The Colonel had two master’s degrees and a Ph.D. He was a committed, life-long learner, and he instilled that expectation in his daughters. He said, “You have to keep educating yourself. If you’re not always learning and growing as a person, you’re not growing as a leader.”
I believe once we stop learning, we start dying, so I am continually looking for more information in my areas of expertise. I study new systems and methodologies, and I study how to improve my stagecraft and how to refine my business practices. The more I continue to learn about what I present and how it affects a continuously evolving workplace, and the more I refine how I present that information, the more effective I can be for my consulting clients and the people who hire me to speak. As leaders, we have to keep learning and growing, both as people and as leaders. We need to be continually improving – our communication skills, our strategic thinking, our insights into our competitors, and our understanding of industry trends, technology, and human resource trends (if not actually HR law).
I heard a joke when I was a sales director with Mary Kay Cosmetics that went something like, “There goes my team. I must follow them, for I am their leader!” While that may cause a chuckle, I wonder how many leaders feel that way because they have stopped educating themselves daily. You don’t have to know absolutely everything about everything—that is an unattainable expectation. To retain the right to lead, however, we do have to be committed to continual growth and continual learning.
Read Lauren’s Whitepaper on The Nine Essentials of Significant Leadership.