The Essential Prerequisite for Successfully Leading Others

Alex talks with Tom Lemanski of Chicago Executive Coaching about the critical foundation of leadership: leading yourself first. Listeners will learn how to identify whether they're focused on *doing* versus *being* as a leader and will receive a practical exercise for aligning their actions with their values to earn genuine buy-in from their teams.

Tom Lemanski is an executive coach and leadership advisor at Chicago Executive Coaching. If this conversation sparked something for you, visit https://chicagoexecutivecoaching.com to learn more or get in touch.

Transcript

Speaker 1 0:04

Welcome to Leadership Breakthroughs, where executive coaches and leaders explore the mindsets and strategies that drive real growth. I'm your host, Alex, and today we're digging into something that stops a lot of leaders cold. The idea that before you can lead anyone else, you have to get serious about leading yourself. I'm joined by Tom Lemanski, founder of Chicago Executive Coaching. Tom, welcome.

Speaker 0:26

Thanks, Alex. Glad to be here.

Speaker 1 0:29

Tom, let's start with the problem you're actually diagnosing. When a leader comes to you and says their team isn't bought in, isn't executing, isn't following through, what's the first question you ask them?

Speaker 0:40

The first question I ask is, are you focused on what you should do or who you should be? And most leaders look at me like I've asked them something in a foreign language because they came in ready to talk about tactics, what they need to change, what their team needs to start doing. They haven't considered that the gap might be in themselves.

Speaker 1 0:58

So they're looking outward first.

Speaker 1:00

Almost always. And it's understandable if you're task-oriented, which most people who rise to leadership are, your default is to look at the action list. What more can I do? What should my team do differently? But that framing skips a critical step.

Speaker 1 1:15

What's the step they're skipping?

Speaker 1:17

Self-leadership. And I want to be precise about what that means because it's not a soft concept. Self-leadership is the practice of intentionally influencing your own thinking, your own behavior, and your own emotions in order to achieve your personal and professional goals. It means taking responsibility for your own development, holding yourself accountable consistently, and setting a personal example that actually lines up with your values and your vision.

Speaker 1 1:45

That sounds like something most leaders would say they're already doing.

Speaker 1:49

They would, and that's exactly the problem. There's a significant gap between believing you're accountable and actually practicing it. Between thinking you're authentic and being someone your team experiences as authentic, the gap shows up in results, specifically in whether people are genuinely buying into your leadership or just complying with it.

Speaker 1 2:09

How do you tell the difference? From the outside, compliance and buy-in can look the same.

Speaker 2:14

In the short run, they can, but compliance is fragile. It depends on authority. People do what they're told because you're the boss. Buy-in is durable. It means people are following you because they trust you, they respect how you carry yourself, they believe you're aligned with what you say you value. When things get hard, and they always get hard, compliance cracks. Buy-in holds.

Speaker 1 2:34

So the argument is that buy-in doesn't come from your strategy or your vision statement. It comes from you personally.

Speaker 2:41

People don't follow strategies, they follow people. You can have the clearest vision in the room, the best slide deck, the right market analysis, and still not move people. Because they're not evaluating the plan, they're evaluating you. Are you someone they want to follow? That's the question underneath everything.

Speaker 1 2:59

Let me push on that a little, because I think some leaders would hear this and say, fine, but I do have good values, I do have integrity. The problem is my team. How do you respond to that?

Speaker 3:10

I'd say if your team isn't buying in, that's not their problem to solve first. It's yours. Not because you're necessarily doing something wrong, but because leadership influence flows in one direction. It starts with you. If something's broken in that chain, you have to start by asking what in your thinking, behavior, or emotional responses might be contributing to it. That's not comfortable, but it's where the real work is.

Speaker 1 3:34

What are the traits you actually see making the difference? The things that separate leaders who earn that buy-in from the ones who don't?

Speaker 3:41

Integrity and authenticity are at the top, not as buzzwords as lived behaviors. Emotional intelligence, self-awareness, empathy, and the willingness to be vulnerable when the situation calls for it. Those aren't soft skills in the dismissive sense. They are the operating system underneath everything else a leader does. Without them, all the tactics in the world produce mediocre results.

Speaker 1 4:04

Vulnerability is an interesting one to put on that list. A lot of leaders, especially ones coming out of hard-driving operational backgrounds, resist that word.

Speaker 4:14

And I get it. In certain environments, showing uncertainty felt like a liability. But what I've seen over 20 years is that leaders who can't acknowledge what they don't know, who can't say I got that wrong, who project certainty they don't actually have, those leaders create cultures where their people are afraid to tell them the truth. And eventually the truth catches up to everyone.

Speaker 1 4:37

So vulnerability isn't weakness, it's an information system.

Speaker 4:41

That's a sharper way to put it than I usually do, but yes. When you model the willingness to be honest about limitations, you give your people permission to do the same. That's when you start getting real information instead of filtered information. And real information is what lets you lead well.

Speaker 1 4:56

There's a line in your writing: being someone others want to follow. I want to make sure that lands right because it could sound like it's about being likable. That's not what you mean.

Speaker 5:06

No, likability is nice, but it's not leadership. Being someone others want to follow means they trust your judgment. They see your actions match your words, they believe you're genuinely invested in their success and not just managing your own. You can be demanding, even difficult, and still be someone people will follow through a wall for if you've built that foundation. You cannot be agreeable and still lose people if the foundation isn't there.

Speaker 1 5:32

James Allen wrote, and you've referenced this, you cannot travel within and stand still without. What does that mean in practical terms for a working leader?

Speaker 5:43

It means your inner work shows up in your outer results whether you intend it to or not. The leader who hasn't done the work on their own self-awareness, their own emotional regulation, their own values, clarity, that gap is visible to the people around them, even when they think they're hiding it. The inverse is also true when you commit to developing yourself as a person, not just as a manager. It shows in how your team responds, how your culture feels, what results your people produce.

Speaker 1 6:12

And this isn't a one-time exercise. You're describing an ongoing practice.

Speaker 6:16

Self-leadership is not about reaching a finish line. It's not about being perfect. It's about continually striving to grow, to be more consistent, more self-aware, more aligned with your values. The leaders who get this right treat their own development the way they treat any serious business discipline, with intentionality, honest assessment, and consistent effort.

Speaker 1 6:39

Last thing before the takeaway, is there a moment you typically see that tells you a leader has made this shift? Something that indicates they've moved from the doing mindset to the being mindset?

Speaker 6:50

Yes, they stop defending themselves and start getting curious. Instead of explaining why their team isn't responding, they start asking what they might be doing or not doing that's contributing. That shift from defensiveness to curiosity is the tell. It's not dramatic. But once I see it, I know we're going to make real progress.

Speaker 1 7:08

If someone is driving to work right now and they want to take one concrete thing from this conversation, what would you tell them?

Speaker 7:15

This week, pick one leadership interaction that isn't going the way you want, a team member who isn't engaged, a dynamic that feels stuck, and instead of asking what they need to do differently, ask yourself, who am I being in this relationship? Are my actions consistent with my values? Am I the kind of leader this person would genuinely choose to follow? You don't have to have a perfect answer. You just have to be honest with yourself. That honesty is where self-leadership starts. And once you start there, everything you do as a leader works better.

Speaker 1 7:49

That's leadership breakthroughs. Thank you to Tom Lemanski for a conversation that points the mirror in the right direction. You can find Tom's Leadership Breakthroughs blog and coaching programs at ChicagoExecutive Coaching.com. We'll be back next week.