The Power of Self-Leadership

How can organizations become more courageous, transparent, and curious about the world around? How self aware are you?

Thank you for taking the time to read and share my blog with your team, employees, friends, and across social media. By doing so, you are supporting like-minded, growth, and innovation-oriented professionals. Together, we are cultivating a better workplace culture one conversation at a time.

Join the conversation! Share your thoughts and experiences in the comments, and don't forget to follow me for more insights on workplace culture, leadership and organizational culture and change. Let's inspire each other to lead with courage and curiosity.

I apply several methods to help organizations build better culture and autonomous learning organizations. I see self-leadership as the foundation for building other crucial aspects such as empathy and attentiveness in the lifelong learning of individuals, teams, and organizations.

The difficulty with being self-aware is that you need to be self-aware to know that you are not.

There are different degrees of self-awareness, and being self-aware is not a binary state. Receiving or giving feedback to become self-aware is not always easy. Becoming more self-aware will mean confronting tough truths about yourself.

When leading yourself, you need to make space to primarily listen, investigate, and understand your own thoughts and values. What you hear, see, and experience, needs to be processed before you decide how to act. You need to ask yourself if your conclusion is correct and open your mind to other causes that might explain what you have experienced.

It has been shown that when we humans make decisions, we act emotionally rather than based on facts. Your mental attitude is crucial to the decisions you make. Psychologist Daniel Kahneman has written books about how humans make decisions, describing how our decisions are often disturbed by noise, meaning your state. Do you feel happy, scared, sad, diminished, or can the pouring rain or daycare drop-off affect you when making important decisions?

In your self-leadership, it is important to understand yourself and be aware of your state of mind when you and/or your team make an important decision. Even when listening to and leading others, your state of mind is very important.

When you are aware that you are experiencing a feeling (e.g., I feel disappointed, I feel irritated, I feel shame, or I feel guilt), you can note that you are experiencing that feeling, but you need to separate the feeling from your "self," recognizing that the feeling is just an experience and does not need to become part of and influence the decisions you make.

When you are aware that you, for example, feel disappointed, you can show respect to yourself for perceiving it that way, and then choose to show curiosity and explore whether you are working with or against your own values. You can go through your day with this insight, making decisions with the knowledge of what you are experiencing and feeling at that moment.

Self-leadership includes taking care of yourself and giving yourself warmth, care, and love. This can mean doing what you are passionate about outside of work, a hobby, or interests you love. Fundamental to feeling good in both body and mind are, of course, physical activity, a healthy diet, restorative (replenishing) activities, and sleep.

Self-leadership means taking responsibility of your way of viewing your thoughts, fellow humans, and the world around you.

Self-leadership means taking responsibility of your way of viewing your thoughts, fellow humans, and the world around you. When you do this, you will find it easier to lead with empathy and attentiveness. You will have much more energy, be a role model for your employees, and contribute to the modern leadership that today's workplaces require.

Regularly inventory yourself on your terms to develop into a better leader. Be curious and continuously learn more about yourself, others, and your surroundings. You will thank yourself when you discover a new world of possibilities!

Want to learn more?

Every great dream begins with a dreamer. Always remember, you have within you the strength, the patience, and the passion to reach for the stars to change the world. Harriet Tubman

My favorite books 2024 include topics in workplace culture, change management, conflict management, leadership, and decision-making.

1. Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life. Life-Changing Tools for Healthy Relationships by Marshall B Rosenberg

Nonviolent Communication serves our desire to do three things: Increase our ability to live with choice, meaning, and connection. Connect empathically with self and others to have more satisfying relationships. Sharing of resources so everyone is able to benefit.

2. Stretch for change by Gustavo Razzetti

Discover a new framework to guide you in creating a flexible mindset that is more open to new ideas. Change is unavoidable, and for most of us, it's hard to deal with. But you can prepare for it. 

3. Radical Respect by Kim Scott

We-all of us-consistently exclude, underestimate, and underutilize huge numbers of people in the workforce even as we include, overestimate, and promote others, often beyond their level of competence. Not only is this immoral and unjust, it's bad for business.

4. Emotional Agility - by Susan David

Drawing on more than twenty years of academic research and her own experiences, Susan David PhD, a psychologist and faculty member at Harvard Medical School, has pioneered a new way to make peace with our inner self, achieve our most valued goals and live life to the fullest. Become aware of your true nature, learn to face your emotions with acceptance and generosity, act according to your deepest values, and flourish.

5. Likeable Badass: How Women Get The Success They Deserve by Alison Fragale Dr.

Behavioral scientist Alison Fragale offers powerful new insights and a practical playbook for women to advance in any workplace, full of tips, tricks, and strategies to help secure that elusive corner office. How can women earn credit for their accomplishments, negotiate better, and navigate complex office politics without losing the goodwill of their peers?

