I read a post last year by Allan Reyes on creating his own leadership philosophy. It sent me down a rabbit hole, prompting me to reflect on and develop one of my own. Since it has been a while since my last post, I thought I would kick off the year by revisiting my thinking on leadership and sharing how I went about building my personal leadership philosophy.
This isn’t just for people in formal management roles. I’m not in a leadership position at the moment, but I am working as an Engineering lead and have others that I mentor and work with on a daily basis. Having an idea of your own personal philosophy will not only help you when you’re working with others, it also makes it easier to evaluate teams, managers, and future job opportunities.
I didn’t find many resources that weren’t just offering surface level advice, but I did find a worksheet by the Society for Neuroscience which I used to structure my thinking when creating my own personal leadership philosophy.
Why Write a Personal Leadership Philosophy?
Most leadership content you find online is high-level: be authentic, communicate well, lead with empathy, etc. which is all true, but hard to apply when you’re staring at your own whiteboard wondering what that actually means for you.
Developing a leadership philosophy is an opportunity for structured self-reflection or, if we’re honest, a review of your own quirks and blind spots (but you can’t blame your manager for the feedback). It forces you to examine your beliefs, values, and behaviors, uncover where you could improve and intentionally level up your leadership skills.
Creating an effective leadership philosophy will take some time and reflection. To be an effective tool for guiding decisions and actions throughout your career, it will require some contemplation. Your leadership statement should be unique to you, and there is no right or wrong way to format it.
How to Create your Own Leadership Philosophy
If you are interested in creating your own Leadership Philosophy, these are the steps I recommend:
- Read the blog post by Allan Reyes for his approach to writing a leadership philosophy.
- Complete the worksheet by the Society for Neuroscience, it will help you with:
- identifying your values
- recognizing leadership behaviors you want to emulate,
- defining how you behave under pressure,
- and translating all of that into actionable statements.
- Reflect on your core values, preferred leadership style, behaviours which you admire and despise
- If you want to go into management, think about your own leadership goal.
Once you have an outline of the items above, write down your personal philosophy and keep it somewhere you can read it regularly. Writing it down allows you to revisit and re-evaluate your values, purpose and vision over time. Your philosophy statement can be formatted however you like. Some leaders craft a short paragraph, while others have written entire books about their personal approach to leadership.
How Did I Start Creating my Own Leadership Philosophy?
This section took me several attempts, I kept coming back and changing small pieces and realised that I’ll probably never be completely happy with it, but it is what I am going to publish today before I drive myself crazy. I’ve included a number of questions that I asked myself and some of my answers are below. My goal here was to share how I thought about, and went about, creating my own leadership philosophy for the first time.
Working Through the Workbook
These are the 5 Core Values that I identified for myself when going through the exercise and a high-level overview of what they meant to me at the time. They started as simple statements but they reflected what I already knew mattered in how I work and lead:
- Autonomy: Being able to work independently without micro-management.
- Challenge: The work that I am given / delegating needs to be challenging, if you aren’t challenged, you aren’t able to grow in the role.
- Community: Finding a community in my field is very important. You may be the “top dog” in your current company or the only person in that role, but there are still tons of people you can learn from in your community.
- Creativity: I view cybersecurity as a creative outlet, so having the freedom to solve challenges creatively is essential.
- Integrity: Integrity is the only way to build trust in a team. There has to be alignment between what you say, what you believe, and what you actually do.
Once I had the core values written down (using some pretty mediocre definitions), I needed to figure out how to turn them into actual principals instead of a list of preferences. They needed to be clear, actionable beliefs that would guide how I make decisions and how I show up for others.
- Autonomy: I believe in giving people context, not control. Clear outcomes, clear constraints and the space to execute. Micromanagement kills momentum and signals a lack of trust.
- Challenge: Comfort is the enemy of progress. I seek out and create stretch opportunities for myself and for others because capability is built through friction, not repetition.
- Community: I invest in communities inside and outside my company. Leadership isn’t about having all the answers, it’s about building spaces where everyone can improve together.
- Creativity: Security isn’t a checkbox compliance exercise. I value teams that experiment, prototype, and think creatively, without letting necessary policies limit their thinking.
- Integrity: If my words, values, and actions don’t line up, none of the rest matters. I hold myself accountable first, call out the trade-offs, and pick long-term trust over short-term wins.
Finalizing my Leadership Philosophy
From there, I still needed to focus on improving my actual take on leadership by expanding these values and adjusting them for the sections that I wanted in my Leadership Philosophy:
- How to Lead
- How to Grow
- How to Prioritize
I also spent some time answering the other questions in the worksheet regarding what I believe makes a good leader. Throughout this process I realized that I don’t have all the answers. I also learned more about what I enjoy and what I look for in my team’s leadership than I did before starting this process.
I kept iterating on these ideas for about 3 weeks; adding in more questions, adding and removing Values, etc. until I finally had a version of my Leadership Philosophy that made sense to me. The first version has been added as a link on the side panel for anyone that is interested!
Final Thoughts
Your leadership philosophy shouldn’t be frozen in time, it grows as you grow. Treat it less like a one-time exercise and more like a recurring check-in with yourself. The first version doesn’t have to be polished. I hope you found this post useful and that I have been able to provide you with a starting point while you develop your own leadership philosophy. As always, if you have any questions or comments, please reach out!