subject: Leadership Mastery-how To Begin With Yourself Personal Development-leadership Development [print this page] Did you know that the beginning of effective leadership is the mastery of the most influential person in your life? Did you know that the most influential person in your life is you and that if you learn to lead yourself that leading others will come naturally? All of the great leaders in history became who they were because they were able to master themselves and gain control over their own vices and use them to their advantage. So how can you begin to master personal leadership and become a natural leader? To answer this question, there are three basic principles which you can begin to use right now.
The first step is to draw the proper boundaries between your desires, opinions, perceptions and emotions and those of the people around you. These are all things which each person is responsible for and any attempt to overstep these 'property lines' is a waste of energy. This is energy which you will need to properly lead yourself and once this is done, inspiring others will be a natural consequence of your own actions. Examine every one of your actions and motives and see if they are born out of the need to take responsibility for things which you have no control over.
Once this is done you move to the step of being proactive about your future based on where you want to be in five years or even ten. Most of the time people are only proactive based on things which they want to avoid or to prevent, but this will not ensure anyone that they will get what they really want out of life. Instead of looking ahead at the circumstances which you believe that life will send your way and planning on how to deal with them, decide what you really want. Once you do this, you will find that you are much closer to managing your life on our own terms and leading yourself where you want to go.
The final step is to create a well written action plan which allows you to measure your results but which is flexible enough to where you can adjust it as you move towards your goals. Any plan which does not have this kind of flexibility is destined to fail eventually and then you are stuck with the painstaking process of revising it. Not only that, if the action steps are small and measurable you will have an easier time correcting course as you move towards your long term goal and this will inspire you to persevere when things get intense.
Having all of these in place will ensure that you have one thing which will inspire people to follow you: a clear sense of direction which creates real momentum. As Napoleon Hill said, the world has a way of making room for people who can show that they know where they are going. If you are decisive about your path, people are not only more likely to get out of your way but they are more apt to follow you and to forgive you if you make a mistake. Then you will find that leading others is a natural consequence of personal leadership.
