Make Your Leadership Personal: Why Working on You Is the Real Accelerator
Jun 26, 2025
When was the last time you paused to reflect, not on your leadership skills, but on you?
Most leadership development focuses on what you do. Building a toolkit on how to give feedback, delegate tasks, manage performance. But here’s the truth most programs don’t tell you: none of those skills will land if you don’t understand what’s driving you.
Leadership is deeply personal. It’s not just a role you perform; it’s an extension of how you think, how you react, what you value and what you avoid. And those things don’t come from a leadership textbook. They come from you.
You can learn every leadership model in the book, but if you haven’t looked at:
- What you avoid or leave to the last minute and why,
- Why you over-explain yourself to senior leaders, or
- Why you shut down when you feel challenged…
…then all the skills in the world won’t help you when you are in the thick of the challenges leadership will throw at you.
Skills are tools. Knowledge of self is the operating system (OS). And if the OS is outdated, glitchy or reactive, your tools simply won’t work the way they should.
What do you know about yourself?
Working on yourself means being curious about your thinking, doing and behaviour patterns, your triggers and your blind spots so that you can lead with clarity instead of reaction. It’s your ability to look inward first, and hold up the mirror, before you look outward.
Some examples:
- Do I seek validation before making decisions?
- Do I avoid hard conversations because I don’t want to be the “bad guy”?
- Do I lead differently under stress — and if so, how?
The leaders who grow the fastest are the ones who are willing to look inward and be uncomfortable. Not to get it perfect, but to get it real.
If you want to improve your knowledge of self, start here …
Check in before you react
Pause and ask: What am I feeling right now? What’s the story I’m telling myself?
Ask for feedback on your presence, not just performance
Ask “How do I show up when things are tense? What’s it like to be led by me?”
Learn your emotional triggers
Identify the themes, is it control, approval, recognition, insecurity or uncertainty? Understanding this helps you to identify the actions that will best serve you.
It's not having all the tools in your toolkit that will make you the most effective leader if you don’t know how your thinking, feelings and behaviours affect how and when they are used. The most effective leaders are willing to look in the mirror and work on the person reaching for the tool.
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