Self Leadership- Book Review

In Self Leadership: How to Become a More Successful, Efficient, and Effective Leader from the Inside Out, Andrew Bryant and Ana Lucia Kazan offer a brief easy to read book on self management that provides a comprehensive self-help guide grounded in principles and research. It provides useful advice and tools and emphasizes the idea that by first learning to lead oneself, a person can then be in a solid position to effectively lead others. The book begins with the authors providing us with why self-leadership is important and how it can be the foundation of effective leadership, the authors go on to suggest that you can’t have a learning organization without self leadership.

The authors build on the premise of self-leadership by presenting key elements starting with the individual progressing to the organization and then ending with how to coach and lead with self-leadership. In order for the reader to get a greater understanding of the concept, they are presented in the following fashion:

Driver or Passenger- we are shaped as children, all of our experiences and interactions are a part of what we are today as adults. We have the ability to use these experiences to help improve our self-esteem and self-motivation, which are important skills for self-leadership. We become Drivers when we are able to choose our responses to any situation because we know where we want to go.

Choices or Decisions- A discussion of Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs tells us that we make decisions based on our needs, we are also programmed to make decisions that will move us closer to our intentions. In order to make good decisions we have to have choices and time to evaluate those choices. The path to self-leadership involves greater confidence in our decision-making ability.

Knowing What You Want- focuses on our relationship with others and addresses the concept of Responsible for or Responsible to. If we understand that it’s a balance we will be able to live a life of purpose....