Three Ways To Grow Your Leadership Skills
A new white paper authored by DDJ Myers’ Senior Vice President Peter Myers, MCC, shares research on mid-level leadership practices from six years of cohorts in the Emerging Leaders Program. This 35-page white paper is rich with information on mid-level managers and their strategic leadership practices. Here are highlights of three of the eight characteristics of mid-level managers being developed as strategic leaders. Read the white paper for more information on these three and the other five characteristics.
TRAIN HARD: Most managers become leaders through a transformative experience that does not happen in a one-off training class. Managers who want to develop their leadership skills need to be in environments where those with leadership titles are invested and serve in integral roles in leadership development. Piecemeal training is not the solution to leadership development. You need an environment of ongoing learning, practicing with rigorous feedback, adjusting and modifying, and ongoing commitment to getting it right. Leadership development work is never complete, is not easy, and requires hard—really hard—work to stretch your mind and body.
MAINTAIN A STRATEGIC ORIENTATION: Your leadership development journey needs to be practiced in a strategic orientation context. The strategy requires a vision followed by effective and relevant action. Each action you take, every conversation you are in, and each request or offer you make needs to be directly connected and relevant to the strategic purpose of your organization. Only through tangible outcomes will you and others observe how you embody a vision, compel others to follow, and create outcomes that further the organization’s purpose.
SEEK, ACCEPT, AND SHARE ROBUST FEEDBACK: Developing leadership skills is a journey that requires seeking, accepting, and sharing robust feedback connected to your actions, moods, and outcomes. Show up as one who seeks self-clarity, is vulnerable, wants to deepen relationships, and looks for blind spots. It is much easier to give feedback than to ask, receive, and adjust. The mere act of requesting feedback is often unpracticed, but when embodied it serves as a catalyst for self-leadership.
The eight characteristics of leadership do not develop in a vacuum (starts on page 13). A group of committed learners and a trained leadership development professional are ingredients for success.
Deedee Myers
PhD., MSC, PCC
