Leaders are learners; learners are leaders.

The more you learn, the more you grow. The more you grow, the more your influence can increase. Influence, as a leader is paramount, as you look to build your sustainable business.

We know and acknowledge that learning is important. However, the more important question to ask is "What should I be learning in order to grow as an effective leader, manager, or business owner?"

There are many things that we could learn, but they may not all be applicable for where we are now. Let me suggest to you, from much experience and research, three of the key areas of learnings for those who want to grow in their effectiveness in business.

To Grow Yourself, You Need To Know Yourself

How well do you know yourself? You may say, "I know myself well." However, if I asked those who work with you to describe you, your strengths, and your limitations, would there be any surprises for you?

We all have blind points. That's why it's important to have a good and honest inner circle, not just made up of yes-people, but those who want the very best for you, and therefore, are prepared to speak into your life and provide feedback on your style of leadership.

Self-leadership is one of the most challenging areas we will all face.

Here are 8 questions to ask yourself to lead yourself to be effective:

• Would you go out of your way to follow yourself? Why is this?
• When was the last time you learned something new about yourself? What have you done with this information?
• Do you tend to make decisions based on emotion or wisdom?
• Consider your last three big decisions. Good or bad? How did they go?
• What are your strengths and limitations?
• What motivates you? What gets you excited about waking up each morning?
• What triggers a bad reaction from you. We all have things that trigger bad reactions. They are based on our innate fears based on our personality style. Discovering what those are can help you navigate them and grow from them.
• What are you actively doing about your strengths and limitations?

So, the first area of learning is to learn yourself. The more you know about yourself, strengths, limitations, the more your leadership can grow.

Learn About Your Team

Are you a team player? Can you lead your team well? How well do you know those that work with you? John Maxwell says, "Teamwork will make the dream work." Teamwork is imperative for the success of any organisation. Teamwork includes areas such as communication, commitment, collaboration, to name a few.

Find out more: A Leader's Guide To Team Building

With teamwork, everyone is together on the purpose and vision of the organisation. On a scale of 1 to 10 (10 being great), how would you rate your effectiveness in leading the team?

Effective leaders learn about the skills and talents each team member has. As a business consultant, I can assure you that many skills and talents remain dormant within team members because the leader/manager has failed to recognise and develop them.

This is often one of the reasons for staff turnover. People leave because they don't feel that they're being fully utilised and stretched. Do you recognise this? Has this happened to you?

Leaders are learners, and they learn about their teams.

Key Questions To Help You Learn and Grow Your Team

What active steps can you take to learn more about your team? What makes them feel fulfilled?

What will you do with this knowledge?

As a leader/manager, in which areas of communication would you like to grow in?

Why is this one so important to you?

Learn About Your Customers/Marketplace and Clients

The constant learning of your marketplace and your customers' desires will allow you to stayi relevant to them. We all know of brands that once were strong, High Street names, but sadly are no longer around.

There may be any reasons for this, but one reason is that their service/product did not keep up with changing customer's desires. Today, we often buy on desire, not just need. Look at the fashion industry and mobile phone industry as examples.

What are you learning about your customer's desires? I'm not asking what you learnt, when you first started your business, or even a couple of years ago? But what are you hearing today?

Listen to the whispers of your customers as they help you to stay future-proof.

Without customers, businesses don't succeed. Research would suggest that 50% of business fail within the first five years. Look after your customers very well. Otherwise, somebody else will.

Questions To Help You Learn About Your Customers' Desires

What is your process for listening to your customer's desires?

How are you acting on what you are learning?

In what areas will your organisation need to adapt in the next six months to remain relevant to your customer?

Find out more: 5 Connecting Principles and Practices To Increase Your Influence

As an entrepreneur/leader/manager/leadership is vital. I often describe leadership in the following way, "Leadership is the ability to lead others to places they could not have gone without you."

Leaders are learners. Effective leaders work on the following areas of learning:

1. Themselves;
2. The team;
3. Their customer/community/industry.

Employ this model of learning in your leadership. It will increase your effectiveness as a leader. In turn, this will help you to build a sustainable business.

Tony Lynch is a business consultant, speaker, coach and trainer. He helps business leaders develop strategic plans, closing the gap between expectations and results, providing a process for greater effectiveness, team engagement, performance, productivity and profitability.Tony is a regular speaker at events as well as being a TEDx speaker. He was also featured in Inc in the ‘100 Great Leadership Speakers for Your Next Conference’.

Tony can be reached at:

Keep Thinking Big

22-25 Farringdon Street,

London. EC4A 4AB

T: 0203 195 2905.

E: [email protected]

W: www.keepthinkingbig.com

L: www.dhirubhai.net/in/tonylynch1

Recent Testimonials

Louise Punter - CEO, The Surrey Chamber of Commerce.

Having spent a morning with Tony understanding the importance of different styles of communication I can fully recommend not only his knowledge but also the way he managed to get engagement from everyone in the room. The benefits from the session are already beginning to show. Thank you Tony

Tara Wavre - Finance and Resource Manager, The Surrey Chamber of Commerce.

Tony recently came and spent a morning with the Surrey Chambers team running a training session on team communication. With two members of our team being new starters that week, there couldn't have been a better time for it.

Tony worked with us to understand our individual personality types and work styles and then those of the rest of the team. Tony's session was really valuable and helped me learn how to better communicate with each member of the team in a more positive and profound way. I learnt a lot about myself and how to maximise my strengths to communicate more effectively with others. He is an excellent teacher and coach and I would really encourage anyone who is looking to do some work in team communication to reach out to Tony.

Eve Geere - Senior Solicitors at Colemans Solicitors.

I have had the pleasure of attending a number of seminars presented by Tony Lynch.

I consider Tony to be a thoroughly engaging and inspirational coach, both in business and in personal development.

Tony never ceases to be thought provoking and motivating. He is a mentor I am pleased to have the benefit of knowing.

Alison Courtenay - Private Client Legal Executive with Parfitt Solicitors.

I have personally benefitted from both group and 1:1 sessions with Tony, he makes you see things differently, some things you may already know about yourself but are not sure how these traits either help or hinder you but Tony has a knack of drawing things out of you so that you come to the right conclusions yourself, he has helped me to not be so critical of myself and to see the positives.

I would absolutely recommend Tony to anyone wanting to look deep within themselves, to learn how to use your abilities wisely and to find the positive in the negative!