Leaders Manage - Themselves

Proverbs 31:4-5 (MSG) Leaders can't afford to make fools of themselves, gulping wine and swilling beer, lest, hung over, they don't know right from wrong, and the people who depend on them are hurt.

Behavior always speaks more loudly than words. Just as golf is the game of commerce and is often used to judge the character of potential clients and people with whom one does business, so the “19th” hole also is a visual book of behavior. Words spoken, without the normal constraints of the business setting, cannot be recaptured in the air once their sound is out. At all the “19th holes” in life, leaders know their drinking limits and stick within them

It was Sun Tzu in The Art of War who admonished, “... It is said that one who knows the enemy and knows himself will not be endangered in an hundred engagements. One who does not know the enemy but knows himself will sometimes be victorious. Sometimes meet with defeat. One who knows neither the enemy nor himself will invariably be defeated in every engagement.”

What is consistent here is the phrase “knowing himself” – leaders who know their limits can be trusted. Peter Drucker in his 1999 HBR article on “Managing Oneself” who pointed out that "history's great achievers - Napoleon, da Vinci, Mozart - have always managed themselves....[and later in the same article]…Success in the knowledge economy comes to those who know themselves - their strengths, their values and how they best perform."

Having good intentions is admirable. It is your behavior that will have impact. If you want to maximize your impact, first manage your behavior while purifying your intentions. And as Polonius admonished Laertes, “This above all: to thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man.”


Are you managing yourself well?


Copyright ©2009 by P. Griffith Lindell