From the course: Leading Yourself

Identify your self-leadership needs

From the course: Leading Yourself

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Identify your self-leadership needs

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- Leading yourself starts with assessing your current leadership situation and identifying some holes that you can fill. Whether you have a great boss, a bad boss, or a well-intended, but overwhelmed boss they will play a big part in defining your current self-leadership trajectory. Let's start with the positives. Maybe you have a great boss who gives you tons of undivided attention, they give you helpful feedback, clear directions, and they make time to support your development. Great leaders still appreciate teammates who can lead themselves because even great bosses get busy and being a self-starter enables you to get the most of your bosses, sometimes limited time, but maybe you have a bad boss who doesn't give you any feedback and they don't show interest in your development, and they only seem to rely on you when they've messed up. This is a challenge that most people will face at some point in their career, and if you're there, leading yourself is even more imperative. The upside of this situation is that you likely have a lot of white space to set goals and take charge of your development. You can still find support through peers, mentors, and online communities. We'll talk more deeply about that later in this course, but likely when it comes to your boss, you're like most people. You have a decent boss with good intentions, but they get busy, distracted, and they struggle to give you the support that you'd like. This boss will likely be relieved at any effort you make to lead yourself and step up to the plate. Understanding your current leadership landscape and the potential gaps is crucial in making a plan to lead yourself. If your boss is great at giving feedback but not great at helping you set goals, you can step up to the plate in that area. If your boss can give a killer pep talk, but they're not great about performance reviews, you can learn to assess your own effort and create opportunities for growth. I hope you have a great boss, but if you don't, you are not powerless. Regardless of where your current boss is on that spectrum, your career will benefit from self-leadership. You'll work with a wide variety of people through your career. The data suggests you'll have at least 10 bosses. Being able to take the reins self-start and operate in less than perfect conditions is a predictor of your success.

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