The best leaders are always developing - are you?
Photo by Marc Olivier Jodoin on Unsplash
As leaders, we are continuously improving and evolving to achieve our ambitious goals not only for our organisations but also for our own careers.
But how many of us give this the time and thought required to make sure we are intentionally heading in the direction we want to go? Our future is not something we want to leave to fate or in the hands of others.
The most effective leaders have a clear line of sight toward who they want to be in the future. They have also taken the opportunity to unpack what it will take to get themselves to this future place.
When we are thinking about our own development, there are a number of areas to consider:
Our skills and knowledge
Our work assignments
Our strengths
Our current behaviors
Our attitudes and beliefs
Our Skills and Knowledge
If we consider our skills and knowledge as a leader, how do we feel we stack up. If we think about where we are wanting to head in the future, what additional skills and knowledge do we need to master? Skills and knowledge are fairly easy to measure and most of us know if we have certain skills and knowledge or not. If you are unsure though, you should seek feedback from a trusted mentor or colleague.
Our Work Assignments
When we understand what we are trying to achieve and where we want to develop to move our careers forward, we should take notice of the work assignments we are involved in. Are these work assignments moving us forward or are they holding us back? Sometimes we continue to do things that we should delegate to others because they are easy, and they make us feel good because we can do them. However, if we really want to move forward, we need to let go of some of these work assignments. Give them to others who could benefit from the stretch and learning that task will provide them and free yourself up to move onto the things that will stretch and develop you.
Our strengths
If we are wanting to build on our current strengths, we need to understand which strengths would help us be more successful. To do that, we first need to understand what our current strengths are. A great way to do this if undertake some form of diagnostic that helps describe what your current strengths are. We need to be careful about the diagnostic we choose as we’re not after something that will label us and put us in a box suggesting that we can never move out of that box. Having clarity around your current strengths can help you determine how to leverage these strengths to achieve your future self.
Our Current Behaviours
A behaviour is an action, it is something we do. A behaviour is something that someone could video and you could replay it to know exactly what someone did. It’s useful for us as leaders to understand what our current behaviours are. Are these behaviours helping us or hindering us? If we identify a behaviour we want to change, we then need to think about what new behaviour we would like to replace it with. We then want to make sure we have some form of trusted feedback loop so others can help us keep accountable for the new behaviours we want to display. This is about breaking old habits and forming new ones. BJ Fogg author of Tiny Habits and James Clear author of Atomic Habits, both give some excellent tips on how to create new habits that will be sustainable. The key point here is to identify the behaviours that are working for you and those that aren’t.
Our Attitudes and Beliefs
Our mindset is a huge contributor and detractor from us achieving our future goals. The way we think about things, the way we are convinced about certain issues, the way we make decisions, the way we talk to ourselves – all of these things have a big impact on how we view and then experience the world around us. Are your attitudes and beliefs around what you think is possible for the future, helping you?
Photo by Milad B Fakurian on Unsplash
The complexity of learning
Some of the areas we want to develop are easier to master than others. If we look at our list above, the things external to ourselves, the skills and knowledge and the work assignments are relatively easy to learn. With the right focus and dedication, we can pick these new things up. With the things that come from within us, our attitudes, beliefs, and behaviour changes, these can be a little more challenging and may take longer to change. Again, understanding how we are playing our inner game by getting insightful, well-validated, and researched diagnostics can be a huge help here. Once we have the appropriate level of self-awareness, the motivation to change, and we understand what and how to change something, we are well on our way. Having guidance from a trusted mentor or coach through this inner game development process will be invaluable.
When it comes to our development, I like to use Neil Barrington’s quote, “The grass is greener where you water it.” We are in the driver’s seat when it comes to our own development and with something as important as our future, we don’t want to leave things up to someone else.
If you would like to get more clarity around how you are playing your inner game so you can target your own development on the things that will really matter, we should chat. Your development forms a component of my Leading with Impact 1:1 Coaching Programme. If you are ready to make some meaningful progress and gain more clarity around what you want your future impact to look like, let’s connect.