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Measuring Success in Leadership (Part 5) Self Development/Personal Growth

Written by: Ralph Twombly
Published: March 2011

L and M Observation Process

Last month was the fourth of eight installments focused on success in leadership by introducing you to the element of Growth/Development of People. If you missed February’s article or any of the first four installments and you want to catch up, click on this link and presto it will be on your computer http://aprioritylearning.com/articles/measuring_success_in_leadership_part_4.php. So, here we go with installment number five of eight sections in the pie above. I plan to explore Self Development/Personal Growth.

Think of defining Self Development/Personal Growth as a continuous learning cycle which begins each day, week, month and year that never ends. There is no tomorrow without personal growth and the leader’s development intellectually, emotionally, psychologically and behaviorally. People change, times change, businesses change and every day we are learning new ways to be more effective. Your will to continuously learn is a required characteristic of all great leaders of substance. Stop for just a moment and the rush of new knowledge and its accompanying change will pass you by.

Leaders can learn things from the technology boom of the last fifteen years. When we started this business in ’95, one of the first purchases we made was a great big computer tower, with screen, key board, software, and e-mail was just beginning to emerge as a way to communicate. I remember this thing weighing fifty pounds and it made the cats run away as I was setting it up and the lights dimmed when we booted it up. Eventually it got eaten by a worm or virus on a Sunday morning and we began the journey alongside the rest of the world into choices like Microsoft or Mac, Lotus or Office, fast or slow, ram vs. hard drive capacity, processors of all manner of galactic equation, and on and on. Every day was like some adventure, whether we wanted to go or not, into the exotic world of Giga and Mega that felt a little like the movie Groundhog Day.

Well, we survived and, since those old computers have gone from those large, heavy, complicated, proprietary tools that required a steep learning curve to fast, sleek, light and easy to use business necessities. If you were around during this time, you may never have envisioned how quickly this would all happen. What made the change happen so quickly? I think it was the ever-increasing knowledge of the users and the demand for more, faster, smarter and less cumbersome tools. Those users didn’t care who came up with the solutions, they simply wanted a way to turn this ‘Groundhog Day’ process into a productive tool that would save time and energy.

growth and development in peopleFor all the early computer people who wanted to keep the status quo of their world intact, well, today they probably work for one of you or were simply passed by in the whirl of change. But, just think what might have happened if our first computer had not succumbed to the ravages of some anonymous hacker in his mom’s basement? What if we had decided that this was enough to get us into the next fifteen years? What if we were working with software from 1995 and still scaring the cats each morning engaged in the lengthy and sometimes tenuous process of launch? Some leaders try to do just that. These leaders even have clichés, such as, “Been there, done that, Got the tee shirt, and that is all that touchy feely training”

Over and over we run into groups of intact leadership who refuse to be involved because they feel like they have received all the development they need. Interesting fact for you to consider is that in our workshops we find that two-thirds of participants are women yet the overwhelming (still) number of management roles are filled by men in business. This number is changing quickly but is it because of the emergence of women into the workplace or their seemly endless approach to learning? I don’t mean to offend or generalize but, “It is what it is” as they say.

It does point out the challenge. Doctors would be out of patients quickly if they didn’t keep up with the latest discoveries; builders would be out of business if they didn’t learn the latest techniques in the trades; and leaders who don’t find a way to continuously become learners of their craft of leadership will quickly be replaced by quicker, nimbler, and more enlightened leaders. To this end, we feel each leader needs to understand the skills and behaviors of personal development and be the model for other leaders and for aspiring leaders. Below is our list of skills and behaviors. Give yourself a score of 1-5 (1 is poor and 5 is good) to see how well you are doing in this segment of development.

Skills and Behaviors Matrix

Forced Rate:

Skill

Behavior

Forced Rate:

 

Building an individual growth plan

Displaying the courage to grow

 

 

Creating a systematic approach to growth

Trying new things

 

 

Setting attainable small goals

Trusting yourself

 

 

Documentating your success and challenge

Believing you can achieve

 

 

Recognizing your potential in the plan

Finding success in everything

 

As in previous installments allow me to breakdown the skills below and the related behaviors.

Self Development/Personal Growth – Skills

Building an individual growth plan: As mentioned earlier (section 4) there are fundamentally three parts to a comprehensive growth plan; reviewing your past progress in regard to growth along the three arrows above in figure 1, defining the current state of your development and determine a plan for the future that is built upon a goal or vision that benefits you. Want to have the most effective experience, involve your boss. They will, no doubt, have an opinion and you may be surprise at the added benefit of having a partner in your plan.

Creating a systematic approach to growth: It is really hard to help others grow unless you have done this for yourself. Step by step plans make sense to people and as a leader you need to be able to build a table, chart, or even a hand written document for yourself that helps identify the first, second and third things to accomplish. This allows you to begin and know what is next and proceed without assistance. When you share what you are doing, it is a great way to build credibility with subordinates and your boss.

