When I first heard the phrase self-leadership, I thought it was something for executives in boardrooms.
The truth is: self-leadership is for all of us, especially those who’ve known hardship, pressure, or the feeling of being at the mercy of others’ choices.
Self-leadership is the practice of guiding yourself with clarity, compassion, and courage. It’s not about being perfect. It’s about recognising that, even on the days we feel powerless, we still hold influence over how we respond, how we grow, and how we live.
Between 2011 and 2016 I worked with results coaches, both in my personal life and as a business leader. I was a self-starter entrepreneur, had become passionate about personal development, and was always curious to become better in my roles. But with the wisdom that comes from healing deeper trauma (between 2018 and 2023) and choosing a path I call healthy inquiry — learning what’s going on beneath my surface — I realised coaching alone wasn’t enough. It lifted me when I was flat. It delivered results. But too often it felt like “fixing problems” rather than attending to the underlying wounds.
The coaching industry soared after I was first introduced to it in 2011. Many coaches would apply models like GROW. What I noticed was that the work often stayed at surface level: shifting a limiting belief or gingerly touching a wound, and tears would rise up and flow, then quickly the coaching would move back to safe ground, mutually proud of an aha.
An aha moment can spark momentum — it feels like a breakthrough. But unless it’s followed by practice, integration and doing the deeper work, it rarely reaches the roots. As one of Tony Robbins’ team once said to me: “It’s working today because you’re doing it. But it won’t last unless you keep doing the work.”
This is only my perspective, of course — and I share it as someone who sat with a coach every 10 days for several years before immersing myself in coaching studies. I understand the inner workings and the drivers. I also know some incredible coaches who show up fully in a coaching relationship, and that is a gift. Others, I’ve seen rebrand themselves, eg. after a yoga retreat to Bali, as spiritual coaches, forgetting we’ve witnessed the alleyways of their search for stable income, and know what they aren’t willing to deal with in their own lives! A title means little.
I once had a very experienced master coach on my podcast, and we were talking about the words spoken to us in childhood, the ones that echo later as our inner critic’s whisper. We went back and forth, and when it was my turn, I named mine: “She doesn’t have it in her… who does she think she is?”
Later, I learned through Brené Brown’s work that these are classic words of shame.
And I’ll never forget the coach’s reply on that podcast: “Well, Susan, there’s therapy for that!” and she asked what else would we talk about next.
When you have lived with hypervigilance, you notice these moments. You notice the coaches who shut you down instead of leaning in. And you witness their constant evolutions, the way they rebrand or redirect. Intriguing, to say the least.
Many people who go to coaching with unresolved trauma, myself included, are capable of diverting the guidance of our coach.
When we don’t feel safe enough to reveal what was happening beneath the surface, we will go back to our old resourcing — strategies we had developed to cope as best we could. We will enter coaching, read our coaches, and keep shifting around, tackling what we want to work on, rather than what we truly need to.
Often, this will be driven by:
- Fear of rejection by the coach — fear of failure, unfixable, not being good enough, being seen as unworthy.
- Lack of awareness of cPTSD or trauma triggers — fight/flight/freeze responses flaring when things went sideways. Self-blame and shame rising easily.
- The boundary that “coaching is not therapy.” Fair enough — but surely coaching must at least be trauma-conscious?
Since becoming certified as a professional coach and NLP practitioner in 2017, and doing a lot of trauma-recovery work since, I aim to now be a trusted thought-partner, confidante and guide, to walk beside those ready to go deeper, and always meet people where they are.
Our lives are multifaceted. Therapy may be one path; coaching or mentoring are others. For many, trauma is part of the story, it’s not something to hide or keep silenced. And trauma doesn’t appear as a single, tidy event. It unravels us again and again. Every change, every life transition, has the potential to stir it back up.
That’s why I believe coaching, at its best, must go beyond surface aha’s and involve trauma-aware practices. It must meet people with compassion, honesty, and an understanding of the layers that shape who we are will change, shift, implode, and life transitions will cause traumas to get in our way time and again.
In our approach today, we won’t “tuck it away.” We acknowledge it with compassion, and curiosity, not judgment.
To lead from the inside out, I believe people already have what they need. What they need is a guide who believes in them, who helps them build tools of self-confidence, re-find self-worth, and companion them through the realities of shame, guilt and self-blame. It’s not about “fixing them”, it’s about helping them see what’s already alive inside.
That’s why I lean into self-leadership, something I often discussed with mentor David Emerald before he passed away in April 2025. An essential skillset for leaders in business and life, in families and relationships, for people choosing not to follow blindly. We are here on on this earth to co-create across important areas of our lives. What else were we put here to do if not to bring our gifts, live our truths, and leave a legacy?
The Five Key Elements of Self-Leadership
- Self-Awareness
Understanding your strengths, weaknesses, values, and how your actions affect others. Noticing the intentions, motivations, and triggers under your responses. Awareness is the torchlight into hidden parts of self. - Self-Empowerment
Taking charge of your life rather than being a passive observer. Practising boundaries, follow-through, rest. It’s not about force; it’s about grounded agency. - Commitment to Growth
Lifelong curiosity. Inviting feedback. Learning through discomfort. Choosing evolution over safety. - Authentic Purpose
Finding your why — the values and passions that drive you. Not someone else’s expectation, but your inner compass. Leading in alignment with what truly matters. - Resilience
Life brings losses, disappointments, pressure. Resilience isn’t denying that — it’s adapting, bending, returning to centre, choosing to continue toward what matters.
I believe self-leadership isn’t a nice add-on — it’s a core life skill.
In my ideal world I believe we ought to bring it into education: teaching children how to lead upward in systems where their caregivers may lack capacity or have not had healthy role models themselves. I had clients aged 18–19, whose parents shared something along the lines of, “I can’t parent her anymore”. My first thought: she doesn’t need parenting, she needs a wise guide to walk beside her. In each case, we applied these five elements and life skills to support them toward confident independence.
Trauma-informed coaching + leaning into what we do have, not what we don’t want, helps shift us out of being knocked over by family or workplace drama. It trains us to notice, name, and step into empowerment instead. It lets us model new ways of leading for our teams, organisations, and ourselves.
Reflection & Invitation
Which of these five elements feels most alive in you right now?
Which one is whispering, “I want more attention”?
👉 If you’re ready to explore self-leadership more deeply, I invite you to message me for one-on-one coaching, or express your interest in a Lead Believe Create Conversation Café.