3 Reasons Why Great Leaders are Trainers and Teachers

I’ve studied great leaders and all the latest leadership principles for years but never internalized the idea that training and teaching others was so critical to the success of a team until recently.  It’s not that I didn’t train others on their role as a regular course of coaching and guiding people but never realized that it was an official role of mine big enough to allocate a percentage of time, and big enough to set specific goals around training my team and those around me. 

What was my problem? I still felt I was the clay and needed to be molded into a great leader, and wasn’t thinking enough about my obligation to be the trainer of others. My desire to continue learning is terrific but I had learned enough to move forward.  It’s not like I didn’t know most of what I was going to learn. At some point, one achieves at least some level of mastery in order to switch gears.

So my lesson to you is that I didn’t switch gears fast enough but now I have several avenues for training, including writing articles like this one. I set up a training calendar for the year. Some training I can do on my own but making contact with authors or other speakers for training and facilitating workshops or other sessions is part of the training mix. 

Below are three reasons why great leaders train others:

1. The Lessons You’ve Learned are Too Valuable Not to Share

We’ve all faced hardships and difficulties in our career. We’ve all had to overcome great challenges. Yet, we’ve all succeeded no matter what roadblocks we have faced. It’s not the success alone that people want to hear about as much as the journey and what it took to get there.

And many of us have helped inspire people with our vision of the future, our passions, our convictions and strong beliefs. Everyone needs to be inspired now and then.

“In every day, there are 1,440 minutes. That means we have 1,440 daily opportunities to make a positive impact.” – Les Brown

It’s not until we start sharing do we fully understand the talents given to us by our Creator. Holding on to those and the lessons we’ve learned can actually be selfish in some way. By sharing, you can make a difference in the lives of others and make you more, as author Adam Grant says, “otherish.”

2. People Learn More Faster through Your Stories

When you share your lessons in the context of a story, people will remember both you and your story. As a result, your listeners will have a higher propensity to learn and apply that learning to their own situations and lives. It becomes more real rather than what they might read in a leadership textbook.

Real-life stories have a way of being passed down to and through generations of people whether in family life or work life. The premise is the same. 

In these times of technology, mobilization and automation, speed and efficiency become critical to the success of your team and company. Training others on an ongoing basis is one of the fastest ways to impart knowledge and for everyone to participate by giving them the opportunity to share their experiences, too.

3.    Leaders Learn More by Training

There are many subjects for which leaders can teach: 

• It might be a subject or adaptation that’s new to you for which you’re studying
• It may be a leadership principle that you found especially helpful
• Or it may be a lesson you were taught by one of your mentors that helped you the most in you career

If you stop for a moment to think about it, you learn every day. So why not share with others so you can internalize those lessons even more?

It’s easy to gloss over a lesson you just learned from your manager, an executive, a mentor or the CEO, for example, because in reality you may get back to your desk and then, well, work happens. But if you know you’re going to teach it with others, you become more cognizant of the lesson, remembering it more yourself if you know you have to recall it and share it with someone else.

I’ve found the best way to start is to keep a journal and write those lessons. I use the Self Journal and write 3 things I learned every day. The discipline of writing each day creates a reference place for material that can be shared.

Training can come in many forms. A few months ago, I started writing an email to my staff called Motivational Monday. While I didn’t write it every Monday depending on my schedule and workload, it became an ongoing avenue for sharing simple principles on a single subject like leadership, strategy, gratitude, etc. 

The emails helped me create a library of lessons to pull from for training sessions, and helped me to realize and have confidence that I not only had a lot to share but that it all adds up to something bigger. Maybe even coalescing into a book of lessons that would be worthy of publishing. Les Brown has said there’s no sense going to your grave with all those dreams and lessons still inside you. Find a way to get them out and shared because you’ll be a better person and accomplish more as a result.

If you want to continue on your journey of being a great leader and mentor, make a plan today to begin teaching and sharing your knowledge. 

It doesn’t matter if people are younger or older than you, it doesn’t matter if they have an executive title, and it doesn’t matter if they’re your companion or competitor. We’re all learners by nature but there always seems to be a shortage of teachers, and not just in the school system. The business world needs trainers in the same way, especially to keep up with today's smart machine age.

Like to read more on the subject of Leaders as Trainers and Teachers?

• Harvard Business Review HBR.org: The Best Leaders are Great Teachers
• AboutLeaders.com: Leadership Skills #9: A Great Leader = A Great Teacher
• About the Smart Machine Age: Humility is the New Smart, Rethinking Human Excellence in the Smart Machine Age