Managing Yourself

Managing yourself is about managing personal feelings, personal attitudes, personality preferences and personal behaviors to bring out the best in yourself and others. A quarterback on any given play may have personal feelings about their receiver, but he still must throw to that person to win the play.

First, you must set high standards for yourself and those around you; and you must hold people accountable. Second, you must develop your emotional intelligence skills. Emotional intelligence is the ability to recognize your own emotions, understand how they affect you, and manage your responses with tact. It also involves your perception of others, allowing you to manage relationships more effectively.

To do the best job of managing yourself and role-modeling for others, you need to be:
• Competent in your job
• Committed to the organization and its people
• Trustworthy, reliable and honest
• Fair
• Respectful to everyone, every time
• Aware of and avoid under- or over-managing
• In control of your behavior and not let personal feelings dominate your actions
• Confident that others will be responsible and intelligent

Managers that are truly effective recognize that individuals and work teams need to be experts in their jobs and that people are our best resource. Managers who lead engaged employees:
• Understand themselves and others
• Learn personality preferences or styles and use the knowledge wisely
• Manage their own behavior
• Recognize that effective leadership requires behaviors that they may find uncomfortable or difficult
• Remember that leadership is about getting others to do the right things in the right ways

Some things to keep in mind:
1. Monitor your work hours
2. Recognize your own signs of stress
3. Get a mentor or coach
4. Learn to delegate
5. Communicate as much as you can
6. Recognize what’s important from what’s urgent – fix the system, not the problem
7. Recognize accomplishments