Leadership doesn’t start with management tools. Leadership starts with self-awareness.
I don’t think it can be any other way, although I often see that it is thought that when a manager starts his job, he has to be given a huge amount of skills in a short period of time, to be trained, to be given manuals, to be taught the principles of leadership in the organisation, to do “practical” exercises, to be trained already in the first months of his leadership journey, etc.
But it doesn’t work. People starting out as leaders are adults who learn and develop ONLY through deep personal self-awareness and reflection on experience. The desire to teach, however, stems from the desire to reproduce pedagogical methods that are appropriate for children from our school days. It does not work with adults.
Humans know very well what to do, what is right, etc., but what we don’t do is apply our skills because we don’t have the conscious foundation underneath – ourselves and our subconscious patterns that prevent us from actually applying the skills.
For years, I have started with self-awareness and only then with skills, both in my own training courses for experienced managers and for new managers.
I conduct training for new managers – including the classics: roles, delegation, feedback, responsibility, etc. that a new manager needs to systematise. But this is not enough.
❗ Do you want new leaders in your organisation to simply repeat everything that previous leaders have done before them?
If we only teach them academic management skills, nothing will change. The same pattern will continue. In new packaging. With a new name.
If you want new leaders to create something new, you have to look deeper and support them to look deeper. For example, questions such as.
– Why do I, as a leader, try to control everything and do everything myself?
– Why do I avoid difficult conversations?
– Why can’t I delegate?
– Why is it difficult to let go of the specialist role?
– How do my past experiences shape my leadership behaviour?
– Which people are “difficult” for me?
🎯 I myself have trained over a thousand start-up managers – in both the public and private sectors. And the feedback is always the same: “It was the first time someone helped me to see myself as a person, not just a role.”
If you want to consciously grow the next generation of leaders in your organisation, let’s talk. Because new leadership doesn’t just require knowledge. It also needs the courage to look within. Enough preparation shows that everyone will come with it – even those about whom there is usually doubt. Because everyone is interested in themselves, so is self-awareness as a leader.
