Becoming the leader we want to be requires consistent personal commitment. The environment also matters, especially where we spend the most time...at work. With the combination of personal growth and organizational support, we can rise with leadership challenges throughout our professional lives.
Personal Responsibility
Improving your leadership skills on your own is a daunting task at the least. Actually, we don't really do it on our own, we have help from a ton of different sources. Our dedication to reading, watching, listening, self-assessments, seeking feedback, etc. all add significantly to our awareness of ourselves in different everyday situations. These behaviors display our inner motivation for sustained leadership effectiveness. This introspection takes humility and vulnerability which can also increase confidence.
Benefits
- Positive impact on the organization (effectiveness)
- Improved self-awareness (playing to your strengths, passions, and interests)
- Better collaboration with colleagues (vulnerability & humility)
- Clarity and focus on career goals
Organization Responsibility
Having a healthy environment to support leadership development displays the company's investment in everyone's growth. Solid training, and mentoring, alongside opportunities, help guide the organization to meet its goals with elevated engagement, loyalty, and a higher sense of value from employers.
Benefits
A culture of positive leadership growth is vital to the success of any enterprise. Caring for employees in this way helps keep the talent you've developed while reducing costly turnover.
- Better engagement (intrinsic motivation)
- Improved performance & productivity (teamwork)
- Healthy succession planning (right people in the right places)
Challenges
Both employees and organizations are critical. Finding time for personal development with work responsibilities can be hard. Likewise, organizations can also struggle to make leadership development a priority with competing business needs. Here are some steps to help address these:
- What are your current practices? An audit of both personal and organizational activities can identify effective strategies to support.
- Establish a roadmap! Together, create both personal and organizational steps to support consistent growth for all career stages.
- Be a "success partner"! Support the roadmap structure with regular follow-up check-ins to ensure personal growth and its connection to organizational success.
We can't be all we can be if others aren't all they can be. Organizations can't be all they can be without employees being all they can be. Individual success is tied to organizational success. By creating the right conditions in our lives and in our organizations we can achieve a better balance of effective teamwork for consistent leadership development!
BONUS - What's Missing?
Transforming Leadership Development: Are We Missing The Main Thing?
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