Guest Article by Shelley Holmes from Leadership-and-Motivation-Training.com
Not everyone sees themselves as a leader. This usually brings to mind someone who relishes the role of directing other and feels at home with the spotlight shining front and center. While this may not be the most comfortable situation for your own personality, the fact is that everyone will find themselves taking leadership roles at one time or another.
Parents may need to direct their children; coaches need to guide their team; even community activists may need to teach other volunteers about their duties and responsibilities. These are all leadership jobs. Your sense of self esteem will play a large part in determining how effective you are in leadership roles, as well as your ability to take on these jobs in the first place.
TIPS FOR IMPROVING YOUR SELF ESTEEM AND LEADERSHIP CAPABILITY
There are many ways that you can work to increase your self esteem. Whether or not you ever plan on taking on a leadership role, these exercises can still be useful to your success in life. Healthy self esteem positively effects all facets of existence, including work, spirituality and personal relationships. You can increase your self esteem by:
- Adopting a positive attitude and optimistic outlook … the way you talk to yourself known as self-talk has a major impact on your self esteem and leadership potential
- Making decisions about your response to challenges … be proactive instead of reactive in the way you handle life’s hiccups.
- Being willing to admit mistakes and yet not focus on them … when you learn to use mistakes as a learning tool – rather than something to dwell upon and beat yourself up over – you set yourself on the path to success
- Setting clear goals …no matter the size of the goal … (for some people even getting out of bed can be their goal – for others it might be owning their own helicopter) setting and accomplishing goals give a real boost to your self esteem and leadership journey.
- Recognizing the accomplishments of others … (when you acknowledge others – with an open heart you also unwittingly open up the channels within your mind that cause you to feel good about yourself)
- Following a clear moral compass … nothing is more likely to damage your sense of self worth than when you know you are not doing the right thing – no matter if it is speaking unkindly to your partner to stealing from your company – big or small each time you don’t “do right” you chip away and lower your sense of self esteem
- Keeping commitments … Being a person who is known as someone that can be relied upon is a surefire way to build your self up.
Of course, there are even more things that can be done to increase self esteemand leadership capability, however, never make the mistake of thinking that self esteem is merely an item that can be affected by fulfilling a checklist of tasks. In fact, true self esteem goes much deeper.
While accomplishing things can increase your positive self-image, it isn’t so much about what you are doing, but that you are truly impressing your inner self with these actions. While you can often fool other people, and even try to convince yourself about your own value, you can only truly affect self esteem by being the person that you know you are capable of.
Community service is often touted for its ability to increase self esteem. However, it won’t have that effect on you if you truly know that you do it only to impress others. In order to reap the benefits, you must actually feel care for your fellowman, not just perform an outward task. This, truly, is the key to increasing your self esteem leadership capability.
For more on self esteem and leadership visit leadership-and-motivation-training.com
