Skill

Behavior

Forced Rate:

Building an individual growth plan

Displaying the courage to grow

Creating a systematic approach to growth

Trying new things

Setting attainable small goals

Trusting yourself

Documentating your success and challenge

Believing you can achieve

Recognizing your potential in the plan

Finding success in everything

Creating a systematic approach to growth: It is really hard to help others grow unless you have done this for yourself. Step by step plans make sense to people and as a leader you need to be able to build a table, chart, or even a hand written document for yourself that helps identify the first, second and third things to accomplish. This allows you to begin and know what is next and proceed without assistance. When you share what you are doing, it is a great way to build credibility with subordinates and your boss.

Setting attainable, small goals: Each and every one of us who has ever experienced success is the product of positive small things done well repeatedly. These small bit-sized chunks are easier to achieve, easier to sustain and easier to build into habits. There is plenty of time to ramp up and raise the bar and it is always about small attainable steps. Smalls goals attained lead to feelings of confidence and success and as they say “success begets success.”

Documenting your success and challenge: Personal score keeping is part of development and it is critically important that leaders balance both success and challenge. We tend to look at what doesn’t work and this can discourage growth in an instant. Look for success in the learning elements as well as the skill part of the plan and build on them. Documentation helps you make a case for your continued growth and your continued investment in your future. Without this critical documentation, you will find that your boss is less likely to support the continued investment of time and resource.

Recognizing your potential in the plan: This skill could easily fit in the behavior side but we placed it here because we think that it can be learned, refined, and taught. What is your potential? The question is more than rhetorical because the answer will determine what you do for your own growth and development. If, for instance, you determine you want to be president of your company, the path you take will be significantly different than it might be if you plan on leaving the organization to start your own business. How do you find out about your potential? For a more conventional approach you can take indicators and diagnostics that will help you determine things like preference (Myers-Briggs) your IQ, EQ, Career AnchorsTM and many more of the things traditionally held as indicators of potential. There are hundreds of books dedicated to this topic alone. A little less conventional approach would be to spot something that others are doing that looks like fun, challenging, interesting and that you have the heart for. We would recommend a combination of the two to be used as a process over time that continues on for years as your career evolves and you add layers to your development.

Displaying the courage to grow: Leadership has many functions but at the very top of everyone’s list should be the hope to do great things, make a difference and to lead by example. Leaders who cannot do this are eventually going to be relegated to management roles. The formula for success here is part personal energy and excitement, and part personal belief (you really need to believe you can). Here is how it goes, you gain feedback and do research, plus soul searching around your potential beginnings with energy to quantify the behaviors that will create success. And finally, enthusiastically building these behaviors into habits. The final element is to repeat the process adding all the time to your new behaviors. Hard work reserved only for leaders!

Trying new things: If you look at the people who have attained success by anyone’s standard you will always find one common theme - they took a chance. For leaders this is not an occasional thing but a routine thing and with it comes occasional failure. Sometimes we define ourselves by the things we tried and came up short on. Leaders who attain real success always have “war stories” that turn out to be the hot forge fires that made them strong. Find me a leader who rewards thoughtful trying and I will show you someone who gets maximum creativity, initiative, and potential from others and from themselves.

“Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore.” Andre Gide (French writer, humanist and moralist, 1947 Nobel prize for literature, 1869-1951)

Trusting yourself: Early in our careers we are dependent on others for direction, guidance, and even timing. As our careers grow we don’t lose the need for others to input our direction and even timing but learning as you go is critical to your success. You want to become independent but guided to avoid disaster and as time passes you need to have a voice that is strong and credible. Set your own standards for success because you will probably set them higher than others might. Each day you need to earn trust, every day as a leader it is your job to involve your boss, learn their expectations and gain confidence in your ability to serve. It sounds like a long journey doesn’t it? It’s supposed to sound long because it never really ends. You build trust, trust yourself a little more, and repeat the cycle. One day you find others want you to trust them. “Do not trust all men, but trust men of worth; the former course is silly, the latter a mark of prudence.” Democritus   Greek philosopher (460 BC - 370 BC)

Believing you can achieve: I believe that our real power lies in our ability to achieve extraordinary results. People constantly surprise me - no, they amaze me. These seemingly ordinary people live their lives in extraordinary ways and do amazing things. Everyday people that we (you and I) interact with: raise children with disabilities, care for returning soldiers, volunteer in soup kitchens, giving time, money and parts of their very souls (and sometimes their lives) to causes and values that would shock and humble. Then they write a novel that goes worldwide. The capacity of archive is infinite and hard wired into each of us, whether we are 15 or 80. Most people simply need something to believe in to stretch in impressive ways. As a leader you need to believe that you can. Your example is the purest form of leadership.

Finding success in everything: If you do a lot of things, you will get a fair amount of those things a little imperfect, messed up or completely wrong. In the long view of our careers it really doesn’t matter. You will be judged by the body of your work so getting it “just right” each time is less important than learning from each and every event. Good or bad there is something to be learned so, the next time you get it wrong or right and the emotion passes in an hour or a day ask, “What did I learn that I can apply next time and share those things with others.” Sharing with others shows humility but also benefits the other person while cementing the new behavior firmly in your mind. “Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat.” Theodore Roosevelt