No matter how finely you hone your skills, no matter how committed you are, no matter how much you preserve, you will NEVER become a truly great leader until you have accepted full responsibility for WHO, WHAT and WHERE you are.
Self Responsibility and emotional health go hand in hand with leadership. There appears to be a direct relationship between self responsibility and positive emotions. Negative emotions have been called the “robber” of emotions. Negative emotions can be enormously harmful. A very good mentor of mine once said to me: “The whisper of the boss is like the ROAR of Lion.”
Strong leaders are emotionally healthy. They are highly self responsible. Elimination of negative emotions is a critically important job for anyone aspiring to a leadership role. The most common negative emotions are: Doubt, Fear, Guilt, Resentment, Envy and Anger. All are destructive. All can block you from becoming an effective leader.
To be successful leader you need to reduce, eliminate the use of these as management actions. To that end, it is important to understand the four major causes of negative emotions:
- Justification
- Justification occurs when you attempt to explain to yourself and others why you should feel this negative emotion, why you are entitled to feel angry and upset or whatever.
- Identification
- The second major cause of negative emotions is Identification or taking things personally. You become angry about something to the degree that you can personally identify with it and see it affecting or harming you in some way.
- Lack of Consideration
- You may show negative emotions when you feel people are NOT giving you your just due, not respecting you to the extent you feel you deserve to be. When you feel slighted, ignored, or disrespected, your ego may become involved.
- Blame
- The polar opposite of Taking responsibility is Blame. Blaming your employees, your clients is easy and never productive.
There are proven principles that when you put them in use can help you strengthen your emotional health and show your employees taking responsibility for your self and then themselves is what breeds success. If you are to become a great leader, accept responsibility, work on improving your emotional health and develop a positive mental attitude.
Need coaching on how? Feel free to reach out.