TOOLS FOR ASPIRING LEADERS...
About Self Improvement and Career Development (From Courage through Service in the book, The Five Insights)
Compete with yourself – not the world. If you measure yourself against someone else, you may be able to set a high standard, but it’s the wrong standard. We all have people we look up to or try to emulate, but when we compete with people who have a skill we want to develop, competing with them makes it difficult to be coached by them. Practice those things that are important to you and mark your own progress against yourself. By competing with ourselves, we are competing against the most difficult adversary we have. One note: Competing with yourself has one major fallback. It is hard to accurately assess your own progress. For this, I rely on the feedback and observations of a few trusted advisors who know me and can tell me when and if I am making as much progress as I think I am. The reason assessing our own progress is so difficult is, I think, because when we do battle against ourselves we may expend a tremendous amount of energy for what appears to the outside world as only an incremental improvement.
Push yourself — take on emotional, leadership, business and physical challenges that stretch your endurance, intellect, relational skills, flexibility and strength. In other words, take a chance—but take smart chances. Don’t agree to take on a project at work that is critical unless you feel pretty sure you have the necessary support around you to pull it off. Make sure it is well known that you are not entirely sure if you can pull it off before accepting it. Kurt Hahn used expeditions to catalyze teams and teach the importance of human relationships in Outward Bound. The ultimate goal was the same, to build confidence by helping people stretch and push themselves.
Attach yourself to projects at work and in life that make a difference. In addition to doing the tasks and functions of your job that are expected and required, make the time to also work on projects and initiatives that are outside your traditional job function. Companies are led and run by leaders who don’t just do their jobs; they do what needs to be done in the best interest of the entire enterprise. Hahn referred to this anecdote as “Projects” to teach craftsmanship and the importance of interdependence.
Adopt a mindset of service. What would the world be like if we all adopted a mindset that said, “My purpose in life is to make a difference for others”? Service to others teaches us humility on the one hand and pride in accomplishment on the other. In addition, adopting a service mindset gives us a vehicle to practice numbers one through three above, if doing so at work seems too risky.