Setting attainable, small goals: Each and every one of us who has ever experienced success is the product of positive small things done well repeatedly. These small bit-sized chunks are easier to achieve, easier to sustain and easier to build into habits. There is plenty of time to ramp up and raise the bar and it is always about small attainable steps. Smalls goals attained lead to feelings of confidence and success and as they say “success begets success.”

Documenting your success and challenge: Personal score keeping is part of development and it is critically important that leaders balance both success and challenge. We tend to look at what doesn’t work and this can discourage growth in an instant. Look for success in the learning elements as well as the skill part of the plan and build on them. Documentation helps you make a case for your continued growth and your continued investment in your future. Without this critical documentation, you will find that your boss is less likely to support the continued investment of time and resource.

Recognizing your potential in the plan: This skill could easily fit in the behavior side but we placed it here because we think that it can be learned, refined, and taught. What is your potential? The question is more than rhetorical because the answer will determine what you do for your own growth and development. If, for instance, you determine you want to be president of your company, the path you take will be significantly different than it might be if you plan on leaving the organization to start your own business. How do you find out about your potential? For a more conventional approach you can take indicators and diagnostics that will help you determine things like preference (Myers-Briggs) your IQ, EQ, Career AnchorsTM and many more of the things traditionally held as indicators of potential. There are hundreds of books dedicated to this topic alone. A little less conventional approach would be to spot something that others are doing that looks like fun, challenging, interesting and that you have the heart for. We would recommend a combination of the two to be used as a process over time that continues on for years as your career evolves and you add layers to your development.

Self Development/Personal Growth – Behaviors

Displaying the courage to grow: Leadership has many functions but at the very top of everyone’s list should be the hope to do great things, make a difference and to lead by example. Leaders who cannot do this are eventually going to be relegated to management roles. The formula for success here is part personal energy and excitement, and part personal belief (you really need to believe you can). Here is how it goes, you gain feedback and do research, plus soul searching around your potential beginnings with energy to quantify the behaviors that will create success. And finally, enthusiastically building these behaviors into habits. The final element is to repeat the process adding all the time to your new behaviors. Hard work reserved only for leaders!

Trying new things: If you look at the people who have attained success by anyone’s standard you will always find one common theme - they took a chance. For leaders this is not an occasional thing but a routine thing and with it comes occasional failure. Sometimes we define ourselves by the things we tried and came up short on. Leaders who attain real success always have “war stories” that turn out to be the hot forge fires that made them strong. Find me a leader who rewards thoughtful trying and I will show you someone who gets maximum creativity, initiative, and potential from others and from themselves.

“Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore.” Andre Gide (French writer, humanist and moralist, 1947 Nobel prize for literature, 1869-1951)

Trusting yourself: Early in our careers we are dependent on others for direction, guidance, and even timing. As our careers grow we don’t lose the need for others to input our direction and even timing but learning as you go is critical to your success. You want to become independent but guided to avoid disaster and as time passes you need to have a voice that is strong and credible. Set your own standards for success because you will probably set them higher than others might. Each day you need to earn trust, every day as a leader it is your job to involve your boss, learn their expectations and gain confidence in your ability to serve. It sounds like a long journey doesn’t it? It’s supposed to sound long because it never really ends. You build trust, trust yourself a little more, and repeat the cycle. One day you find others want you to trust them. “Do not trust all men, but trust men of worth; the former course is silly, the latter a mark of prudence.” Democritus   Greek philosopher (460 BC - 370 BC)

Believing you can achieve: I believe that our real power lies in our ability to achieve extraordinary results. People constantly surprise me - no, they amaze me. These seemingly ordinary people live their lives in extraordinary ways and do amazing things. Everyday people that we (you and I) interact with: raise children with disabilities, care for returning soldiers, volunteer in soup kitchens, giving time, money and parts of their very souls (and sometimes their lives) to causes and values that would shock and humble. Then they write a novel that goes worldwide. The capacity of archive is infinite and hard wired into each of us, whether we are 15 or 80. Most people simply need something to believe in to stretch in impressive ways. As a leader you need to believe that you can. Your example is the purest form of leadership.

Finding success in everything: If you do a lot of things, you will get a fair amount of those things a little imperfect, messed up or completely wrong. In the long view of our careers it really doesn’t matter. You will be judged by the body of your work so getting it “just right” each time is less important than learning from each and every event. Good or bad there is something to be learned so, the next time you get it wrong or right and the emotion passes in an hour or a day ask, “What did I learn that I can apply next time and share those things with others.” Sharing with others shows humility but also benefits the other person while cementing the new behavior firmly in your mind. “Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat.” Theodore Roosevelt

Again, I hope you read the descriptions before you gave yourself a score in the skill and behavior categories. Next month we take a look at the Team Development category.

As always, your feedback and examples are welcome. Visit us on Facebook and we will be back in April with spring fever.




Ralph Twombly

Ralph Twombly

In the 20 years since starting Priority Learning, Ralph has facilitated countless learning experiences and has conducted training for thousands of managers and leaders. With over 30 years of leadership development and organizational development background and work, Ralph continues to build relationships with client companies all over the U.S.