Twelve Rules for Self-Management

Management is not just for managers, just as leadership is not only for leaders.

We all manage, and we all lead; these are not actions reserved for only those people who happen to hold these “positions” in a company. I personally think of management and leadership as callings, and we all get these callings to manage and lead at different times, and to different degrees.

Considered another way, I believe we can all learn to be more self-governing through the disciplines of great management and great leadership; these are concepts that can give us wonderful tenets to live and work by.

For instance, these are what I’ve come to think of as 12 Rules for Self-Management. Show me a business where everyone lives and works by self-managing, and I’ll bet it’s a business destined for greatness.

• Live by your values, whatever they are. You confuse people when you don’t, because they can’t predict how you’ll behave.

• Speak up! No one can “hear” what you’re thinking without you be willing to stand up for it. Mind-reading is something most people can’t do.

• Honor your own good word, and keep the promises you make. If not, people eventually stop believing most of what you say, and your words will no longer work for you.

• When you ask for more responsibility, expect to be held fully accountable. This is what seizing ownership of something is all about; it’s usually an all or nothing kind of thing, and so you’ve got to treat it that way.

• Don’t expect people to trust you if you aren’t willing to be trustworthy for them first and foremost. Trust is an outcome of fulfilled expectations.

• Be more productive by creating good habits and rejecting bad ones. Good habits corral your energies into a momentum-building rhythm for you; bad habits sap your energies and drain you.

Read more: https://www.lifehack.org/articles/featured/12-rules-for-self-management.html