Personal Leadership Mastery is essential on the path to success, but what does it really mean in the present moment?

Peter Drucker said that “real leadership is the lifting of a man’s vision to higher sights, the raising of a man’s performance to a higher standard, the building of a man’s personality beyond its normal limitations.”

For successful leaders, doing the right thing is their job. Neither the strength of authority nor the persuasiveness of charisma will solve the problem. Only a clear vision and the development of the internal attributes of personal leadership can supply the strong confident individuals needed to exert public leadership.

Paul J. Meyer, founder of Leadership Management International, said, “Personal leadership is the self-confident ability to crystallize your thinking, so that you are able to establish an exact direction for your own life, to commit yourself to moving in that direction, and then to take determined action to acquire, accomplish, or become whatever you identify as the ultimate goal for your life.”

What is your goal for your life? Do you know? Are you passionate about it? Does it motivate you?

We tend to view people as extraordinary leaders or courageous leaders when they are successful in terms of wealth, prestige, popularity. But if these are the only criteria you use, you are unable to account for the vast number of people who live rewarding, satisfying lives without achieving worldwide acclaim or great wealth. Their commitment to what is important to them constitutes personal effectiveness and winning behavior and demonstrates the reality of personal leadership.

Personal leadership is an inside-out job. The essence of leadership is that you cannot wait for someone else to push you; you must motivate yourself through individual learning and goal setting. Effective leadership is an inside job.

In As a Man Thinketh, author James Allen compares the mind to a garden that “may be intelligently cultivated or allowed to run wild; but whether cultivated or neglected, it must, and will, bring forth. If no useful seeds are put into it, then an abundance of useless seeds will fall therein, and will continue to produce their kind.”

Your job is personal growth, to continually learn new skills to help you reach your full potential and plant seeds that will help you become a Level 5 Leader.

In his book, Good to Great, author Jim Collins explains how a Level 5 Leader builds enduring greatness through a paradoxical blend of personal humility and professional will. “Level 5 leaders channel their ego needs away from themselves and into the larger goal of building a great company.”

As you continue your journey toward personal leadership mastery and professional success, you will discover that the greatest leaders serve a purpose that reaches much further than their own self-interest and beyond just their professional life. These leaders do not influence team members by wielding control over them but by serving the common good. Focusing on the needs of your people and your customers is a powerful tool that can improve their lives, and in turn, they will help you achieve your goals.

Learn more about the practice of self-leadership, leadership development, and practical tools that will help you effect positive change in your organization at Achievable.com.