001: 4 Tips to Leading Yourself Well

We often promote people who can build a widget well but don’t know how to lead people. Tammy has seen after years of coaching and consulting that leaders don’t know how to lead themselves well. In today's episode of Playing In The Sandbox Podcast, Tammy gives you 4 tips for leading yourself well. 

1. Look in the mirror

• You cannot change what you cannot define. Look in the mirror and ask yourself what areas you are deficient in. Ask yourself how you can improve. 
• Consider your own soft skills and rate yourself on a scale of 1-5 how you are doing. Ask your team and family to rate you as well. 
• Where are your gaps and how can you fill them? When building a team, hire those who are going to help you fill your gaps. 

2. Listen with the intention to understand

• Ask questions with the intention to understand the problem, not solve the problem.
• Find the root of the problem so that you can solve it properly. 
• As leaders, we have a difficult time accepting that we are the root of the problem.

3. Suspend judgment of yourself and others

• When we are listening with intent we cannot solve the problem unless we suspend judgment. 
• When the team isn’t achieving we start judging the reasons why the team isn’t achieving. It requires the capacity to understand the true root of the issue. 

4. Ask for help and ask for input

• Once you have reflected, asked, identified the root of the issue, and suspended judgment - ask others for help. 
• It is not all up to you.
• We are only as good as the people around us who make us shine. 
• Not feeling comfortable asking for help is one of the biggest hindrances to leading yourself well. 
• If you aren’t willing to ask for help, how can you expect your team to do the same?
• “People would rather follow a leader who is always real than always right.”

Playing In The Sandbox Podcast is brought to you in part by TammyJBond.com

In today’s swift-moving employee market leaders are far too often putting people that are technically good at their jobs into leadership positions, without first developing them on how to be leaders of people. 

How do you course correct, or better yet make sure you don’t make that common mistake? Develop your people to lead others from the moment they join your team. For more tools on how to develop others around you head to TammyJBond.com

We’d love for you to join us for our next episodes by tuning in on Apple Podcast, Amazon Podcast, or Spotify. This podcast is produced by TSE Studios.