Manage Yourself First
You need to make yourself a priority.
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I’m not young anymore, and every year I feel things getting a little harder. Running a mile, lifting weights, playing sports. It’s just a little harder every year to do as well as I have done in the past.
As a result, I spend a lot of time exercising. Investing in my fitness is an investment in my future, and if I want to continue doing active things in 20 years it will be because I invest now. The fact that it gets a little harder is a warning, not an excuse.
I talk to a lot of leaders who aren’t young anymore either, but who don’t find time for fitness. There are always excuses: I’m on the road too much, I have back-to-back meetings, I have family obligations. All of those are likely true, but the net result is no investment in fitness.
Someday, that bill will come due.
You cannot be a great leader if you don’t invest in yourself. Learning new things, improving your leadership skills and finding new challenges are all investments in yourself. Spending time on your fitness, eating well and sleeping well are also investments and just as important.
It’s easy to push yourself to the bottom of the priority list. Business is a voracious consumer of your time, and the larger your team the more time it will demand. The easiest path is to give more and more.
Great leaders do work for their teams, enabling them to do their best work. However, there must be a limit where you don’t sacrifice too much for your team. If you aren’t a priority, you aren’t really helping.
You expect your team to learn, so you need to keep learning.
You expect your team to stay healthy, so you need to stay healthy.
You expect your team to adapt, so you need to adapt.
All of the things that you expect from your best team members, you need to expect from yourself. In fact, you need to expect them from yourself first! Leading by example doesn’t just pertain to doing the work, it involves how you manage yourself as well.
It might sound hard to make the time to invest in yourself with all of the demands of your business, and it can be. However, like any investment it pays off in the future. Better health makes it easier for you to deal with stress. Learning new things keeps you ahead of where the business will be in the future. The cost of not doing these things today goes up in the future.
Narcissists don’t have this problem, of course. Helping their teams doesn’t even occur to them, and focusing on themselves comes naturally. Perhaps that is why narcissism is so common among CEOs.
I am not recommending you become a narcissist! There are many degrees between focusing entirely on yourself and focusing entirely on your team. In those degrees is a balance that allows you to do your best work, while also enabling your team to do their best.
Think about everything you are sacrificing today and think about how you would manage yourself. You make sure your team is not burning out, you make sure they are taking care of themselves and you make sure they can do their best work.
Now it’s time to make sure the same is true for you.
For more on Mental Health, see:
Love this one. Lifting weights regularly changed my life -- started doing it before anything else, and at least for me the additional positive strength, energy and neurochemical boost helped make all the other parts of my day and things I was struggling to do easier. And for people who are busy with work, it actually doesn't even take that long - worth adding to the schedule, wish I had sooner.