Self-leadership leads to Options and Opportunities
Andrew Bryant, CSP
?? Global Leadership Authority | ?? Bestselling Author: Self-Leadership, Team Performance, and Human Potential | ?? Executive Coach to Fortune 500 Leaders | ??International Keynote Speaker
I was playing chess with my son, Nathan and he had me cornered, it looked like I had no options. Experience has taught me that chess is a metaphor for life and so I didn't quit or resign, I stayed with the problem. I zoomed out my perspective and considered every angle, and then I saw it - the opportunity to not only get unstuck but to change the game.
Options
An option can be viewed as?the power or liberty to choose. Often, we don’t see our choices because of our framing or conditioning. Certainly, circumstances can restrict our liberty to choose, and yet we always have a choice.
Viktor Frankl, the author of the book, Man's Search for Meaning, a Jewish prisoner of the Nazi death camps destined for the gas chamber, realized…
“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms – to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.”?
This power to choose one’s own intentions and actions is at the core of?self-leadership. It is summed up in the poem Invictus that inspired another prisoner, Nelson Mandela.
?“It matters not how straight the gate,
how charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.”
Opportunity
Do you know the meaning of the word opportunity?
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It means a favorable wind. It comes from the Latin phrase?‘ob portum veniens’?- coming toward a port.
In my latest work, 'The New Leadership Playbook - Being Human Whilst Driving for Accelerated Results, I share the story of a CEO who was struggling with limited options to grow his company at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic. During our coaching, we explored the metaphor of a sailing ship’s captain when stuck in the doldrums (an area of little or no wind around the equator).
A good captain will set his crew to clean the boat and fix the sails, so that when the wind returns everyone, and everything is ready to maximize the opportunity.
My CEO client took this metaphor and ensured his company was ‘ship-shape’ so that he could ‘hoist the sails’ when opportunities returned. The result was three record-breaking quarters!
?SELF→LEADERSHIP & The Future of Work
?“Self-leadership is the practice of intentionally influencing your thinking, feeling, and actions towards your objectives” – Bryant and Kazan 2012
Self-leadership is owning your options and maximizing opportunities, which is why self-leadership is an essential practice for leaders, entrepreneurs, and for anyone who wants to remain relevant.
Research?by the McKinsey Global Institute has looked at the kind of jobs that will be lost, as well as those that will be created, as automation, AI, and robotics take hold. And it has inferred the type of mindsets and high-level skills that will become increasingly important.
They identified 56 deltas (mindset or skills) and sorted these into four clusters. Digital fluency is not a surprise, but did you realize how vital self-leadership is to the future of work?
?So, are you practicing self-leadership, constantly considering your options, and are you ready to hoist your sails and take the opportunities when they arise?
"Speaker on Healthy & Creative Productivity | CEO at Music Training Lab | Empowering Teams Through Wellbeing & Rhythm"
1 年Great article. Yesterday I was facilitating a Leadership Communication training for employees and some of these methaphors arouse. I like using also the ship for teamwork ( resources, time, leading, objective,...) and leadership styles when being in the middle of the storm or "crisis". Also the methaphor of sharpening the axes in those " calm periods" for team members to perform as you said when the opportunity comes at their peak. Thanks for sharing.
? Helping Experienced Coach-Therapists to Scale With Workshops | 2*TEDx | Int. Speaker | Best-Selling Author
2 年Thank you for sharing Andrew!
Bachelor of Commerce - BCom from Nizam College at Hyderabad Public School
2 年????
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2 年Interesting reflections, Andrew Bryant, CSP. It makes sense that as more manual jobs are replaced by robots, the concept of self-leadership becomes more important if people want to reinvent their roles and positioning in the labor market.
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2 年"Man's search for meaning" and "Long walk to freedom" - two of my favourite books. Also "Self leadership" too is in my list of top books.