THE LEADER IN YOU

ALBERT V. DATU

There is a saying that you need to know and understand yourself first in order for you to succeed as a leader. You cannot start to lead without a good understanding of who you are. Becoming a leader begins with knowing yourself and what you want to make of your life. What are the things that you should be doing in knowing yourself?

As a leader you should examine your capability to lead and be able to build up your personality. Learn to develop your skills, attitude and your external looks. It’s only as you examine your life that you get to know yourself and to understand your personal motivations, values, desires, talents and strengths.

Developing self-confidence is a must for a leader. It would be difficult to influence others if you do not believe in yourself. Great leaders must build self-confidence by having a conviction that you can do it. Stand firm in your decision and be able to take risk when tough situation arises. Self-confidence makes the leader to believe that his or her attempts in making decisions are appropriate and right. Leaders who are selfconfident tend to deal right away with problems and conflicts. Committing mistakes and failures show that you are self confident because you have a chance correct them.

Building self-confidence is to build self-efficacy. Developing self-efficacy is another thing to consider which is mastering your skills and willing to learn more to become competent. According to Albert Bandura, self-efficacy is “the belief in one’s capabilities to organize and execute the courses of action required to manage prospective situations.” In other words, self-efficacy is a person’s belief in his or her ability to succeed in a particular situation. Bandura described these beliefs as determinants of how people think, behave, and feel.

Self-efficacy is your unique character that allows you to be motivated, persistent, goal-oriented, resilient, and clear thinker under pressure. Never doubt on what you are capable of, because your uniqueness (self-efficacy) leads you to make confident to hurdle difficult situations. But the question is do you have that in you? Now try to look at the past years in your life as a leader, did you come to realize that your experiences help you to become strong, competent and confident. It is only through experiences overtime that you develop your self-efficacy.

Self-esteem is a part of self-confidence that you need to develop from within its the “feeling good” or having positive feeling on yourself. Self-esteem is coupled with self respect and self assurance, how can your followers respect you if you yourself do not have self respect. Working on the self respect is building the trust in your followers. Self –esteem does not mean that you are bragging of yourself and over confident but rather showing concern for the welfare of your members in a team. When you display this character as shown in your work then you followers will be assured of that they will be working with you and lead them to success. Only, if you are confident about your thoughts and thinking you can be a good leader.

Self-confidence, self-efficacy and self-esteem are not inborn qualities of a leader, you need to work out on them and develop them overtime as you lead your organization, as they say leaders are not born they develop. Developing these three qualities in you makes you feel confident to lead and it’s only when you reflect and understand who you are, not what the others think of you, that you’re ready to lead. Now get yourself a mirror and see the inner you.

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The author is HT III/OIC of Candating High School, Arayat Pampanga