The Leadership Secret: Why Self-Leadership is the Key to Leading Others

Episode 75: The Leadership Secret: Why Self-Leadership is the Key to Leading Others

In this episode, Holly Hibbard - Executive Leadership Coach & Corporate Relationship Consultant - shares with you...

• why effective leadership starts with leading yourself, regardless of your title or role
• how you can use accountability neutrally, without assigning blame to yourself or others when things don’t go as planned
• how practicing self-discipline and accountability can inspire others and enhance both your personal and professional lives

If you like what you've read so far, I’d love it if you’d SUBSCRIBE to the show, and TURN ON your notifications so you don’t miss a future episode.

-----

WORK WITH HOLLY IN JANUARY, 2025 //

• Ready to elevate your impact? Hire Holly as your relationship strategist and coach! Book a quick call with me here: https://tidycal.com/thehollyhibbard/quick

-----

#Leadership #MindsetMatters #GrowthMindset #SelfLeadership #PersonalGrowth #LeadershipDevelopment #OvercomingFear #GrowthJourney #EmotionalIntelligence #LeadershipSkills #ConfidenceBuilding #MindsetShift

Transcript

Welcome to the Holly Hibbard Show.
I'm Holly, executive coach and corporate relationship consultant.
This show is for leaders, go-getters, and individuals ready to improve communication, build stronger teams, and create a workplace culture where everyone thrives, both professionally and personally.
We'll explore personal development, effective leadership, mindset, and strategies to help you succeed.
If you're ready to elevate your impact and lead with confidence, you're in the right place.
Let's get started.
Hey, everyone.
Welcome back to the Holly Hibbert Show.
I am your host, Holly Hibbert, and, yeah, you might have noticed some changes here today, a focus on leadership and mindset and growth.
Will I still talk about content creation and your brand online?
Yes.
I will.
And I have spoken about in the last two episodes, episode 73 and 74 about I won't even say they're signs, but different changes and thoughts and reflections that I had at the end of 2024 around what I am most passionate about.
And so for the time being, and at least as far as I know of in the future, I really do wanna take this show and have it be focused on those three tenets of leadership, of mindset, of growth.
Even when I was teaching on episodes about content creation and your brand online, I was still speaking about those three things.
It's simply something that I cannot get out of my system.
I love teaching about and talking about relationship building and that's a big part of running a successful business and having a brand that appeals to people and is also very much connected to leadership.
And I have been in the realm of working in professional and personal development for over a decade now, and I love swimming in these waters.
I love giving people something to think about.
In fact, when I made my first piece of content many, many years ago, that was what I said at the beginning of every single show.
And so with that, I thought this would be a great topic to jump into, the show with today, which is the leadership secret.
What is the leadership secret and why self leadership is the key to leading others?
Now you might think of this and say, okay, Holly.
Like, this is a little bit cheesy.
Yes.
I need to lead myself.
And I wanna say how important this topic is because I can't tell you how many times I've speak to people and because they don't have a title on their desk or a title on their office door that is of management level or ownership or corp more corporate or in a leadership role of other people, so many people automatically say, well, I'm not a leader.
That only is that that title is reserved for people that have these jobs or these roles over here, or they might think I'm not a leader because I work in an office where there are only 8 people total that work there.
How are 8 people possibly when you don't have big departments and 100, if not thousands of people in that organization?
How am I a leader?
That doesn't make sense.
So what I wanna point out to all of you is whether you know it or not, you are always leading someone.
Whether you know it or not, you are always leading someone, and it may not be, obviously, the way that you think it's going to look.
Leadership doesn't always mean that you are the loudest voice in the room.
Leadership doesn't even mean that you're necessarily standing up in front of an audience and presenting something.
Leadership doesn't even mean that you're giving a direction to other people.
Self leadership is, as you can probably imagine, how you live your life.
Okay?
So you're in your own bubble.
You you go do you, but leadership, self leadership also allows you to lead others by your example.
Meaning, people are always watching you.
If you don't think the people that you are coworkers with, the people who manage you, the people that you manage, and let's just set work and career aside for a second.
How about your family?
How about your kids?
How about your parents, your neighbors, people in your community, people that you see in the car loop when you're dropping your kids off?
We are always leading others no matter how much we try to avoid it.
So I wanted to put this episode out here today because I want to help you start to see leadership in another frame, this new frame of leadership so that you know that by you making great changes and setting incredible goals and just going for it, whether you have those goals happen professionally or personally, whether the goals happen or not, you are always leading others no matter what.
Your self leadership, this is what's going to set the foundation for you to lead others.
So let's start here.
It is so vital that you, in my opinion, that you always be setting it will always be setting.
What am I saying?
It's super important that you set a goal continuously throughout your life and have something to work forward to.
I just listened to something the other day that was talking about your brain, when you physically are walking forward towards something, it signifies in your brain, oh, like alertness, being awake, excitement, passion.
