A Simple Habit that will Transform your Leadership

What is the one habit that can significantly impact your leadership skill and business results? In this article I will share:

• 4 tips to help you get started,
• 4 strategies to make it more impactful, and
• My Top 10 reading list for Leaders.
• My secret shortcuts to thought leadership

But first – You guessed it - it's Reading - So Why read?

1. Follow the leaders?– Many successful people like Warren Buffet, Tony Robbins, Elon Musk, advocate this daily habit and so do I!

2. Books are an amazing source of organized knowledge. An author has spent months, maybe their lifetime, organizing their knowledge into a concise format so you can understand and implement it. What an incredible gift and usually less than $30!

3. It elevates your thinking and creativity.?When you read daily you expand your perspective and naturally become more thoughtful. The more angles and views of our world, the better the solutions we can have to our challenges. Alternative perspectives can help us get unstuck from our beliefs, bring awareness to our biases, and help us see more of the systems and interrelationships in our world. With a bigger picture and more insight, we see new possibilities to be more creative and innovative. It might even help you see around corners and gain insight into future directions.

4 Tips to start your reading habit:

1. Don’t let the hundreds of exceptional books overwhelm you, just pick one and start. Want a suggestion? Download my?Top 10?Reads for Leaders.

2. Start small. Commit initially to 10 min. per day. You can do this!

3. Link it to an already established habit, like brushing your teeth or making your morning coffee, or your commute. Obviously, an audio book is key with the later.

4. Have what you need ready to start, which means the book is on your phone or desk. Pick and order 2 books today. I highly recommend an Audible and Kindle subscription plus a book summary (more on this later). When I find value in the book, I then order a hard copy for my library and for the pleasure of flipping pages and highlighting text. Yes, you guessed it, I’m over 45.

Forming a new habit is a challenge but reading daily is much like investing. It is best to start now and benefit from compounding knowledge than to wait until you have the time. You probably won’t have the time until you retire and, much like investing, its too late.

4 Steps to maximize your results from daily reading

1. Catch the main themes, experiment, & reflect.?Don’t doddle through a book, consider it a fast-learning moment. Set a timer and see how many insights or new ideas you can capture that appeal to you in 30 minutes. I make notes right in the book and add sticky notes if not enough room. Or speed up the audio book to 1.25 and have a notepad ready.

• Capture a quote or a concept to share with your team that day.
• Make note of areas you want to spend more time in on your next reading block. Stick to no more than 5 sessions per book. You are not trying to memorize the content just absorb the key concepts.
• Focus on 2-3 key ideas useful to you now and experiment with them. You can only implement so much.
• Keep a digital journal. For each book note key learnings, what you tried, what worked, and challenges.
• Go back to the book for more guidance if needed. If you found it valuable, you can probably find some YouTube videos on it to help you integrate more.

The material that you actively engage with will become part of how you lead going forward. Reflection and teaching others are the most effective ways to create integration and long-term memory.

2. Engage your team

Make reading, learning, and experimenting with a book’s concepts a team project. Assign sections to each member to present at a team meeting, discuss, and determine if the team or individuals want to experiment with key learnings. Set up accountability.

3. Find Articles, Book Summaries, or Blogs to speed up knowledge acquisition.

These 5–20-minute reads (or audios) are a quick way to build your knowledge in an area of interest and to keep up to date on the latest conversations. Download my?Thought Leadership Development with Book Summaries?recommendations.

4. Keep track of your reads and key learning.?Keep a spreadsheet of everything you read (or article links) with key take aways, quotes, or things you experimented with.?Sheets are searchable making it easy for you to quote or share material in the future. Don’t trust your memory when you are reading over 300 pieces a year. This also provides you a great vehicle to reflect on your learning which reinforces and integrates it into your model of the world.

Reading, just like regular investing, adds up!

Imagine that you read 1 book per week and 5 articles or book summaries. In one year, you will have the insight and expertise from 52 authors and 260 articles!

As you integrate and experiment with the ideas you will begin to form your own thoughts and models which you can then share. As we all strive to be more effective leaders our shared thought leadership can create powerful momentum for better relationships and workplaces.

Follow me on LinkedIn

I like to share good material to help you enhance your leadership and business results, so I post daily on?LinkedIn.??Some articles are written by me while others are sourced from reputable sources like HBR, McKinsey & Co, Inc., Forbes, notable newsletters, and blogs.

Please share your tips and the benefits you have experienced from daily reading.

I would love to hear what has worked for you plus the good books or articles you find.?Even better, become a thought leader on LinkedIn and share your insights from the articles and books you read. We all benefit when ideas are presented with different perspectives to digest and integrate into our worlds.

Best of success to you and keep me posted!

The Author

Leanne Abraham helps leaders and teams reach higher levels of performance. She supports teams as an executive team coach, facilitator, trainer, and advisor. She and her team also help organizations find and retain the right people through her?4 Phase Executive Search?and?New Leader Integration Solutions.

Leanne serves clients throughout the US and Canada, ranging in size and industry. She is a certified executive coach and team coach (EMCC, ICF); has completed extensive training with The Birkman Method, the Adizes Institute, Tony Robbins coaching, the European Mentoring & Coaching Council (EMCC), and the Global Team Coaching Institute (GTCI). She is also an avid reader, aspiring author, student of servant leadership, mother of 2, and loves hockey. She recently completed her team coaching practicum under David Clutterbuck and will begin her senior practitioner work in 2023 with the GTCI.

If you are looking to elevate your team, your leadership, or your career, please contact Leanne at?[email protected]?or?book a no charge?consult?through the Premierehire website.