The Making of a leader: Leadership Begins with You

This episode explores why great leadership begins with leading yourself before leading others. Discover how self-awareness, character, emotional discipline, and accountability shape the way you influence those around you. Before you build a great team, you must first build the leader within you.

Transcript

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Welcome to the Leadership Collective. I'm Sandra Elizabeth. Today we begin a new series called The Making of a Leader. The first podcast is entitled Leadership Starts With You. Many people believe that leadership begins when somebody gives them a position, when somebody makes them a manager, when somebody makes them the supervisor, or even when they become the CEO. Getting your name outside your office door also doesn't make you a leader. You see, leadership begins long before the title. Because before you learn to lead a department, to lead a team, or lead a company, or even an organization, there is one person you must learn to lead first, and that is yourself. And sometimes that is the most difficult person you will ever have to lead. Let me begin with my first point. Your position doesn't make you a leader. There is an important difference between having authority and having influence. Any company can give you authority. But they cannot automatically give you influence. Influence has to be earned. Think about the leaders that you've respected throughout your career. Was it simply because of their job title? Probably not. You respected something about the way they carried themselves. It's possible that they remained calm under pressure, they treated people with dignity, they were willing to make difficult decisions, or even admitted when they were wrong. Now that's leadership. A title can make people report to you, but leadership makes people trust you. Let me tell you the story of Indra Nui, a woman who took leadership beyond her boardroom. When Indra was CEO of PepsiCo, she became known for an unusual leadership practice. She reportedly wrote personal letters to the parents of some of her senior executives. Why? Because she remembered something from her own experience. After becoming the CEO, she returned home to India and noticed people congratulating her mother on her daughter's achievement. That experience helped her recognize that successful executives often have families who contributed enormously to the people they became. So she took it upon herself to begin acknowledging them. Think about that. She was running one of the world's largest corporations, yet she understood something very human. People want to know that they matter beyond their job description. Leadership isn't always demonstrated through huge strategic decisions. Sometimes leadership appears in how you make people feel. Number two, before managing others, learn to manage yourself. One of the biggest mistakes we make in leadership development is teaching people how to manage everybody else before teaching them how to manage themselves. How many leaders do you know that manage other people but don't know how to lead themselves? And so we teach delegation, we teach performance management, we have meetings, we strategize, we ask for feedback. But what happens when the leader cannot manage their own emotions? What happens when criticism makes them defensive? What happens when their mood determines how they treat their employees? Before asking why won't my team change, sometimes the better question is what needs to change in me? A leader has to change before changing the company. When Satya Nadella became CEO of Microsoft in 2014, he inherited a huge successful company. At the same time, Microsoft was facing major cultural challenges. Nadella didn't simply begin by saying everyone else needs to change. He emphasized a different mindset. Instead of a culture filled with people trying to prove that they already knew everything, he encouraged the employees to become learners. And the idea became very famous. Move from being a know it all to a learn it all. That principle applies directly to leadership. One of the most dangerous moments in your career is when your title becomes so impressive that you believe you have nothing left to learn. Great leaders remain students. The higher you climb, the more intentional you have to become about staying teachable. Number three, your team is watching more than you realize. People don't only listen to what leaders say. They watch what leaders do. They watch how you behave when something goes wrong. They watch how you treat junior employees. They watch how you respond when somebody challenges your idea. They watch whether you take responsibility for your mistakes. They watch whether the rules you create for everyone else also applies to you. You may think that nobody notices, but let me remind you today that they actually do. They do notice because eventually your behavior becomes permission. If you constantly arrive late, lateness becomes acceptable. If you gossip about employees, gossip becomes acceptable. If you ignore poor performance, poor performance becomes acceptable. But the opposite is also true. When you as a leader demonstrate accountability, accountability will become normal. When you remain respectful during disagreement, you teach people how professionals disagree. Leaders teach culture every day, often without realizing that they're actually teaching it. Number four, lead your emotions. One of the greatest leadership skills isn't necessarily written in a job description, it is emotional regulation. Great leaders have emotions. They're human, they're normal. They become frustrated, they become disappointed, they even become angry. They experience enormous pressure, but mature leaders understand not everything I feel needs to become everybody else's experience. Imagine a CEO receives terrible financial results. She walks into the leadership meeting angry. What happened? Who messed up? Why didn't anyone see this coming? And so everyone becomes defensive. People stop thinking about solutions because they're trying to protect themselves. Now imagine the same CEO enters and says, We have a serious problem today. These numbers aren't where they need to be. Let's understand what happened. Let's see what we can do next. Same numbers, same problem, different leader. Leadership doesn't mean pretending that everything is fine, it