6. Cascades: How to Create Movement that Drives Transformational Change by Greg Satell

In this groundbreaking book, one of today's top innovation experts delivers a guide for driving transformational change. To truly change the world or even just your little corner of it, you don’t need a charismatic leader or a catchy slogan. What you need is a cascade: small groups that are loosely connected but united by a common purpose.

7. Contagious - Why Things Catch on by Jonah Berger

Dynamic young Wharton professor Berger draws on his research to explain the six steps that make products or ideas contagious. Why do some products get more word of mouth than others? Why does some online content go viral?

8. Clear Thinking by Shane Parrish

You might believe you're thinking clearly in the moments that matter most. But in all likelihood, when the pressure is on, you won't be thinking at all. And your subsequent actions will inevitably move you further from the results you ultimately seek-love, belonging, success, wealth, victory. According to Farnam Street founder Shane Parrish, we must get better at recognizing these opportunities for what they are, and deploying our cognitive ability in order to achieve the life we want.

9. The Culture Code: The Secrets of Highly Successful Groups by Daniel Coyle

What links a call centre in Bangalore, the 2010 Chilean mining accident and the New England Patriots? The answer? All are examples of successful organisational cultures, where individuals bond together to form a motivated, cohesive and cooperative team. In The Culture Code, Daniel Coyle employs the latest psychological research to investigate how successful cultures are created and what we can learn from them.

10. Systems Inspired Leadership: How to Tap Collective Wisdom to Navigate Change Enhance Agility, and Foster Collaboration by Frank Uit de Weerd and Marita Fridjhon

A powerful alternative for innovative leaders. Instead of an outmoded and ineffective top-down, leader-knows-all style that results in stress, pressure, and anxiety, Systems Inspired Leadership offers a fresh, proven approach for achieving optimal results for your organization. This approach helps to overcome barriers and open doors to growth and innovation by tapping the collective wisdom of the organization.

Our most downloaded episodes 2024

💚 Podcast on Fears and emotions at workplace, and the antidote - Gustavo Razzetti

Learning is about thinking. Are you teaching people to screw up and learn, or learn to get it right from start?” Get fresh perspectives on fears in workplace, failure and actionable insights. Gustavo Razzetti is passionate about helping teams do the best work of their lives. He is a sought-after speaker, culture consultant, and author and has built a career at the intersection of marketing, innovation, and leadership. After 25 years of helping organizations build purpose-driven brands and teams, Gustavo realized that most companies don’t lack ideas, resources, or talent but a conducive culture.

💚 Podcast on Modet, perspektiven och hävstången för att klara framtidens utmaningar - Anders Brolin Jaconelli

Anders Brolin Jaconelli and me discuss why we need to dare to be brave. We explore the role of leaders, empathy and courageous leadership, and the perspectives needed to create leverage for more effective care and nursing. We also discuss how automation and AI can enable solutions to today's and tomorrow's challenges. We explore the benefits when leaders can free up time and be more listening and present.

💚 Podcast on Justice, what’s broken in the HR system and why grievance procedures don’t work - David Liddle

How much cost the broken HR system? What could be better? The benefit and impact of transformative and restorative justice is large. Our guest David Liddle tells about his passion and he stands at the forefront of conflict resolution and organizational culture transformation. With a degree in race and community relations and an MBA with distinction, David's journey began with pioneering one of the UK's first mediation and restorative justice programmes. Subscribe to our newsletter and be updated on all our awesome guests in our podcast.

💚 Podcast on I huvudet på en serieentreprenör - Cecilia Gruvberger

Cecilia Gruvberger, CEO of Favvos, loves ideas, creative environments, and making things happen through teamwork. In this interview, we talk about raising capital, the drive to contribute to something bigger than yourself, and the definition of happiness and success. In this episode Cecilia and me share lessons and anecdotes about entrepreneurship.

💚 Podcast on Training that is a must-have, not just nice-to-have - Chris Fenning

Improve your trainings and outcomes significantly with the right mindset, strategy and culture. Meet Chris Fenning and me. This conversation is important for everybody who wants training to go beyond expectations. Training that is a must-have, not just a nice-to-have. What is wrong with today’s trainings at workplace? What’s missing and how can you succeed with your trainings?

I'm happy you stopped by. Thanks for supporting me. I'm grateful.

Book a consultation.

Send me an email to ewa.hutmacher@snabbfoting.se or visit snabbfoting.com

I can help you in these ways:

1. Culture consulting - Mapping current culture, Culture Identity Assessment, prioritization, and design of the future state.

2. Workshops - Design and facilitation. Sessions on the different building blocks of the Culture Design Canvas, a canvas created by Gustavo Razzetti, Fearless Culture.

3. Team Offsite - Design and facilitation of alignment workshops.

4. Edtech consulting - Advisory and facilitation on solutions that leverage the latest technologies, such as AI, personalized learning, microlearning, and social learning.