Leaving a Leadership Legacy -- Part 3 -- Grow yourself daily

After 25 years with one company, Thomas was still doing the same old job and drawing the same old salary as when he started. Finally, he'd had enough! He summoned the courage and went to his boss and told him he felt neglected. Tom exclaimed, "after all, I have a quarter century of experience." In response, his leader said, "No Tom, you don't have a quarter century of experience, you have one experience for a quarter of a century." 

Tom's fundamental problem (amongst probably others) is that he felt a sense of entitlement and was not willing to even attempt to step up or out and OWN his own growth or development. Easy to imagine what the rest of that story looks like. We have probably seen it in our leadership journeys.

As leaders, we have to set the standard for our teams, our families or anyone who look to us as a mentor of continued personal development. Easy to say, but practically, how do we accomplish it? Following is a guide that might help:

1.) Complete a self assessment -- it's the old S.W.O.T. analysis but instead of applying it to your business, you are applying to yourself. What are your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats? Any number of other tools are available as well. I love to use the Johari Window exercise (pictured below). Effectively it's a simple way to get to what you know about yourself (and with the help of others) get to know what you don't know about you (blind spots). Powerful in that once you know these things, you can begin to build a plan to address.

2.) Develop specific aspirations and goals and write them down -- Aspirations are what we want to be (best father, better husband, etc) while goals are what we want to do (invest into reading a book a week). Like a compass. Aspriations and goals become the true north for you. Whenever you feel yourself deviating, you simply pull out the compass and get back on course. You'd never set out to a destination you'd never been without having an idea of which direction you were heading. History is replete with accounts of people failing in the journey due to lack of vision and execution or lack of a compass.

3.) Begin & have some accountability and follow up --The American Society of Training and Development (ASTD) did a study on accountability and found that you have a 65% chance of completing a goal if you commit to someone. And if you have a specific accountability appointment with a person you’ve committed, you will increase your chance of success by up to 95%. Could be a trusted peer, a partner, a family member. Whomever it is, they will help you achieve your objectives.

4.) Reassess -- I love the Deming cycle model below in the context of personal growth.  Effectively it says that growth is an intentional and cyclical process. It doesn't have a finish line. Failure to understand this very simple premise leaves us where our friend Thomas was in the opening story. We will have nothing to which others could look and say there is growth.

So, how does striving to grow personally impact our leadership legacy? Very simple. First, as we strive towards personal growth, we help others grow -- from the things we've experienced, learned and suffered through. Second, we may very well be aspirational to those around you. Great leaders recognize this responsibility and strive to help others grow and realize a key way to do this is to continually grow themselves.

So that's it. Four simple and practical things we can do to grow and keep growing. Start today! Tomorrow I'll hit on the "A" in LEGACY which carries the responsibility to accept new ways of thing/adjust old ways of thinking. Until tomorrow! have a great day.