but at arm's length. And another way to say boundary is to manage and block time in your calendar. Do not have an empty calendar, folks.

Empty white space in your calendar is inviting people to fill it with meetings with appointments. Let's face it, you do not spend your time doing nothing at your work. You are busy. And if your calendar is white and clear, and looks like you are free all the time, then people think that you're not busy when actually you are.

Every activity you do takes time. Put the activity in your calendar and block time for it. Be strategic, plan backwards if you've got a meeting you need to prepare for and put that time in. And if you've got time that you want to have an open door policy with your team, let them know when you're available.

Folks, I'm here. In my calendar, you'll see. I've got 2 hours on Monday and chairs on Wednesday and an hour on Friday open door policy. Please come and see me with anything you want to chat about.

The rest of the time, I am working on priorities and strategic actions. Being boundary and communicating that clearly is going to make your life much easier. And obviously, you're there always in an emergency, but when you let people know when you're available, For casual chats, for catch ups, for just interaction with you, then that's going to really help you manage your time better on the rest of your strategic thinking. And then I want you to start being that CEO of your own life.

I want you to start leading intentionally. I want you to think about it. I want to in fact do a swat analysis of you. What's your baseline?

What are your strengths as a leader? What do you do really well? And that might include. Giving other people the responsibilities and supporting them with that.

Okay, a strength isn't taking things on. That might be a weakness in that spot analysis. Your weakness is that you want to hold control too much. What are the opportunities for you?

What could you do better? You could learn to boundary better. You could learn to block time your calendar better. You could learn other things that might help you be more strategic and more supportive of your team.

Learning to trust them more and believe in them and their capabilities. And what are the threats? There could be numerous threats round about your work. It could be that resource HR are going to deplete your resource, your human resource, and therefore everyone's going to have more, um, more in their plates and more responsibilities, and you've got to manage that.

And it might be something that's NDA and you're not able to speak to anybody about it. So all these things are challenges and threats that you might want technology. But doing a little swat analysis is really going to help you. Going forward because then what you can do is use a model that I call the Daki model.

So it's a drop, add, keep, improve. These are where you make your choices intentionally. So remember, Kazan and Bryant spoke about, um, About you, it's leading your thoughts, your energy and your behaviour intentionally. They are um, All about specific outcomes.

So say your outcome that you're looking for is you're planning towards a strategic meeting. You can use your Daki model to help you. What do you need to drop that you're doing just now to help you plan for this? What do you need to add?

To help you plan for this? What do you need to keep? What you need to keep doing that's going well? And what can you improve on that's, you know, that's already going well, but actually it needs finer tweaking.

And using models like that help you be strategic and intentional as a leader. Don't drift. Plan. And reflect, block time in your calendar.

Fortunately to look back and go, what's happened? Where have I been this last fortnight? Where's my energy been? What's been useful for me?

How am I able to take this forward? What do I need to change? And really be introspective in the way that you're turning up as a leader? And the way that you're going forward.

Are you allowing your team space to grow and evolve? And you're there, it's a curious, challenging supporter that helps them with coaching questions to grow and evolve in their own practice. All these things are really, really important. And unless you break that pattern that you've created, of taking everybody else's work on board.

It's not yours to hold. That just weighs you down and adds stress to you. Then you are not self leading. And when you don't self lead, you cannot lead other people effectively.

So. Ask yourself this question. What would it look like for me to lead myself right now? Self leadership is a daily practice.

It's not a concept that you just do every now and again. It's daily intentional practice. Where you put yourself 1st because actually, you are the only variable in your life that you are able to control. You're the only able to control where your energy goes and the choices you make and how you turn up.

So. When you own your leadership, You will create sustainable impact without overwhelm. When you self-lead. Fox, it's been a pleasure chatting to you today.

I' see you next episode. Take care.