A bit of background about my story of being a woman in leadership and how I learnt to lead myself well.
My self-leadership story began before I was a young mum.
As a wife, mother of four, and Childcare Director, I juggled a lot. As far back as I can remember, I’ve always tried to lead myself well. Even as a teenager, I managed my studies, household chores, volunteering, and babysitting.
Then, after becoming pregnant and leaving university (and my dream of becoming a Maths primary school teacher), I handled the challenges of being a teenage mum.
Following our first daughter’s birth, I returned to work whilst studying for a Montessori Teaching Diploma and volunteering within an Early Years Montessori setting. Along with being a young mum, I trained and gained more qualifications.
Again, I focussed on leading myself first!
Did someone say twins? And then there were three!
With the birth of our twins, the self-leadership went to new heights.
By this time, with a few years of experience, I was gaining leadership responsibility; juggling the demands of workplace leadership and family life.
A few years later, our second daughter was born. By this time, I’d developed as a leader and was the Childcare Director for a successful chain of privately owned Early Years settings.
Once again, I was learning how to lead myself intentionally.
With my husband also carrying leadership responsibility and our children growing quickly, the wake-up call came when I started having health issues.
With the pressure of self-leadership, I realised something needed to change.
And it did!
Dramatic change of scenery – everything looks so different now!
After about eighteen months of thinking, conversations, and planning, we relocated from London to the Southwest of England.
We believed this decision would improve our quality of life and reduce the stress of unsustainable demands.
But leaving behind family, friends, and what we’d always known wasn’t easy. Neither was a new home in need of renovating.
All this, along with supporting business owners and their leadership teams through coaching, mentoring, and training, meant lots of self-leadership—and travel!
Studying, working and setting up a business… it never stops!
In more recent years, I took on local, term-time-only roles.
This helped with being available for our children and imbedding into our new community, but still required self-leadership.
After three years of searching for a locally run Institute of Leadership and Management (ILM) course, the pandemic nudged me towards online training.
I loved the ILM Level 5 in Coaching and Mentoring, which took me about a year to complete.
Again, I led myself well.
While studying and completing my coaching, I continued working four days a week while starting my own business.
Life will always have demands – but I focus on leading myself well!
Whilst navigating my responsibilities, I also learned to manage my confidence and limiting beliefs alongside the expectations of others.
I know now that leading ourselves well includes leading ourselves in both internal and external stuff.
Now, even with all four of our adult children living their own lives and not living at home, I still juggle, but differently.
Being a wife, mum, “Grammy”, mother-in-law, and business owner, my life has changed significantly.
And, if I’ve learnt anything, it’s that life will always have its demands, and I’ll never get to a point where I’m not making tweaks to lead myself better.
What I see now, though, is that it’s about how I lead myself and deciding what is most important.
Self leadership is intentional, and it requires courage, clarity and confidence.
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