Leadership: Learning-2

In today's fast-paced world, there is need for a change in the paradigm of leadership to move beyond autocratic and dictatorial leadership styles and closer to more conventionally accepted styles. This calls for leaders to unlearn, learn or relearn skills that move them to where they are more effective, efficient and fulfilled personally.

Learning, on the side of leaders, has been shown to:

• Lead to awareness of one's inner power.
• Help one see the connectedness of everything.
• Lead to achieving ever higher levels of consciousness.
• Help one assess one's ability to affect a situation and people by BEING-[actively or unconsciously]
• Help one balance humility and self-confidence.
• Help one appreciate innovation by questioning everything and aid sparking quantum leaps in how things are done.

Tips that may help leaders start or re-engage a learning path:

Hire a Coach

The best kept secret of successful leaders is having a coach. Great leaders have multiple coaches for most areas of their lives. A coach helps you in your learning path by helping you know and discover YOURSELF. This is the most important area a leader should work on first. Once you know yourself then you can know others and more!

Observe

You have two eyes and two ears but one mouth for a reason. Watch, see, hear and LISTEN. Talk less but pay attention to what your other senses are telling you. Take physical cues, pay attention to hunches, your gut, sixth sense and the quiet voice in your mind and heart. Read between the lines, pick up on non physical signs, read the moods of others. There is a lot of information in the QUIET! Utilize your powers of observation to learn about your team, their perception of YOU and the organization.

Invest in Personal development

There's merit in the thought that pure knowledge transfer can be done more efficiently by an individual at his or her own pace. Invest in self-paced online courses that pertain to your area of expertise. Read, watch or listen to informative articles on most of the media platforms available to you. MOOCs and many free online courses can be easily accessed nowadays at the click of the mouse. Take advantage of all opportunities to upskill or update your current skillset.

Be Open Minded

By simply being open to new ideas, new approaches, new strategies, new ways of doing things draws people close to you. Access networks that brainstorm regularly on new ways of production or providing a service. Hold creativity fairs, encourage team members to think outside the box and celebrate INNOVATION. Learning NEVER stops. You, as the leader, can impart this ideology to your organization by example.

NB: Use was made of www.applied.corporate.governance.com and www.ibe.unesco.org

Keep It Simple and Short!