Conventional leadership advice focuses on how to motivate and lead others. The more subtle, and often overlooked, discipline is leading yourself. If you aren’t able to manage your own habits, focus and emotions, it’s nearly impossible to set the right tone for others.
Self‑leadership isn’t glamorous, but it’s what separates leaders who sustain success over time from those who burn out.
When things break, look inward first.
When companies hit a wall, leaders tend to scan for external causes: competition, market conditions or organizational misalignment. Those matter, but really the first place you should look is inward.
Some important questions to ask yourself include:
• Are you modeling the focus you expect from your team?
• Are you making decisions from a clear head or reacting to stress?
• Have you drifted from the routines that typically keep you grounded?
How you manage yourself shapes the way those around you operate.
Build routines that anchor you.
As a business owner, your day will fill up quickly. The question is with what? I anchor my day around three layers of priorities, starting with the big rocks, then the pebbles and finally the sand.
The big rocks are the high‑impact priorities. These are the strategic decisions that directly shape where we are headed. Pebbles are the important but smaller projects that support those priorities. The sand is everything else: quick pings, small asks and housekeeping tasks that can easily fill the space if you let it. If you start with sand, there is no room left for anything else. Start with the big rocks, and the rest more easily falls into place.
Consistency matters just as much as prioritization. James Clear’s Atomic Habits frames it well: Missing one day is human, but missing two begins a slide. That mindset helps routines hold, even when travel or unexpected events disrupt them.
Do hard things.
Challenging yourself to grow means getting comfortable with discomfort. Progress rarely comes from what feels easy. It shows up in the tough calls, the hard conversations and the moments that test your patience and discipline. Those stretches keep leaders sharp when the stakes rise.
Investing in yourself—physically, mentally and professionally—ensures you don’t get outpaced by the very company you’re leading. Growth at the organizational level demands growth at the personal level. A stagnant leader creates a stagnant culture. If you want to lead a growing company, you need to be a growing person.
Manage your energy as much as your time.
Early in my career, I thought productivity was about packing more into my calendar. Now I think about it differently: it’s about managing energy. Some days, the right move is to push hard. Other days, it’s pulling back to think, reflect or reset.
For me, that means blocking time to work out, getting outside and protecting mornings for deep focus before the meetings begin. It also means recognizing when fatigue is clouding judgment and pausing before making big calls in a compromised state. Staying sharp isn’t about constant motion; it’s about knowing when to slow down so you can speed up later.
The tone you set for yourself is ultimately the culture you build.
Your team won’t rise to a higher standard than the one you set for yourself. If you’re scattered, they’ll be scattered. If you stay grounded and clear, they’ll take cues from that.
Leadership will always involve vision, strategy and communication. But without the discipline to manage yourself first, those efforts fall flat. The most important person you’ll ever lead is yourself. Do that well, and everything else becomes easier.
