Self-Belief and Self reliance Essential for Leaders

What is it that instills self-belief? It can certainly be nurtured and developed by taking the time to identify the positive things that have happened to us as individuals and helped to shape our lives.

There are numerous instances of individuals emerging from insignificance one might say and taking control and command of situations in their own lives and in all parts of the globe. No high ranking status to rely on; no badges, uniform nor medals to add credibility but their actions in the face of life-threatening disaster, display courage, commitment, vision and leadership. Any observer looking and reading of the actions of individals on TV or media, can witness such emergence of individual qualities of leadership that were not previously associated with the persons concerned. Many of us have those experiences in small or large measure but in many instances such occasions are forgotten and parked away in distant memories. Sometimes, perhaps oftentimes, we did not see them as meriting such significance in themselves. We just simply responded to whatever challenge presented itself at the time and did the best we could. However, that "best" might very well have been "great". Think of the accomplishments, the achievements, the successes.


A essay on Self-Reliance, written by Emerson in the early 1800's, identifies, in my view, real core values that shape the personas and dispositions of individuals that allow individuals to identify their own strengths and helps them cope with perceived weaknesses. It also fortifies individuals and permits them to have confidence in demonstrating their leadership characteristics and qualities.

"There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better for worse as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernal of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till. The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried. Not for nothing one face, one character, one fact, makes much impressiion on him and another none. This sculpture in the memory is not without pre-established harmony. The eye was placed where one ray should fall, that it might testify of that particular ray. We but half express ourselves and are ashamed of that divine idea which each of us represents.". (The Portable Emerson- Revised Edition, Carl Bode in collaboration with Malcolm Cowley (1981)


Michael D. Ringrose
www.eLeadershipGuide.com