Dear friend,
This week I am finishing a leadership training I facilitate for a group of great and smart leaders working for a leading company in the Cloud and IT space. The training has last 10 sessions in the form of a mastermind, about the book “Developing the Leader Within You 2.0”, by John Maxwell. As I prepare for this week’s session, I thought I would share with you this morning some of the keys I will be working with them on Thursday.
The last chapter of the book is called: The Expansion of Leadership: Personal Growth. In this chapter John helps us gain a perspective on our next steps after finishing the work with the book. As he likes to explain us, longtime ago he realized that growth and development is a never-ending journey. In this chapter, he offers us 5 keys to understand how growth will help us in our personal path.
The first key is that “Growth is the only guarantee that tomorrow will get better”. Time passing by only guarantees that we get older. In order for our future to get better, we need to be intentional with our growth. Our mistakes of today are just the cues about the areas where we’re not yet as good or mature as we could be. But making mistakes only doesn’t bring me forward. I need to understand those cues and define a clear plan, to grow and to improve. This is the Law of Intentionality: growth doesn’t “just happens”. You need to be intentional about it. And as I grow, I am able to create the required change in my life, as well as to cope with the change that emerges around me.
This is the second key: “Growth means Change”. Change means discomfort, means stretching myself. To be successful in my growth, I need to become comfortable with being uncomfortable. And there is no end to that process. If I have grown in the past and I have stopped growing now, the clock is ticking on my effectiveness as a leader. In reality, there is no such thing as the status quo. Even if, for example, we believe we don’t want to keep going up the hierarchical levels in an organization, if we stop growing, it won’t be long before we feel we’ve been outpaced by our working environment (whether it is the capabilities of our present or future colleagues, the complexity of the projects we work on, the changes in the market that bring changes in our organization’s strategy, etc). And this change is not of the cyclical type, this change is structural in nature. If you intend to keep your value in the market by holding to what you are today, it won’t work. We’re only as good as we are able to keep a learner mindset and grow. The Law of the Rubber Band says that "growth stops when we loose tension between where we are and where we want to be". As a rubber band, my growth is only as effective as my departure and arrival points are apart. So, as I reach my arrival point, it immediately becomes the departure point for my next hop. The process will be based on three aspects:
Learning, new things that come your way, keeping an eye open and asking to people and situations around you, “what can you teach me that I don’t know?”
Unlearning, letting go of what is not relevant anymore, be flexible to challenge yourself and your believes and habits. What got you here won’t keep you here.
Relearning, a permanent questioning of the ways that used to work but don’t anymore is required. How to make myself relevant again and raise my employability level?
The third key is that “Growth is the great separator between those who succeed and those who don’t”. Let me state the following, even if it may seem obvious to many of you: People don’t pay for average. I am pretty sure you don’t crave for an average restaurant, and average vacation, an average movie or an average relationship. So why sometimes do we think that we can just be average and everything will go well? Growth is not a choice, it’s a necessity. But don’t be confused. What is important in growth is not what you get, but what you become. When you set up goals for yourself or your organization, reaching them (achieving the number, getting the KPI in green) is just part of it, it’s not the real reward. What makes it great, is what we have become in the process. When you become the person or your team becomes the team or your organization becomes the organization that can achieve that goal. So focus on the process. Instead of asking “how long will it take?”, ask “how far can I go?”. Every single day, take a few steps up towards your potential. So you outgrow yesterday, old expectations, past victories and achievements, and grow into tomorrow, new expectations, new achievements.
The fourth key is that “For growth to be maximized, it needs to be strategic”. In his book “The E-myth”, entrepreneurship guru Michael Gerber tells us that “Systems permit ordinary people to achieve extraordinary results”. So, as you develop your growth strategy, pay attention to include the following elements on it:
The Big Picture: where do I need to focus my growth? – Where do you want to go? What is your vision for yourself and your organization and what are the gaps you identify between the actual and the desired status.
Measurement: How can I measure and affect my growth? – Because when something becomes measured, it is achievable. Plus you can go back and think about who and what did stretch you in your journey, so you can identify patterns and plan for the future.
Consistency: How can I grow daily? As the Law of the Process says, “Leadership develops daily, no in a day”.
Application: Can I act on it? – The sooner you can act on what you learn and develop, the greater the return for you and others around you.
The fifth and last key is that “Growth is joy”. As you develop into the person you have the potential to be. As you allow yourself to uncover what you’re capable of every single day. You can take the approach that there is nothing new under the sun and stay home. Or you can realize that the biggest gap in your personal development is the one between what you know you could do, and what you actually do. Take action, one step at a time, and experience the joy of growth.
So my challenge for you this week is the following:
Did you already follow a training in the past? Did you already heard a leader wanting to bring change to your team or your organization? Did you already attended a keynote that was intended to motivate you? Did you already work with a development tool in the past? Great! The real questions then are: what did you do with it? What was the action plan that came from it? What was your result when you applied what you learnt into your day to day business and relationships? What patterns or learning did you extracted from the process?
Any personal growth process is only as good as you take full responsibility for it. The most important project you will EVER endeavor is your own life. So, I challenge you to define (or revisit) your growth plan. You should be revisiting it monthly. I do with mine, to make sure in the last 30 days I stayed on course. And take advantage of the opportunities that appear in front of you to develop. As someone said: “When the student is ready, the teacher appears”. If you’re ready, and you feel there is a fit, let me be that teacher for you. Let me know how I can help you and/or your organization. It will be an honor to serve you.
Let me know how it goes. And don't hesitate to forward this message to anyone around you who may need it. They are very much welcome in our community!
Create an awesome week for you and those around you!
Ezequiel
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