Page 193 - HBR Leader's Handbook: Make an Impact, Inspire Your Organization, and Get to the Next Level

182 HBR Leader’s Handbook

relationships do you need to build? And how do you take care of yourself
through it all? These are not onetime questions for you. Such challenges
will evolve and become even more important as you step up to bigger and
bigger roles throughout your career.
Successful leaders exhibit a wide range of skills and traits, and follow
many different routes to developing themselves: there isn’t one right way
to guide yourself down the leadership path. In each section, we’ll provide
questions to ask yourself and to help you make the right decisions for your
own personal journey. This practice involves four elements:

• Knowing yourself: the bedrock of leading yourself, understanding
who you are and what you stand for, what you’re good and not so
good at, and how the world sees you

• Growing yourself: pursuing the most effective paths toward
growth, especially those that help you learn by doing

• Sharing yourself: contributing your energy, knowledge, and skills
to develop others

• Taking care of yourself: managing the physical and emotional
aspects of your own welfare

Knowing yourself

The call to first and foremost “know yourself” is as old as Socrates. The phi-
losopher’s famous dictum remains as relevant as ever for leaders in today’s
organizations.
Knowing yourself is fundamental to forming a vision for your orga-
nization that reflects your own values and to giving the right priority to the
work you care about. It allows you to understand and motivate others; your
colleagues and associates will have an easier time following your lead when
they sense that you know who you are. People want to understand the
person they’re signing up to work with, which is always easier to grasp
when you’re clear about that, too. Developing self-knowledge also means
recognizing how you still need to grow to be more effective as a leader and