How Great Leaders Learn From Experience To Accomplish Results
Tony Gambill
Leadership Development | Executive Coach | Speaker | FORBES Contributor | Author
We had the experience but missed the meaning. – T.S. Eliot
Think back to a time, in either your professional or personal life, when you learned a very important lesson that has positively impacted you in becoming more successful. Now consider where and how you learned this valuable lesson.
I have asked thousands of leaders to consider this scenario and followed it up with this question:?Raise your hand if you learned your important lesson in a classroom or structured learning situation??In all my experience, it is the rare occasion that someone raises their hand to indicate that their important lesson occurred in a formal classroom learning experience. This exercise confirms, what we already know, our most important lessons as adults usually come to us through experience.
The popular 70/20/10 model that many organizations use for developing talent demonstrates this concept. This model is a general framework stating that leaders obtain 70 percent of their knowledge from job-related experiences, 20 percent from interactions with others, and 10 percent from formal educational events. Research confirms what our intuition already understands, the most successful leaders are adept at continually evolving and adapting to meet the needs of their changing environments. The Darwinian rule applies to modern leaders: adapt, migrate or die.
4 Ways Leaders Learn from Experience to Accomplish Results
1) Choose A Growth Mindset
Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time. —Thomas Edison
In her book Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck shared her research that shows how the power of our beliefs about learning and intelligence can have a profound impact on nearly every aspect of our motivation and behaviors.
Dweck’s research shows that people can have one of two mindsets about learning and intelligence. Those with a?fixed mindset?believe their basic abilities, intelligence and talents are fixed traits. We either have a talent for something, or we do not. While those with a?growth mindset?believe they can enhance their abilities through effort. Those with fixed mindsets miss opportunities for improvement, while those with a growth mindset watch their abilities move ever upward. Motivation is the key. If we believe there will be a positive payoff for our effort, we work harder instead of succumbing to helplessness.
Our mindset is not a fixed trait. We have all experienced having both a fixed and growth mindset. The good news is that we can choose the mindset that will serve us best. Having the awareness to understand when you are moving into a fixed mindset can be a powerful way to switch back into growth mode.?
Stephen Covey’s Circle of Influence provides a practical framework for when you need to shift from a fixed mindset to a growth mindset. This tool will help challenge feelings of helplessness by identifying actions, attitudes and activities within your control or influence that will enable you to improve the situation or help to grow and develop your abilities.
2) Ask For Feedback
Leaders are the people that need honest feedback more than anyone else because they are more likely to receive only positive messages from their teams and employees. A leader is often the last person to know when their behaviors and actions are causing issues that negatively impact their teams' motivation and performance.
One of the most courageous acts a leader can perform is actively seeking honest and constructive feedback about their performance. This leadership behavior creates a vulnerability and authenticity that demonstrates everyone is a work in progress and helps establish a culture where continuous improvement is encouraged and expected (Growth Mindset).
Sharing feedback with a leader is often risky. A leader must be deliberate about creating a safe environment by actively giving permission and expressing openness and desire to receive feedback about their performance. The practices below help leaders minimize potential threats while encouraging others to provide them with honest feedback.
Be Specific With Feedback Request?– As a leader, you need to be specific with your feedback request. If a leader asks general questions like “How am I doing?” or “What can I do better?” it makes it very difficult for the individual to understand what type of feedback is wanted and okay to provide. It can be helpful for a leader’s request for feedback, to begin with, a statement that they desire to improve in a specific area. Below are a couple of examples of specific feedback requests:
Ask For Feedback Often?– Leaders need to frequently ask others for feedback about how they can improve their performance. As this becomes part of a leader’s routine, people will feel safe about providing upward feedback.
Avoid Defensiveness?– The quickest way to ensure you will not receive honest constructive feedback is to react defensively. If a leader is defensive, they send a message that they do not want or value constructive feedback. Even if the leader disagrees or feels the feedback is unfair, they should ask questions to clarify their understanding and thank the person for their willingness to share their perspectives.?
3) Practice Daily Reflection
We do not learn from experience….We learn from reflection on experience.
领英推荐
John Dewey, Educational Reformer
Reflection is a humbling yet powerful tool that helps leaders improve their performance. But it is not easy, as it makes leaders look honestly at themselves, their strengths, weaknesses and areas that require improvement. When reflecting, a leader considers an experience and tries to understand it. This reflection often leads to insights, learning and ideas to test with future experiences. Research confirms that reflection is crucial to the learning process.
When engaging in reflection, leaders often focus only on the result of their actions, but that is only part of the story. James Zenger published a fascinating survey that shows how great leadership requires the combination of delivering results and building strong relationships. More than 60,000 employees completed Zenger's survey, which asked participants to identify how different leadership characteristics combine to affect employee perceptions of whether a boss is a great leader or not. Below are some of the results.
Being effective at driving results and building strong relationships seems to be the key to being perceived by others as an effective leader. This research confirms that leaders need to take the time to focus on developing their abilities to deliver excellent results and, at the same time, the strength of their relationships. Below are some daily reflection questions leaders can ask themselves.?
4) Focus On Successful Behavior Change
The real intent of choosing a growth mindset, asking for feedback and practicing daily reflection is positive behavior change. Below are some guidelines to help leaders move from learning from their experiences to establishing new habits and behaviors that enable them to grow and evolve.
Define One Achievable Goal At A Time?- Too many goals will ensure you will lose focus and not succeed at accomplishing the desired behavior change.
Define The “Why” Of Your Goal?- Is it meaningful and important to you and your leadership success? If not, choose a different development goal.
Plan For Obstacles?- You should define what obstacles will get in the way of your success in achieving your new development goal and what actions you will take to mitigate those obstacles.
Tell Someone You Respect?- It can be a colleague, your manager, your team, a personal friend or a family member. There is power in speaking your intention because it creates accountability and solicits support from others.
Great leaders are great learners! How are you leveraging learning from experience to accomplish great results?
BONUS: DOWNLOADABLE PDF'S ON SELF-LEADERSHIP
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
I am the President and Founder of ClearView Leadership, an innovative leadership and talent development consulting firm helping executives and managers bring their best leadership self to their most challenging situations. I am the author of,?Getting It Right When It Matters Most: Self-Leadership For Work & Life . You can also follow me on?Forbes ?to see my latest articles on Self-Leadership and Leading Others.
farming. at I am self employment
2 年the sad question! Why people do not study on experience and then create good leadership?
farming. at I am self employment
2 年experience is a key to any leadership, it help to know the direction
CEO and Co-Founder at Optevo
2 年"The popular 70/20/10 model that many organizations use for developing talent demonstrates this concept. This model is a general framework stating that leaders obtain 70 percent of their knowledge from job-related experiences, 20 percent from interactions with others, and 10 percent from formal educational events. Research confirms what our intuition already understands, the most successful leaders are adept at continually evolving and adapting to meet the needs of their changing environments. The Darwinian rule applies to modern leaders: adapt, migrate or die." Excellent analysis - thank you for sharing David.
Founder, Author, Teacher, Counselor, and Service provider at Victoria's Love4love Ministry
2 年Great article! Leaders who apply what they have learned to each circumstance they face will learn if what they have learned works or not. This is how experince works. We learn best through our experinces in each circumstances and relationship we face. It is not hard to learn through each circumstance and relationship if we want to be leaders. True leaders do not look at learning through experinces as a hardship they look at it as a blessing! If anyone would like to know how to view all learning as a blessing and not a hardship I am not hard to find ?? www.Love4loveministry.info
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