What learning something new can remind us about leadership

In a fit of New Year intention setting, I signed-up for a monthly art class at our local community centre, keen to learn a new skill and unleash my (long forgotten since my schooldays!) artistic creativity. And, as one of my favourite Eleanor Roosevelt quotes goes; “you must do the things you think you cannot do”, I like to stretch myself with personal/professional challenges for the year ahead.

I had forgotten how much fun it can be focusing on creating something from scratch using one’s hands and unlocking the potential that time and (developing) skills can create. It got me thinking about the parallels of starting new things and being creative with leadership and how we can make more impact in our professional lives.

1.??????Starting is the hard part.

It’s very tempting to procrastinate by not putting pencil to paper, especially with a pristine blank canvas in front of us. “What if I go wrong and it doesn’t look like I want it to look?” or “What if I make a mistake?” Very often, in the corporate world, be that starting a new project or embarking on a new opportunity, taking the first step is often to hardest part; to set a course for where we want to go and work from there. Of course, proper planning and correcting as we go is all part of building something new (as well as the fun!) but we won’t know what we can achieve until we actually start!

2.??????It’s easy to get distracted by what everyone else is doing.

It’s also very tempting to compare our starting point with someone else’s. To assume that others know more or are better equipped for the task at hand than we are. And when we’re taking the first steps into a new area, often those thoughts are the ones that can hold us up with actually doing what we need to do. The worry that everyone else has more knowledge/better skills/has done this before is a lot of the basis of what we know about imposter syndrome in the workplace. However by focusing on what everyone else is doing is taking away energy from us achieving what we can do. In my experience, it’s better to 'run your own race', and concentrate on developing ourselves to be better for the thing we’re trying to achieve right now.

3.??????Ask for help.

When we’re learning how to do something new, asking for help from those who have trodden the path before us and can offer insights of their own experience and methods, is a skill we all need to develop, be that at work or at home. Often the fear of asking the silly question or revealing that we don’t know something is what holds us back but by not doing so, we miss out on the opportunity to learn from and overcome problems together. ?

4.??????It’s all about practice.

Very rarely is someone able to master a new skill effortlessly the first time they try it. And the well-known theory that innate talent is actually the result of at least 10,000 hours of practice. The same can be true of leadership and professional development – to become excellent in our field, we must practice the art of the field itself and with that experience, we drive better outcomes and results for all.

5.??????Kindness can unlock creativity.

How we show up as leaders and teachers has a big impact on how quickly people develop as well as the risks that people are willing to make when trying new things. Empathy, trust, supportive encouragement, positive reinforcement, and constructive feedback are all leadership qualities that have been shown to be key factors in higher performing teams and businesses. And it’s no different when it comes to learning new skills – luckily our art teacher had all of these skills in abundance and her supportive approach led us all to create something more than we thought we could.

Are you trying something new for 2023? I’d love to hear some of your reflections and how it applies to what you’re doing at work. Let me know in the comments below. ?