Self Leadership

I recently learned in a yoga class about The 8 C’s of Self Leadership. It peaked my interest to learn more and how it would align with the corporate world of leadership. I had never heard of it and I did some research. Here is what I found, Self Leadership is a type of therapy based on IFS (Internal Family Services) and apparently can be but limited to being used with people that suffer from different types of PTSD. IFS is all about the SELF being in leadership, but while being informed by the sum of the parts of ourselves who hold a lot of important information for the Self. To explain in simplest terms, these are the traits we exhibit when we are “self-led with parts informed.” The parts, without the leadership of the Self, are not capable of displaying these characteristics. How could this align with what we teach or talk about in leadership in the corporate world?

What stands out to me are two things; one is that Self Leadership isn’t really apart of the conversation when teaching Leadership. We spend a lot of time in discussions about how leaders should be able to leading other people but not often enough about how they lead themselves. If we become more connected to our Self Leadership would we all be better team members and leaders? Secondly, regardless of any level of interest in the 8 C’s, I do think that these 8 C’s are a good reminder of how important it is that we must first lead ourselves in a successful way before we can lead others. If you think about leaders who have failed or fallen short, I am betting they didn’t exhibit Self Leadership. It makes sense that if we can not lead ourselves then how can we possibly lead others? Furthermore, when we are stressing out or obsessively analyzing a situation, or feeling anything that does not fit with the 8 C’s, one of our nervous parts has taken the wheel and the Self is not the one in charge. This awareness could be taught as a platform of Self Leadership to build upon Leadership skills or perhaps just a good reminder we can all use daily.

Here are the 8 C’s:

Confidence

Calmness

Creativity

Clarity

Curiosity

Courage

Compassion

Connectedness

Which one resonates with you right now? Which one is possibly not being represented because of a nervous part of you that has taken over?