Self Leadership
What does self-leadership mean to you? In this episode of Incorporating Superpowers, host Justin Recla welcomes guest Andrew Bryant to talk about the concept of being a self-leader. Andrew is a consultant and expert on this topic. He is the author of a book that centers around the dynamics of human leadership and what it means to collaborate to make an impact. Tune in today to learn more about self-leadership!
Justin Recla:
Welcome back to Incorporating Superpowers today. Well, again, you’re gonna be in for another treat, because my guest today is Andrew Bryant. Well, the conversation we were having before the show was just absolutely amazing: the places that he’s been the world over that he’s traveled, the expertise that he carries in the world of self-leadership, and what that means for business today. He’s also the author of a new book called The New Leadership Playbook. And he’s here to share some of the insights that he’s gained over the last 20 some-odd years of traveling the world and working with different clients. Andrew, welcome to the show today.
Andrew Bryant:
Well, thank you, Justin, great to be here.
Justin Recla:
This is gonna be a lot of fun because a lot of what we were talking about before the show really resonates. One of the things that you were talking about was the concept you’ve gotten known as the self-leadership guy in a lot of different circles, right? And some of the pushback that you were seeing was like, well, what does that mean for, well, actually leading people, I love the response you gave, which was, you gotta be able to lead yourself first before you can leave out or this is step was what you were saying. So talk to me a little bit more about your experience in the self-leadership role and why this book, The New Leadership Playbook came about.
Andrew Bryant:
Well, I’ve been talking about self-leadership since the 90s. And it really wasn’t well understood. At that point. In 2012, I published a book, Self-leadership: How to Become a More Successful, Efficient, and Effective Leader from the Inside Out with Dr. Ana Lucia Kazan. And in that book, we defined self-leadership as a practice of intentionally influencing your thinking, feeling, and actions toward your objectives. And if you’ll allow me to deconstruct that a little bit because the analogy is from the great Zig Ziglar, the American motivational speaker, he used to say, motivation is like taking a shower, the effect is not permanent, and, and forgive my terrible, some American accent. But self-leadership is a practice. I’ve been talking about it for nearly 25 years. But every now and again, my wife will tell me if I’m having a meltdown, go self-leadership itself. Because I have it is a practice, we’re all triggered by our environment, you know, we carry baggage from our childhood and early experiences. And we have to practice being intentional about our thinking, feeling, and actions toward our objectives. And so that assumes we have objectives, we have goals, we know where we’re going, and we’re wanting to be the best version of ourselves, which I think will resonate with you and your audience becoming the best version of yourself. And the fact that we own our thoughts and our feelings, they don’t own us. And that’s a big reframe, for a lot of people who want to blame how they think and feel, on their upbringing on their, on their circumstances, it’s always somebody else’s fault. Well, that’s the absence of self-leadership, the absence of self-leadership, is blaming, complaining, and playing the victim.
Justin Recla:
I absolutely love that the language that I’ve used for the last decade or so is the concept of self-dominion, right? You have the tools available to you if you’ve done the reading. And if you understand these things, you’re still going to falter, right? I love the fact that you like when your wife looks at you guys and says, you’re having a meltdown, is self-leadership, right? We have the same practice in our household of like, you know, what, see for yourself, go. It’s our meditative practice. It’s our, it’s our practice that helps us center ourselves because we do carry all the information, then we wouldn’t want to stop being a victim, we can start leading ourselves recognizing that we can find the way out. We don’t have to be dependent on anybody. I love that.
Andrew Bryant:
Yeah, and it’s not easy. And this is why I call it a practice because, you know, from the moment we’re born, we come into the world and mother brings us after carrying us for nine months, and a midwife or a doctor brings us into the world holds us up smacks us on the bottom and we cry, which perhaps is an indication of what’s coming next. But then within a few moments, we’re given a name and nationality and ethnicity and possibly a religion and a football team to follow. We’ve been rained. And so we spend a lot of our lives not that our parents didn’t try and do the best for us. Hopefully, they did. Not that our teachers didn’t try and do the best for us. But we have to discover what I think and feel about this. And that takes a lot of work. And it’s super easy just to default to previous experiences. So being a self-leader, does take a daily effort.
Justin Recla:
I agree. I agree. Folks, we’re going to dive into some of this on the backside of the conversation to find out a little insight into what the new leadership playbook looks like. Some of the things that you can do in your life right now are to start taking steps to become your own leader in your own life, and cracking out of those old behaviors, but before we do, where can people go find more information about you?
Andrew Bryant:
The easiest place is SelfLeadership.com has pretty much links to everywhere if you just want to zero in on the book. It’s TheNewLeadershipPlaybook.com available through all your online bookstores.
Justin Recla:
Fantastic folks, stay with us because we’re gonna get back we’re gonna dive down this rabbit hole even further because this just seems to be a day that I’m picking on the guys because there’s a second interview that I that I’m going to do this I think we need to examine this I mean, especially, I think are super guilty of just abdicating and they don’t know about it. They don’t realize it but we are we have and we continue to do so. And this is I think we’re gonna go to crack the code on the backs of this Congress. These conversations stay with us.
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