Good afternoon from a sunny and warm Vancouver! I hope this finds you well, and that you are enjoying the warmth of good companionship these days.

At a group coaching session this morning I was reminded of the importance of self knowledge in the real work of leadership development. People like me can teach you the mechanics, "the do's and don'ts" of management, but leadership is mostly about getting to know yourself, step, by step. in short, I can’t lead others, if I am not increasinlgy aware of who I am, what my strengths are, what learning I need to keep doing, what pushes my buttons, and a host of other introspective questions. Put another way, it is "all about you!"

I shared this story with the group this morning as an example. Almost 15 years ago I was working on a leadership program with a colleague (who we'll call Tim). Tim was a psychologist by trade, and a gifted coach and teacher. I was quite honoured to be in the class, and kept thinking, 'I could teach this stuff.' I chuckle now as I think about my enthusiastic ignorance! I approached 'Tim' and said, "I'd love to learn how to do what you're doing here, a 'train the trainer' kind of thing, I could learn the content and then deliver it to our clients."

He looked at me, straight on , and said, "Alisdair, people hire 'Tim', they don’t hire the content. Therefore I don't do 'train the trainers.'" I think of that moment often, I continue to learn from it, to this day. For our purposes, I think that what 'Tim' was saying at one level was he was hired not only because of what he knew about the subject, but because of what he knew about himself. I believe that to be the case in leadership more generally. Yes I can manage my way out many instances, but when the going gets tough, it's the people who best know themselves to whom we turn. How well do you know yourself?

May this week be filled with opportunities to learn more about who you are.