Bryant Andrew - Self-Leadership: How to Become a More Successful, Efficient, and Effective Leader from the Inside Out

Copyright 2013 by Andrew Bryant and Ana Lucia Kazan. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. Except as permitted under the United States Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means, or stored in a data base or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

ISBN: 978-0-07-179910-2
MHID: 0-07-179910-9

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Andrew Bryant dedicates this book to his wife, who has known him at his best and at his worst: Zurina, you are my inspiration to walk my talk and be the best that I can be.

Ana Kazan dedicates this book to Juliana and Samir, the country where her soul truly belongs; to Gael, our new little gift from God, and to Luciana, who made him possible; to dad Eudes; and to Badri, the rock we all can trust.

This book is the result of a collaboration of two people interested in the same topic but from different backgrounds, from countries on opposite sides of the globe, and who have never physically met (at the time of writing).

The topic is self-leadership, which is the ability to influence yourself to think and behave in ways that are consistent with who you are and are conducive to the pursuit of goals and experiences that are important and relevant to you. Self-leadership requires (and helps you to get) that you have an idea of where you are going, so that everything elseyour thoughts and actionscan serve that (or those) objective(s). With a toolbox composed of carefully designed strategies to keep you on track, self-leadership puts you on the path to live a more purposeful and fulfilling life, liberated from vain pursuits and worries, focusing on the one person whom you can really change in lifeyouand by doing so, becoming someone who can influence others.

Self-leadership is important for individuals because it allows them to live more authentic and fulfilling lives; it is also important to organizations because self-leaders are more motivated, productive, and creative.

The two people who have never met in person are a Brazilian-born woman, currently living in the United States, Ana Lucia Kazan, PhD, and an English-born man, living in Singapore, Andrew Bryant, CSP, PCC.

This collaboration started in 2009. Ana was searching self-leadership on the web and came across Self Leadership Internationals website ( http://www.selfleadership.com/ ). Ana e-mailed Andrew, the founder of the company, and they set up the first of many Skype calls. On one of these calls the idea of the book came up, and you are reading the manifestation of this idea.

When she first made contact with Andrew, Ana had just returned to Brazil after living in the United States for 15 years. She attended Ohio State University (OSU) graduate school, getting her masters and then her doctorate working as a researcher for the OSU Leadership Center, the OSU Medical Center, Nationwide Enterprise, and Lehigh Carbon Community College. Reestablishing her roots in Brazil, she was starting her consulting business on research and adult education, with an emphasis on self-leadership, and she wanted to see what other self-leadership entrepreneurial initiatives were happening around the world.

Andrew Bryant, self-described as English by birth, Australian by choice, and Singaporean by residence, founded Self Leadership International as a boutique leadership consulting company in Australia in 1999. His methodology was based on his years of study and practice of topics that included physiotherapy, acupuncture, hypnosis, Neuro-Linguistic Programming neuro-semantics, hypnosis, coaching, business, and leadership. This eclectic fusion gave him the ability to look at improving human performance by looking at the individual, the group, and the organization and find the leverage point for change. He moved the companys headquarters to Singapore in 2004 after doing extensive work with Singapore Airlines and seeing the need for leadership and the growth in the Asian market.

The move has been fruitful, and as a Certified Professional Speaker (CSP) and Professional Certified Coach (PCC) Andrew is highly sought after by companies that want to develop their leaders and leadership culture. He is known for his ability to inspire people and likes blending constructive realism with humor to entertain and engage his worldwide audiences.

During e-mail exchanges and Skype calls, Ana and Andrew explored their belief and understanding that self-leadership was a valuable approach and toolkit that could help individuals and organizations improve the quality of their lives and work. Both passionately embraced the ethics of self-leadership, an approach to life thats about responsibility for ones own thinking, feeling, actions, and results. They shared the understanding that self-leadership, unlike some leadership theories, was not prescriptivein other words, it doesnt dictate what people should see, know, and do. Self-leadership is a journey, a daily practice that is powerful regardless of where you are in your life.