Like many workplace skills, self-management skills carry over to all aspects of life. This has become ever more important in an age when the lines between the personal and the professional are more blurred than ever before.
The modern workplace demands that everyone, especially leaders, be self-aware. Leaders have an outsized influence on the people around them, and it’s critical that they know their strengths, weaknesses, and motivations. This ability to manage themselves is what allows them to not only produce their best work, but also set a positive example for their teams and peers.
Although leaders who make good self-management a practice will help elevate the trust and capacity of their teams, anyone can benefit, personally and professionally, from improving their abilities in this area.
Self-management includes the ability to establish and maintain boundaries between work and home, ensuring that both leadership and the employees they serve can manage their time and energy without burning out.
What Are Self-Management Skills?
Self-management skills are comprised of the abilities an individual possesses to regulate and control their emotions, behaviors, and actions effectively. These skills encompass time management, goal setting, decision-making, emotional regulation, and accountability.
Cultivating such skills aids in enhancing productivity, reducing stress, and navigating both personal and professional challenges successfully. It allows leaders of organizations to become great at personal leadership, improving business results, and transforming an organization’s culture far faster than if they were to only turn their eye for improvement outward.
There’s never been a bad time to improve self-management skills. Yet it’s also true that in a workplace that’s changing at a faster pace than ever before, there’s never been a better time, either.
The 7 Core Self-Management Skills
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People provides a great lens to consider improving self-management skills. The 7 Habits is like an operating system for self-management. And it starts long before any challenges arise.
1. Be Proactive
In a world that’s chaotic and swirling, reminding ourselves that we do have agency anchors us on the task at hand. External forces and stimuli no longer matter. It allows us to discard anything we don’t have control over and focus instead on what we can control.
Often, we might fall into the trap of feeling paralyzed at work. We all have had that moment when you know you need to complete a task but can’t seem to get started. Being proactive as a form of self-management means quieting the noise and taking that first step, because the feedback you’ll receive next is what will tell you whether you are moving in the right direction.
Self-management is about taking responsibility for your life. Being proactive is about taking that responsibility and acting on it.
2. Begin With the End in Mind
There’s a lot of value in envisioning the end before getting started. If you don’t make a conscious effort to visualize who you want to be and what you want in life, then you empower other people and circumstances to shape you. That’s the antithesis of the personal responsibility that comes with sharpening self-management skills.
Beginning with the end in mind requires imagination. Painting a picture of where you need to be and then working backward to define each of the small steps that will help take you from here to there.
It also means constantly reassessing where you are on the path and if that path is even still appropriate. Self-management means knowing what next step to take because you’ve mapped a clear measure of success ahead of time, rather than walking through a door just because it’s open and you’ve been invited.
When managing a team, this can improve the focus on the goal rather than getting distracted by the shiny ideas that present themselves along the way.
3. Put First Things First
Think of the most effective people you know. Those shining examples of self-management, who somehow balance a great family life with an equally successful career. What do they have in common? They prioritize.
The people who put first things first are those who’ve successfully fused the self-management skills of being proactive and beginning with the end in mind. Everyone’s “first things” might be different, but everyone who manages to put them first does so by defining them right up front.
Prioritization comes first; and then protection of top priorities is what comes next. This goes beyond the mundane task list. First, we want to get clear about the most important roles we need to play, personally and professionally, for the coming week or month, with a clear eye to those few goals that are the most critical. Then ensure the time is protected to execute on those important actions. Those who’ve sharpened their self-management skills enough work hard at protecting their time because they know it’ll keep them from wasting their day constantly reacting to the next, newest, most urgent thing.
4. Think Win-Win
The first three habits are internal. Self-management begins on the inside but is just as important in interactions with others. Because at both work and home, collaboration is key.
To collaborate more effectively, you have to work on building high-trust relationships. To do that, you have to think of success in terms that don’t automatically mean someone else has to lose in order for you to win.
Self-management skills are meant to last a lifetime. Certainly, you can succeed in a win-lose relationship in the short term. But when I encounter people or co-workers struggling to imagine win-win scenarios, I ask them to think about what those relationships might look like six months, a year, or even five years from now.
Part of the maturity of embracing self-management skills means delaying gratification. Maybe you’ll get everything you want right now if you build a relationship based off “I win, you lose.” But win-win means you’ll get all that and a lot more if you manage to have a little patience. Relationships form the basis of most business success.
5. Seek First to Understand, Then to Be Understood
Reducing the number of assumptions you make is a good idea no matter the context. It’s especially helpful when leading a team.
There’s no greater skill in life than communication. Yet when it comes to self-management, this doesn’t only mean your ability to communicate your own wants and needs. It also means cultivating the skill of listening.
The best way to influence others is to gain a deep understanding of their needs and perspectives. You may think you know what a win looks like for a customer, only to be completely surprised by the answer they give when asked. To build the high-trust relationships needed to be collaborative, you must first work on the self-management skill of being curious and quiet enough to hear what someone else really thinks.
6. Synergize
Once you’ve worked this hard at the self-management skills that allow you to let others win—and when you can actively draw out and listen to what they truly want—you’ve created the conditions for synergy to emerge. This is where you take the trust you’ve built and turn it loose as creative collaboration.
This might feel risky, but it’s where the magic happens. People’s differences—their strengths and unique talents—can be leveraged in energizing ways rather than letting groupthink set in, with predictably poor results to follow. Synergy allows for new thinking, insights and outcomes to emerge that otherwise wouldn’t.
It is those differences that drive synergy. It’s a strength, not a weakness, and it can only make itself seen once you’ve created high-trust relationships that make it safe for everyone to disagree and make their differences known.
Your strengths and weaknesses can be complemented by the capacities and needs of your business counterparts. This is where synergy lives.
7. Sharpen the Saw
Reducing stress is a key skill in self-management. And nothing will reduce stress like making time for the activities that renew rather than drain you.
The habits described above require abundant emotional and intellectual energy. We all need to manage our own energy and capacity for creative and generous work with those around us.
The aphorism to “put on your own oxygen mask first” comes to mind. The first three habits are internal, the next three external, but this one is personal.
Self-management is difficult, sometimes impossible, if you are already burned out. Work-life balance must be a priority. Taking the time to be your best is not a luxury but rather an imperative.
The Advantages of Strong Self-Management Skills for Organizations
Enhanced Performance
- From a commonsense perspective, the idea of maximizing time management and improving both your personal and professional relationships should yield results. It isn’t hard to imagine an improvement in performance stemming from a sharpening of self-management skills.
It’s also been validated in research. According to a study by the University of Warwick, employees with high self-management skills, including emotional regulation, are up to 12% more productive than those without. Imagine being able to turn a dial to create a 12% production improvement across your organization.
Reduced Stress or Reduced Burnout
- Being able to properly manage yourself is a stress reliever. Knowing your priorities and how to accomplish them is a way to reduce uncertainty and anxiety and increases the likelihood that you’ll be able to leave work at work, leading to a more balanced life. The American Institute of Stress states that effective self-management, particularly time management, reduces stress levels, with 43% of U.S. employees admitting that they yearn for help in managing their time.
Consider the energy you could unlock if your teams felt less stress and burnout.
Better Team Collaboration
- Leadership’s ability to set a good example by improving self-management skills has a positive effect, and this is where the culture of a business can be elevated through the outsized impact of those at the top. Self-management improvements in communication inevitably lead to higher trust among teammates. That high trust is a key ingredient that allows team members to take the risks required to make innovative breakthroughs.