means choosing your response instead of allowing your emotions to choose it for you. Number five, sometimes leadership means admitting that you were wrong. This is where leadership becomes very uncomfortable. Leaders aren't always right, and sometimes the most powerful words a leader can say are, I got that wrong. Howard Schulz stepped down as CEO of Starbucks in 2000. Years later, he returned as CEO when the company was struggling. Starbucks had expanded rapidly, but Schulz believed something important had been lost. The customer experience had weakened. Yes, the company had grown, but parts of what made Starbucks distinctive had become watered down. In the year 2008, Starbucks temporarily closed thousands of US stores for several hours so that their baristas could retrain in making espresso. Think about the cost of doing that. A company essentially saying, we're going to stop selling for a few hours because we need to get better at what we're supposed to be good at. Now that's a great leadership lesson there. Sometimes growth requires you to stop. Look at what you're doing, acknowledge what's no longer working, return to the fundamentals. Great leaders don't defend every decision that they ever make. They ask, what does the organization need now? Number six, stop blaming the team for everything. Sometimes employees genuinely underperform. Sometimes people aren't right for the organization. They are not the correct fit. But when the same problem keeps occurring with different people, leadership has to become curious. If five employees have failed in the same position, perhaps the problem isn't the five employees. Maybe expectations are not clear. Maybe the training isn't sufficient. Maybe the manager constantly changes priorities. Maybe the role itself is badly designed. So great leaders develop the courage to ask, how might I be contributing to this problem? Immature leadership looks outward first, but mature leadership is willing to look inward. Number seven, your private habits become public leadership. Leadership isn't created only in meetings, it's developed through your everyday habits. Can you keep commitments? Can you manage your time? Can you prepare properly? Can you finish what you started? Can you receive feedback? Are you willing to apologize? Can you change your mind when someone presents a better idea? Can you remain teachable after becoming successful? Leadership is built through small disciplines repeated consistently. You cannot continually demand excellence from others while accepting mediocrity from yourself. Number eight, don't confuse confidence with knowing everything. A leader doesn't have to be the smartest person in any room. In fact, if you are always the smartest person in the room, you may need a different room. Strong leaders surround themselves with people who know things they don't know. They ask questions, they listen, they learn, they aren't threatened by someone else's expertise. Steve Jobs is remembered as the visionary behind Apple. But his leadership journey wasn't a straight line. In 1985, he left Apple, which is the company that he created. Imagine that. You build a company and then you find yourself outside of it. He later described that period in his life as being painful but also creatively liberating for him. He went on to build Next and became deeply involved with Pixar. Years later, Apple acquired Next, bringing jobs back into the company. He eventually became CEO again and helped lead one of the most remarkable corporate turnarounds in modern business history. The lesson isn't that every failure automatically creates success. The lesson is this: your greatest leadership setback can become part of your leadership education if you're willing to learn from it. So sometimes losing the position forces you to develop you as a person. Number nine, your leadership has a ripple effect. A frustrated CEO pressures a director. The director pressures a manager. The manager in turn pressures a supervisor. The supervisor pressures an employee. And the employee goes home carrying the pressure of the organization. You see, leadership travels, but good leadership travels too. A composed CEO creates confidence in directors. Confident directors create clarity for managers. Clear managers create stability for employees. Stable employees serve their customers better. That is why self-leadership isn't merely personal development. It affects business performance. So this week, instead of evaluating everybody around you, evaluate yourself. Get out a notepad, write these five questions, and answer them. Number one, what is it actually like to be led by me? Number two, what behavior am I tolerating in myself that I wouldn't tolerate in someone I lead? Number three, who am I under pressure? Number four, what is one leadership habit that I need to change? Number five, what is one leadership strength I need to intentionally develop? As I come to the end of this podcast, I want to leave a leadership challenge with you. For the next seven days, practice leading yourself first. Before correcting someone else, ask, have I been clear? Before blaming someone else, ask what part of this belongs to me. Before reacting emotionally, ask, what response does this situation require from me as a leader? Before demanding accountability, ask, am I accountable? Before expecting excellence, ask, am I demonstrating excellence? That doesn't mean that leaders blame themselves for everything. It simply means leaders accept responsibility for the things that they can influence. Indra Nui reminds us that leadership is human. Satya Nadella reminds us to remain learners. Howard Schulz reminds us that sometimes leaders need to return to the fundamentals. Steve Jobs reminds us that setbacks can become leadership education. Different people, different industries, different circumstances, yet one principle connects them. And that is leadership starts with the person before it reaches the position. So don't spend your entire leadership journey trying to fix everybody around you while ignoring the person in the mirror. Think about that. Because leadership starts long before somebody follows you. Leadership starts with you. If this podcast has encouraged you today, share it with somebody. I'm Sandra Elizabeth, and this is the Leadership Collective. Until next time, keep learning, keep growing, and keep becoming the kind of leader that you would want to follow.