WHY - Every leader needs development!

Have you ever thought to yourself "I could organize my desk better?" "Or I should do a better job of thanking my employees?" I believe every leader needs development, because the greatest leaders are those who know they always have areas that need improvement.

Self-awareness and being humble enough to publicly admit your personal weaknesses and more importantly articulate the most important things for you to work on is one of the most critical things leaders can do. In fact it is "why" employees become loyal to their boss. Studies show that employees of today's generation are more likely to stay working for one employer solely based on their relationship with their boss.

We all know the age of leading people by fear and intimidation is gone. But what you may not have considered is that your own development is the key to your employees' loyalty. This is because your employees are no longer motivated by just money, promotion, and security. The average person entering the workforce today is likely to work for upwards of 10-12 employers in their working career. This is nearly double the number of employers in previous generations. Employees of today's generation are motivated by relationships, affirmation of their skills, and a shared sense of values. This is why employees are more likely to respect and follow a humble leader.

Self-development is no easy feat and will not be effective if you are haphazardly trying to be something different to people. In fact, I would suggest one of the most effective ways of developing oneself is to solicit the help of a coach or mentor. In my experience of Executive Coaching there are some rather simple things one can do:

• First, think about a list of people that can provide you with honest feedback about your skills and effectiveness as a leader. This list should include your manager, your peers, your direct reports/staff, and stakeholders. What you are looking for is a list of 15-20 people that work enough with you on a regular basis to provide you with feedback that will be useful. If you list people that only sing your praises you won't get as much useful information as you would if you list people in which you may have had conflict or with whom things didn't go so well.
  
• Provide this list to your Coach or Mentor. They should than solicit feedback on your behalf.
  
• Consider using a 360 feedback survey tool to collect information anonymously and with a set of objective questions to help you distill the information and get to the most relevant feedback.
• Work with your Coach or Mentor to help analyze the feedback. Focus on developing a list of 3 things that are your greatest strength that are contributing to your success as a leader and 3 things that are your greatest weaknesses that if you focused on would help you become a better leader. You might be asking yourself, "why" would I focus on areas that are already my strengths. This is because, these things are already contributing to your success and leaders that focus on leveraging these strengths are even more successful. For example: Did you know that Tiger Woods is ranked #128 out of 135 in terms of his ability to get out of the sand trap. Did you also know that his coach hardly ever has him practice on getting out of the sand trap. Now you might ask yourself "why"? Because, focusing on staying out of the sand trap is a far more effective use of time.
  
• As you develop this list, think about this in relativity to your career. If part of your goal is to move to the next level, focus on areas that will help you do just that.
• Now that hard part, what are you going to do to develop these skills? Work with your Coach or Mentor to develop a realistic plan that is S.M.A.R.T (Specific, Measurable, Actionable, Realistic, and Time bound).
• Now the uncomfortable part...but one of the most important things you do. Share your plan with your team. This doesn't mean you have to tell them every piece of the feedback, but the act of being vulnerable and summarizing what you learned is extremely important. This also invites the people you work with to continue to provide you feedback about your progress and or lack of progress to the things you set out to work on. The other thing this does is set an example of development for your employees. This will allow you to have meaningful and helpful conversations with your employees about their development.
• The next step is to actively work on your plan.....this will take deliberate focus and planning to ensure time is allotted to the learning activities that you have created. This might be things like: taking a class; reading a book; working on a project, spending time with an expert, etc.
• I would suggest meeting regularly with your Coach or Mentor to discuss your progress get suggestions on additional learning activities and keep you on track.
• In order to deeply change your behavior, you must collect feedback on the progress you are making against your plan. Typically 3 or 6 months into your plan is a good time to ask the original group of people that provided you with feedback about the extent of your progress as well as additional things you should consider focusing on.
• Adjust your plan accordingly and keep focused on regular activities to improve your skills.
  

Self-Development is an on-going process and I would recommend all leaders use the above approach no less than every two years. Setting an example of development, being humble enough to admit that we all have things to work on are keys to creating a loyalty between you and your employees and is one of the most important things you can do as a leader.