When I was a sales director with Mary Kay Cosmetics, I heard a joke 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.
The Colonel 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.”
The Colonel had two master’s degrees and a Ph.D. – each in a different engineering discipline. He was a committed, life-long learner, and he instilled that expectation in his daughters. I believe once we stop learning, we start dying. It’s kind of ingrained in me, so I am continually looking for more information in my areas of expertise. I study new systems and methodologies, how to refine my business practices, and I study how to improve my stage-craft. 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 audiences, my consulting clients, and the people who hire me to speak.
To be significant leaders, we have to keep learning and growing. We need to be improving continually. Improving our communication skills, our strategic thinking, our understanding of our team members, and our understanding of industry trends, technology, and human resource trends (if not actually HR law).
You don’t have to know absolutely everything about everything—that is an unattainable expectation. But – to earn and retain the right to lead, we do have to be committed to continual growth and continual learning.
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