Why Knowing Yourself Is the Key to Leading Your Organization
We’re diving deep into a powerful tool called Know Yourself to Lead Yourself—a framework that can transform the way you lead and strengthen your influence with your team.
Here’s the big idea: We all have patterns, habits of thinking, acting, and reacting, that shape how we move through life. These patterns create actions, which lead to consequences, which in turn shape our reality. Sometimes those patterns are helpful, but sometimes they create friction in our relationships, especially at home.
What Does It Mean to Know Yourself?
To know yourself means to become aware of your natural tendencies.
How do you typically respond under stress?
What emotional signals do you send without realizing it?
What expectations or assumptions do you carry into your work interactions?
When you take time to reflect on these patterns, you begin to see the invisible connections between your behaviors and the results you experience with your people.
What Does It Mean to Lead Yourself?
Once you’re aware of your patterns, you can start leading yourself by making intentional changes.
If you notice you tend to interrupt or rush conversations, you can practice active listening.
If you recognize that you pull back emotionally when conflict arises, you can practice staying engaged.
If you see that you tend to over-control details, you can practice giving your tmore room to lead and make decisions.
Leading yourself is about choosing to adjust your patterns so that your actions create better, healthier outcomes.
Why This Matters
When you understand your own tendencies, you gain clarity on how you impact the emotional climate at work.
By knowing yourself and leading yourself, you become:
A calmer presence in moments of tension.
A more consistent leader
A better model of resilience and growth.
Bringing It All Together
The Know Yourself to Lead Yourself loop reminds us that the change we want to see in our organizations often starts with us.
This week, take time to reflect:
What is one pattern I notice in myself that isn’t serving my team?
What’s one intentional change I can make to lead myself better?
Remember, you don’t have to be perfect—you just have to be intentional.
Take the 5 Voices Assessment here and discover your leadership voice.