Physically, if you are walking forward or moving your body forward, it sets that feeling off in you.
Well, setting a goal does the same thing.
Setting a goal means that you are saying, this is what I want that I currently do not have, and I want to make that thing a reality.
I'm not talking about your biggest, wildest dreams just yet.
I'm saying start with something very small.
Let's say you have an immense level of inflammation in your body and you have aches all the time and you don't know why.
Or let's say you have a seasonal allergy that's really getting on your nerves and you really wish you could do something about it.
Or let's take it into the workplace.
Let's say there is someone that you have a really tough time communicating with.
There's a lot of communication breakdown for whatever reason, personality differences, different ways of communicating, and you want it to be efficient and effective, and also something that you and that person can respectfully get along, during while you're talking.
Okay?
We wanna be moving forward.
I want you moving forward.
So many people, when they say they get stuck, they're stuck in the rut of doing the same thing day in and day out.
And while you may be very busy in your life, getting things done and checking boxes, are you progressing?
Are you evolving?
Are you growing in your intellect, in your ability, in your skill set, in your emotional intelligence?
Are you growing?
Because simply being busy and checking all the boxes is not the same thing as growing and evolving and becoming more valuable as a person.
Valuable in, yes, your career, but valuable with your family.
Do you bring in that value, like money value, obviously, but value in the sense that what do you offer to people with your beingness, with who you are?
So for you to be able to lead others effectively, I'm asking of you to consider when was the last time you set a goal for yourself?
Again, not your biggest wildest dream, something that's super scary, but just something small.
A goal that you set for yourself that you knew was going to grow you as a person, your intellect, your emotions, your ability, your skill, your emotional capacity.
When was the last time you set a goal to grow that?
That is a way that you are leading yourself toward becoming the person that you want to be.
Again, professionally, yes.
Personally, probably more.
And when others around you, whether it's in your workplace or it's in your household, your friends, circle of friends, when people see you going for it in life, that is a form of leadership.
Because what happens is when we stop setting goals, when we stop asking ourselves to dream and move forward, it gives permission to everyone around us to also not dream, to also not set goals, to also not move forward.
You are always leading people towards something.
You get to choose, however, what you want to lead them to.
So this is part of being self aware.
That's an awareness.
It's an honest recognition where you can admit to yourself, no judge, no judgment, no shaming, just admitting to yourself.
Wow.
It's been a while since I've asked of myself to grow in some way, since I have intentionally sought out to be a better person because I said I wanted something or I was going to become something and I had not yet made it happen.
Have that honest moment with yourself that, wow, it's been a while.
I really could push myself just a little bit, a little bit.
Okay?
And from there, having that self awareness, that is your first step, followed by from there recognizing and being self aware that you are leading others whether you think you are or not.
Now in terms of taking the actions, okay, if you are in a role of leading others, which I just said you all are, but let's take this to a professional setting.
If you are in a leadership role, that could look like you are managing and you own and run an entire company.
That could look like you are a mentor to one individual who has been at your workplace less time than you have been.
If you wanna be influential with this person, yes, you wanna set the example of you striving to become a better version of you, whatever that is as defined by you.
But also, you want to demonstrate to them what accountability is.
And I want to define for you right now what accountability is and what it isn't in the lens of transformation.
Okay?
Most people think accountability comes down to who's to blame.
If everything goes wrong, who can I blame?
I'm going to quote, hold that person accountable.
I'm saying in the land of transformation, accountability is simply like an accountant taking account of, like a checkbox system, what got done and what did not, really seeing it in a neutral light.
So if you set forth a goal or let's say it's just part of your day to day tasks, you have a set list of things that must get done on the daily in your work and also in your personal life.
And let's say a day goes by and you miss something or you miss multiple somethings.
Now the world will tell you, oh, you need to be held accountable.
You need to blame, or you need to be blamed.
You need to be punished.
There needs to be a consequence.
And yes, there might be consequences for missing what you are supposed to do by a certain time.
And on top of that, what I'm saying is you being accountable in that moment is simply looking at your tasks and going, Oh, I missed it.
I missed it.
I forgot to get it done, or I knew it had to get it it had to get done, and I chose not to.
So in a professional setting, let's give you the benefit of the doubt.
Could you easily forget to do a task?
Yes, absolutely.
You could forget to do it.
In a professional setting, might something go wrong that day and you simply run out of time during working hours and that thing that needed to get done, there was no more time left on the clock to get it done.
Yes.
That happens.
However, in our personal life, being accountable often isn't because we've run out of time.
Sometimes it's because there's a fire we need to put out or something's gone wrong in our personal life.
Right?
