Personal Mastery

 The topic of personal mastery has fascinated people for centuries, and the interest in it is only growing as a lot of people try to find balance between highly productive work and happy life outside the workplace.

In the past 30 years the concept of “personal mastery” received interest not only from individuals but also from organizations, when Peter M. Senge, PhD first wrote about it in 1990 in his book “The Fifth Discipline. The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization”. Peter Senge, who is a senior lecturer at MIT’s Sloan School of Management, views personal mastery from the organizational perspective and calls it one of the attributes of a learning organization.

What does personal mastery involve?

 In simple words, “personal mastery” refers to a set of strategies and tools to help you live and perform at your peak. As your personal mastery increases, you are able to produce high quality results in all spheres of your life as well as understand and further improve the strategies and tools you used to produce these results.

Self-mastery includes but is not limited to the following skills

— Creating vision;

— Setting effective goals;

— Communication;

— Self-awareness;

— Helpful habits and behaviors;

— Self-discipline;

— Emotional intelligence;

— Emotional Resilience;

— Productivity and Time-Effectiveness.

Who needs to increase personal mastery?

Everyone does. It’s helpful to notice and recognize the impact our thinking patterns, emotions and behaviors have on the people and situations around us and what we are getting in the result.

Personal mastery can help you improve:

• Career perspectives. If you can create a clear vision and implement effective strategies to reach your career objectives, your commitment to personal growth will advance your career.
• Work performance. Understanding your areas of strengths and weaknesses will not only prepare you for the next step in your professional growth and development, but will help you do your current work tasks more effectively.
• Communication skills. We need people to understand our intentions, and how we communicate with our inner self determine how we communicate with others.
• Leadership skills. People want to follow the leader who knows where the company is heading. Commitment to the path of self-mastery can help leaders improve their decision-making, creative leadership, emotional intelligence and change management.
• It’s important to not only cultivate self-awareness but also self-acceptance. The inner voice that we all hear often criticizes or doubts us. Knowing your strengths and weaknesses can help you build on the former and strengthen the latter.
• Personal Life. Personal mastery and developing helpful habits can help you have a healthier work-life balance, reduce stress and anxiety and become a role model for your kids.

Start the journey

As coaches we know that words never stay with us as long as results of our actions, and the results that stick are the ones that come from the actions we’ve identified ourselves. Personal mastery is not possible without self-awareness. What small steps can you take to increase your own personal mastery?

Author: Luba Diasamidze