Leadeship #5: Learn and Grow
When we grow up and enter the workforce, we heaved a sigh of relieve; no more exams! If we only knew better.
The world today moves at a break-neck pace. It is not just machinery that experience obsolescence in today's business world. You, with all your fancy degrees and impressive diplomas can become obsolete too. It's a fast flowing river of change in the working world. To remain at the same place, we have to paddle like mad.
If this is true for the masses, how much more true this will be for the leader. Antiquated leadership skills like "You, slave! Fetch!" no longer applies. In come the new-fangled concepts like EQ, colored hats and oh, so many more. The worse thing is, this is only the tip of the iceberg.
As a leader, you not only have to keep abreast of personal and professional development, you also need to know what your people are doing. Recall the famous words "… and my boss has no idea how to do what I do…"?
While the leader need not be an expert in everything, the leader does need to be at least aware of what and why-of's. You cannot expect to be able to make credible decisions without appropriate background knowledge. Your IQ can only get you so far, then you have to employ your EQ and mind your P's and Q's and leverage your network of contacts, experience and know-how to help you make the right decisions.
The most important thing about learning is the growth that you will experience as you learn. This growth will accrue to your team, not just yourself. That is why as a leader, it is so important for you to learn and grow. Otherwise, unconsciously, you are can actually stymie the growth of everyone of your team members.
A leader must be innovative and not shun change. You must be open to learning new skills, assimilate new knowledge; seek change instead of fighting them. Only when you are prepared to take steps forward, that the others can follow. Only when they follow, can you lead.
In our next installment, we will be looking at why leaders need to Take Risks.
(To catch up with my previous article, you can check out here or at my blog: - Leadership #1: Articulate Your Personal Vision As a Leader - Leadership #2: Putting Action To Your Words - Leadership #3: Have a Vision - Leadership #4: Technorati Tags: leadership, leaders, good leaders, leadership skills
Related Tags: leadership, management, manager, development, executive, supervision, professional development, leaders
Calvin is a veteran product marketing professional with experiences at several multi-national companies including Philips, Nokia and others. He has created global products and have brought successful products to launch in China, USA, Europe and Asia. He continues working and blogs about his marketing ideas today at http://www.calvinwarr.com.
He also contributes articles to http://www.versacreations.net
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