Your kid might get sick.
You and your spouse have a fight.
You don't feel well.
You trip and fall or flip on the ice coming out of your car after work.
I don't know what it is.
But in your personal life, how many times do you say you're going to get this thing done?
Put it on a list or not, and you don't get it done, because you chose not to, or you didn't feel like it.
Now, you're feeling called out, guess what?
So am I.
I'm calling myself out here.
We're human.
We do this all the time.
And it's almost like we've made it acceptable that, well, yes, I will I will hold myself accountable and admit to my mistakes when it's an outer circumstance that did it to me.
Right?
If I ran out of time at the office or a patient or a client, something just really went left when it was supposed to go right, and I ran out of time, and it's socially acceptable.
And people say, Oh, don't worry about that.
I won't hold you accountable for that.
Because that quote wasn't your fault.
But in our home life and our personal life, when it comes to managing our finances, taking care of our health, taking care of our mental health, making sure that the people we are responsible for taking care of are also okay.
Making sure we go to bed on time.
Like, there's so many making sure that we eat.
We can easily say, I'm not gonna hold myself accountable because I ate garbage for dinner and didn't spend quality time with my family when I said this morning I was going to, or I didn't read my Bible this morning or whatever it is to you that you say you're gonna do, but you skip it because you don't feel like it or you choose not to.
And I'm not saying this to shame you.
I'm saying this so that we can start to put light on and give you self awareness that you are accountable for those actions.
Are they happening or are they not?
Not from a place of who needs to be to blame, but from a place of did it happen, yes or no.
We're taking account of what happened.
We're taking account of what is there and what is not.
What results are complete and what results are not.
We are trying to neutralize this so we're not beating up on ourselves.
So when you are in a leadership role and you are influencing others, whether you know they're watching you or not, by you stating when you are accountable for something, that's going to inspire them to do the same.
How many times have I worked with businesses and worked with them on their corporate culture and they come back and say, Oh, nobody has any accountability.
Nobody wants to admit to their mistakes.
Everyone needs to do And my first question to them is, well, how do you demonstrate that to them?
And a lot of times, if they are in a leadership role or a management role, they're not outing themselves to the people that they lead or that they manage because they're so afraid that if they admit that they missed the ball on something, that it's gonna make them look bad And they're the people that they manage are going to think less of them.
They're wrong.
Those, if you think that you are wrong.
People, when you are accountable about your own stuff and you admit I made a mistake and you also are accountable for what goes right, Hey, I got this done.
I'm very excited about it.
Here's what worked.
And you share that.
It makes the process human.
It makes your place of employment real, like, because you're a real person and people are more influenced by that in a positive way than they are by you faking it till you make it and not being accountable and saying, well, I'm just here to make sure everybody does their job.
Let's bring the humanity back to the culture, back to the workplace.
So here are some challenges for you to take away from this episode.
When it comes to your professional life, set a day and a time in your calendar, even if it's 5 to 10 minutes once a month, standing appointment, even if it's on your commute to work or from work where you are in quiet reflection about what you have done in the previous month that you have shown others that you are accountable for your life, that you are accountable for how you show up in your workplace.
And then additionally, when it comes to your personal life, probably don't track it once a month.
I would track it daily somehow.
Start tracking a daily action.
Just one.
Start with 1.
Make a promise to yourself and keep it and track how often you complete on that promise and hold yourself accountable.
Not to be perfect, not to be imperfect and beat yourself up about it.
We're not doing that either, but practice accountability.
This is self leadership.
This is pushing yourself in a forward motion toward the life that you say you want professionally and personally, and it is demonstrating for others what leadership looks like, what self discipline and self leadership looks like, and also allows them to express where they're winning or where they could use some support, as well from you or from other people.
So that's the leadership secret, everybody.
You are leading yourself all the time, and people are being led by you all the time nonverbally, in every way, shape, and form.
So the sooner you can notice that, the sooner you will have the ability to, with that self awareness, shift your actions, shift your choices, become accountable for what is and what is not, and then seek to improve upon that.
And watch your world change.
Watch your family change.
Watch your home life change.
Watch your office change, your mentorship relationships, your managerial relationships.
Watch.
It's It's awesome.
It is really awesome.
That's all I have for you with this episode today.
Until next time, I will talk to you next time.
Thank you for listening.
I'm giving you a virtual high five for prioritizing your personal growth.
If you enjoyed today's episode, I'd be so grateful if you could take a moment and leave a 5 star review on Apple Podcasts.
Share the show with friends and family or snap a screenshot of this episode and tag me on Instagram at the hollyhibbard.
You are not alone on this journey, my friend.
I'm always here cheering you on.
So until next time, stay curious, stay encouraged, and keep empowering yourself.
You are doing better than you know.