Self-Leadership: The Internal vs External Challenge

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There are endless definitions of leadership. Typically, those definitions center on leading organizations, teams, projects. In sum, engaging and leading other people . The most powerful type of leadership – Self-Leadership – isn’t defined as frequently or as easily, yet it is the most crucial leadership of all.

Self-Leadership reflects our capacity to manage our internal resilience and external confidence. It involves individual decision-making, intentional choices to support our needs:  ego, soul and body. It’s about making our external reality match our internal vision of ourselves.

Back to the Future

Twenty-eight years ago I was blessed to transfer my corporate skills to lead mission-driven non-profit organizations.  I love – am educated and skilled in – organizational leadership.  My self-leadership capacity has grown with experience and confidence, but still proves challenging with BIG personal change.

Recently, I shifted my attention back to for-profit with a sincere commitment to social enterprise; a burgeoning and worthy field that I believe holds promise for ending the cycle of non-profit sustainability issues. During this transformation I find myself challenged and exhilarated by the self-leadership it necessitates.

How will I explain to others that I’m giving up my status as a “non-profit expert” to move fully in this new direction?

The Test

Last week a colleague introduced me to a successful entrepreneur who has started several businesses and is committed to a (social enterprise) triple bottom line. He has served on large, powerful non-profit boards, and is an advisor to a social media organization.  I was excited to be having coffee with my vision of an ideal client.

After a few minutes of small talk, I asked him to tell me about his work.  For the first five minutes he casually introduced his five or six start-ups.  Exciting, right?  Then my excitement turned to disappointment and then anxiety as he spent the next 15 minutes talking about non-profits and the work of the social media organization he advises, an organization that focuses on small non-profit fundraising.

My internal dialogue began:  “He thinks I’m only interested in using my non-profit expertise, that’s why he’s here meeting with me! How I was going to break it to him that I no longer have an interest in working in the non-profit sector. How do I tell him that the real reason I was excited to connect with him was his small business and start-up perspectives and how they align to social enterprise.!  He is going to leave, walk out of the door and not look back at this individual who has just wasted 30 minutes of his valuable time!”

Taking a deep breath, I realized it was a self-leadership test, an opportunity for me to translate my skills and experience and most importantly, my internal vision of myself with confidence and conviction that I fit into his for-profit world

I shared my story of how I have become convinced that social enterprise is an answer to non-profit sustainability; how I sincerely believe that corporations can be the catalysts for eliminating the world’s social, environmental and injustice dilemmas; and how my firm desire now is to make my living serving small business rather than non-profits.

When I’d finished, he said, “Wow.”  With surprise registering all over his face, “this is not the conversation I was expecting.”  I feared that the conversation was over.  And then,  much to my delight, for the next hour we engaged in an energetic, thoughtful, inspiring conversation regarding social enterprise, small business and start-ups. He walked away promising to refer executive leaders to me for business coaching, telling me that the conversation was stimulating and enjoyable. I promised to be available for occasional calls, advice for the social media organization.

Women & Self-Leadership

Self-leadership requires many of the same leadership abilities as those we use with others:  translating vision into reality, empowering action, and influencing those around us to support vision and goal attainment. There’s no doubt in my mind that both men and women find self-leadership different, and perhaps more challenging, than organizational leadership – I know I sometimes do too.

As women, however, I believe we are well-positioned to excel at Self-Leadership when we use our unique gifts and:

• Strive to have an intimate understanding of who we are, what is most important to us and what we need to do to find fulfillment;
• Exercise  our natural “future-mindedness” drive to see ourselves, our family and friends, and our communities survive and grow in this complicated world; and,
• Remain attentively open to influence from the people and experiences we come across in our daily lives.

We also face opportunities to transform ourselves for as women, we may have learned how to put others first – even as organizational leaders – minimizing how important self-leadership is and losing chances for greater service and fulfillment along the way.

From my perspective, the Universe provides multiple opportunities to test our resolve, our self-leadership. These tests come from colleagues who know us well, from networking interactions, and from routine, everyday situations where lifting our egos, bodies and souls to the forefront isn’t easy.  But the authenticity and empowerment that comes when we self-lead – match our outside reality with our internal vision of ourselves – is where joy lives.

K C Gauldine, Management Consultant, lives in Seattle and provides Interim C-Level services, Consulting and Executive Coaching to Small Businesses, Social Enterprise and Entrepreneurs. Connect with KC via LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/pub/k-c-gauldine/7/81a/a93/ .