The most difficult person to lead is me. According to Dee Hock, author of The Art of Chaordic Leadership, leaders should spend 50% of the time leading themselves. Leading yourself is so crucial to personal success in every area of your life. Here is a list of Scripture consistent self-leadership categories and questions that my former ministry coach, Dave Kraft, sent to me. If you want to experience success in every area of your life and leadership and be better than you were yesterday, then engage these game-changing self-leadership questions.
Powerful Questions to Help You Lead Yourself
- Gifts: How am I doing at leading myself by knowing my gifts, staying within my limits and developing those gifts to their highest God-pleasing potential?
- Character: How am I doing leading myself by being a person of integrity, following through on promises made and being a person whom others can trust?
- Purity: How am I doing at leading myself by being careful of what I allow my eyes to see, my ears to hear, and my mind to think about? How are my relationships with members of the opposite sex? Do I have guidelines, safeguards and appropriate and honest accountability?
- Pride: How am I doing at leading myself by keeping Christ and not me at the center? Am I the hero of my own stories? Do the words I speak communicate an attitude of arrogance and superiority, or am I characterized by humility and teachability?
- Pace: How am I doing at leading myself in the use of my time? Is my schedule writing checks my body can’t cash? Am I going at an unbalanced pace that is digging myself and those whom I lead an early grave? Do I have a biblical view of work and leisure, or am I a workaholic who get my sense of worth from my work?
- Finances: How am I doing at leading myself in the money arena? Do I have healthy checks and balances built in regarding funds that don’t belong to me? Are there healthy audits over all the financial dealings with which I am associated? Do I resist the lusting, grabbing lifestyle of my culture, choosing instead to be content and satisfied with God’s provision? Or, is my happiness at the door of the next purchase?
- Anger: How am I doing leading myself emotionally? Do I have a reputation for being a hothead, having a short fuse? Do I keep track of and keep score regarding perceived slights, insults, put-downs? does resentment, bitterness, lack of forgiveness characterize me? One survey I came across revealed that bitterness is the major cause of burnout for men between 38 and 50 years of age.
Self-Lead or Self-Destruct
Years ago I heard Lorne Sanny (former president of The Navigators) speak about areas of self-leadership that he kept an eye on and prayed about so that he wouldn’t self-destruct. I, at that time, developed my own list that I pray for most days: Purity, Humility, Patience, and Contentment. These are my key areas of “Self-Leadership.”
Turn Your Minutes Into Moments
How well are you leading yourself? In which area (s) do you need to lead yourself better?
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