“What are you going to be doing in 2025? More importantly, how are you preparing today to lead effectively in an ever-changing world?”
Most of us don’t know what we will be doing a decade from now, and maybe many of us are not even sure what we will be doing next year! But we know for sure that at some point in the next decade, most of us will have at least a different job, and there is a good chance it will be with a different company. Change is coming!
When your job is to lead others, no matter what the job title or the company that signs your paycheck, your job is to learn the art and science of what you get paid to do – lead others! I like to think that we are being called to lead others to do what they wouldn’t be able to do on their own. That requires your people to learn, grow, and change. Maybe they need to do things they need to take risks, experiment, innovate, fail fast, try harder, cooperate more, work with those they don’t like, communicate more clearly, make better decisions, solve problems faster, etc. For leaders, we have to INFLUENCE others – call them to “greatness!”
To do that, we must be working toward greatness ourselves. Others won’t follow us unless we set a great example. To rigorously develop yourself is called Learning Agility. Learning Agility, as defined by the Zenger Folkman company, is making a real effort to improve based on feedback from others, actively looking for opportunities to get feedback to improve, and creating an atmosphere of continual improvement and pushing themselves & others to exceed expected results.
How do you do that?
The answer is simple: practice leadership skills intentionally. Decide what you will practice, track your practice, and then evaluate your practice. Mastery comes from persistent practice and evaluation of your practice. Choose well. Never stop. Always reflect. Rinse and repeat. I know this because I have watched this happen many times.
From Average to Exceptional: How One Leader Transformed Through Learning Agility
Jason was a mid-level manager in a large organization with average leadership skills. You would have liked to work with him, but he didn’t stand out as a great leader. Jason was perceived as having high integrity & honesty and strong technical & professional expertise. He was ‘good,’ but in a company with many great players, he was perceived as ‘average’.
At one of my leadership workshops, he received his 360-degree leadership assessment results and had one big strength: a “Profound Strength.” One of his raters gave him low scores, and he used that as a wake-up call: “She’s right; I learned a lot.” He left the workshop with a development plan and, when he got back to the office, started diligently doing his work and integrating his leadership practice into his week.
He told me he “took his action plan to heart and focused on only two or three things.” One of his ideas was to continue to solve problems and use storytelling to communicate the solutions. He focused on the critical business problems, the long-standing issues that are easy to ignore because they were not raging fires. He worked hard to ask other departments for help and practiced communicating why the problem was essential to solve and the outcome they were trying to achieve. Jason said: “the most important thing is making the most important thing, important”, something he attributed to Yogi Berra.
Jason used a journal before he came to the leadership workshop. When he heard me emphasize why it is so important to your growth, he committed to keep doing it. He used his journal to identify what he was feeling as he led others. He wanted to generate a feeling of trust and recognized that those who fail are not generating trust with their managers and their teams.
I also love this: He focused on listening and had a Post-it note that said “W.A.I.T” – “Why am I talking?” Jason was trying to be more thoughtful and intentional. His goal was to use straight talk and be open and direct.
As you might have guessed, Jason’s approach worked exceptionally well. When he used the Leadership 360 assessment a second time to gauge his progress, he was shocked to see how much he had improved. Remember, he started with one Profound Strength, and in the follow-up assessment, his team and others perceived him to have 14 Profound Strengths. Remarkable!
All this doesn’t happen unless you have a great leadership 360-degree assessment to begin the process with. A strength-based assessment can multiply your leadership strengths powerfully and rapidly.
It is a great time to do a leadership assessment at the end and beginning of a new calendar year. If it has been over five years since your last assessment, you are due. Don’t blow off the leadership doctor; get your assessment done today! Start your 2025 leadership transformation now!!
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Order a 360 assessment before January’s end, and we’ll donate $50 to your favorite charity – because great leaders inspire change everywhere