What is the great leader? Lars Sudmann starts is talk by making us to think about the best leader we had? Who are our role models? Why do we put them in this category? Who came to your mind, the leader you feared? the one who never made mistakes or the one who always knew what was the best to do? Certainly none of them. People who came to your mind made you change for the best, made you wanting to behave like them. For Lars Sudmann, leaders must resolve constantly an equation about how to optimize time, power and people. Too be leadership role models and solve this problem, Lars proposes leaders to, first, leading themselves before leading others, using a Marc Aurelius quote: “The happiness of your life depends on the quality of your thoughts”. How to lead themselves? By implementing 3 “self” steps:

• self-awareness, are we consistent? Do we see ourselves as the others do? How to get feedback in a leadership position? Am I the leader I want to be? How do I evaluate my leadership?

• self-reflection, what did I fulfilled? What are my challenges of the day, week, month, year? What is really important ? Using 5 minutes per day to think about it, is a worthy investment

• self-regulation, adjusting our energy and attitude to the importance of the challenge we are facing.

This short recipe to improve our leadership, can be enhanced with a dose of coaching. Coaching will improve the process, dealing with the “Too little time” thing, speeding up the 3 “self” steps. As Dr Cherie Carter-Scott promotes it in her book “Transformational life coaching”, certified and trained coaches are continuously implementing those 3 “self” steps for themselves to be able to support their clients in this challenging journey.

I don’t know if Marcus Aurelius got a coach to support his self-reflection journey, but I imagine he would have enjoyed not be alone on the path.

And you? Would you like to undertake this “self journey alone or with a coach?

The happiness of your life depends on the quality of your thoughts - Marcus Aurelius