31 Days to Becoming a Better Leader
Foundations
Day #12: Personal Growth Plan
Income seldom exceeds personal development.– Jim Rohn
Jim Rohn influenced many, many high-income earners in his lifetime. He almost always said to work on yourself harder that you work on your business. The older I get, the more I resonate with that statement.
I constantly hear from entrepreneurs, especially, that they have read about leadership and want to focus on something important, implying that leadership isn’t as important as “getting things done.”
Let me be clear: NOTHING HAPPENS WITHOUT LEADERSHIP.
We have been taught leadership incorrectly and we have inherited systems that aren’t working. It’s time to reframe leadership and work on our skills to lead the organization we are responsible for taking forward to the fulfillment of its mission.
Hugh’s four leadership principles will empower you to lead any type of organization in a more effective way.
Here are my principles, expressed in general principles and in a musical conductor’s terms:
- Foundations: Know the Score
- Articulate your vision
- Know your plan
- Build your skills
- Relationships: Hire the Best
- Create good relationships
- Learn to delegate
- Be the influencer
- Systems: Rehearse for Success
- Conduct effective meetings
- Evaluate constantly
- Correct as needed
- Balance: Value the Rests
- Work and rest
- Have a life
- Always pace yourself
These principles are how a Transformational Leader influences and transforms ideas into results and people into high-performing cultures.
Here’s my list for maintaining a personal growth program:
- Read Constantly: All the best leaders I know or know of are avid and faithful readers in fact many of them reread books and articles with a highlighter that’s a different color than the original marker. They find that there are different passages jumping out to highlight because they are ready to learn the next thing.
- Hang Around Winners:The old saying is, “If you want to remain broke, then hand around broke people.” Associate with people who are successful and learn from them. They can also learn from you. Make sure that the people you hang with are smarter (by your opinion) than you feel you are.
- Hire a Coach:There’s nothing better than having a paid confidential advisor who asks you difficult questions and assists in exposing your blind spots. We can’t find those blind spots alone. You might need a different type of coach for different stages of your personal growth.
- Keep and Open Mind: I love the old saying, “The mind is like a parachute. It has to be open to work.” Be open to different ideas than yours. Consider conflict and disagreement a creative tool rather than a personal attack. Lack of awareness is the biggest barrier to success in my view.
- Never Stop Learning: Work on yourself constantly even more than you work on your business, either for-profit or for-purpose. There’s no ultimate arrival point for leadership development. The more we learn, the more we discover we don’t know. In fact, it’s difficult when we don’t know what we don’t know.
Join the online Community for Community Builders to support your leadership growth at https://SynerVisionLeadership.org
Don’t forget to purchase the Action Guide to expand your learning opportunities from the podcast.