It’s as simple as this. The extent to which you deviate from this path, you will be putting your leadership and results objectives at risk.
Have you ever worked for a person who came to work every day, did their thing and went home? Perhaps someone who did not necessarily welcome new ideas and did things a certain way because that is the way they have always been done. These were good people with families, hobbies and dreams … but trouble was coming for them. The ones that tried to hang on to their familiar methods were usually unable to do so. They developed problems retaining good people, getting along with colleagues or maintaining team performance. We have all come across people like this. Do some of these people survive over time in a company? Yeah, it happens… but these are edge cases and I believe it calls the entire organization into question.
It may seem obvious that continuous learning is a critical element of success for leaders, but it has never been more pressing than it has in recent decades. I graduated from college in the mid 80s (last century!) and I have identified over 25 transitional learning experiences that enabled me to adapt to evolving business conditions, technologies and roles in my journey from entry-level to C-level and, recently, executive advisor and coach. I started a long time ago – heck, the first five years of my career went by without email, and seven more without the Web. It is a completely different game for us now.
If you are graduating from college now, your choice of major is important for getting opportunities but, more importantly, you must prove to yourself and others that you have the sustained ability to learn and adapt. When you know that you can adapt to circumstances and expand your portfolio of skills as needed, you will be able to take on new assignments with confidence and an open mind. In the coming years, you can expect the business and technological environment to evolve so rapidly that you must be ready to career switch multiple times along the way.
The journey will include developing yourself (and others) in the following areas:
- Personal Development
- The obvious ones: ethical behavior, workload management, using time effectively, sensing an audience, communicating effectively, etc.
- Management Skills
- Understanding your responsibilities, getting to know your people, communicating about performance, asking for more, pushing work down, working with business metrics to drive and measure performance, etc. Read the book.
- Leadership Skills
- Handling stressful situations effectively, attracting and developing talent, generating organizational momentum, instilling confidence, succession planning, enterprise metrics for results, driving a positive culture, etc.
- Keeping pace with Business and Workplace evolution
- Studying your company, understating the market you are in, developing a good understanding of all aspects of the business and the customers, strategy, sales, marketing, product development, operations, supply chain, technology, finance, etc.
- Keeping up with Technology and Innovation
- Automation, globalized work force, the use of new technologies across all aspects of your business, your market and your customers, embracing experimentation and partnerships, etc.
Are you doing (or at least planning) some development in all of these areas and setting an example for the people you lead, or will lead?
Let’s start on a plan. More to come on this topic. But a great conference is a good place to start.