The Importance of Developing Yourself as a Leader

Hi. It's Stacey Ashley here, and this is my first LinkedIn video, and just thought I'd give it a whirl. I've just come back from a fabulous session with one of my really great clients at the moment, so hey Evelyn and crew, really great working with you again this afternoon.

It really highlighted to me one of the things that's been a little bit of a bugbear of mine recently. I've just come across a couple of situations where, and this is not the case for Evelyn and her team, because they're fabulous. They're open to learning and they want to develop themselves and as the leader, Evelyn's really role modelling that and taking everything on and integrating it into the way she performs her role and encouraging her team to do the same thing, which is fantastic. Leaders are learners, and they always need to be growing themselves and growing their toolkits, so they've always got something new and fresh to offer the people that choose them to be their leader.

What's highlighted for me is that, yeah, I just have this little situation a couple of times in the last month or so, I've encountered scenarios where, "Hey, yes, we want some coaching for our team”, or “we want to build coaching skills," which is fantastic. Absolutely brilliant. "But no, we don't need it” as the leader, or the leadership team. “No, we're okay." I think, "Really? There's nothing left for you to learn? That just doesn't seem completely true. As leaders, we've got a responsibility to keep adding to our toolkit, to always have that something new that is helping us to be our best, and to add to our performance as a leader and how we show up and who we are, and the set of skills that we've got in our toolkit.

It really frustrates me when I hear those, "No, no, we're fine, we don't need anything," because I think there's always something. There's always something that can give you an edge. And so what I wanted to do was just leave this little thought with you. Don't forget about yourself when you're planning the learning and development, don't forget about yourself. Yes, you've probably got more experience if you're the leader. Yes, you've probably got more skills in your toolkit. But there's always something that you can add that is just going to make it easier, quicker, smoother, less effortful, or maybe it's really profound and insightful and you can really gain an incredible insight. Learning is a key part of being a leader, so don't leave yourself out of the process. Yeah.

So, my question to you is what are you doing to support your own learning and growth and development? First lead yourself. Learn yourself, and do it even better than you already are.

Comments below, love to hear how you're growing and developing yourself now.

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