Leadership Development - The Leader As Learner
There was a time when only the most senior and the most junior organization leaders really made learning a priority. Senior leaders learned because they were responsible for crafting a competitive business strategy and junior leaders learned because they were seeking to earn their place in the organization. Today, learning is every leader’s business. We are likely in the early stages of a digital global economy that is completely dismantling the existing social and financial framework. Markets are volatile, talent is in short-supply, information is rapidly and broadly dispersed, and traditional organizations are flattening and losing their boundaries. Leaders can no longer simply rely upon their positional power, domain knowledge, technical expertise and exclusive access to information. They now need to be great learners as well. The rapid rate of change means that leaders cannot act solely on what they know. They need to act on what they learn. They need to shift from leading from knowledge to leading from learning. But this is not easy. Think of it as the difference between playing a single game of checkers against a well-known opponent and playing several, simultaneous games of three-dimensional chess against opponents that have never been previously encountered. It is that difficult, but it can be done.
We can begin by learning from five distinct qualities of today’s highly successfully leaders. Typically, they have:
- An Opportunistic Bias – they know tomorrow will be better than today! They believe that the marketplace is brimming with both unknown opportunities and unknown dangers…and they believe they have the ability to help their organizations navigate around the dangers and into the opportunities.
- Premeditated Agility – they assume that they are wrong! They craft the best plans possible and then set out with the attitude that these plans are inherently flawed and that success will depend on their ability to rapidly adapt to surprises, upsets and unexpected good fortune.
- Emotional Strength – they can let go and move on! They have the inner strength and maturity to be able to abandon closely-held (and dearly loved) assumptions, beliefs and mental models, and suffer the inevitable pain associated with learning and changing.
- Reversed Perspective – they see through the eyes of others! They have the capacity and courage to honestly look at themselves, their organizations and their businesses as their staff, customers, suppliers and others do.
- Unfair Intelligence – they hear things others do not! Because they operate with noble intentions, they are able to boldly dive into uncertain, risky dialogues in which they gain highly valuable and often exclusive insights and ideas.
The good news is that there is nothing on this list that is beyond the reach of all who seek to lead. There is really no mystery to becoming a true learner, just a big commitment and hard work. But the price you pay will pale in comparison to that paid by those who do not follow you on this road. Look around you. Leaders who fail often do so because they base their actions on outdated knowledge and irrelevant models. They lead by looking behind rather than ahead. Where are you looking? What are you learning? A good leadership litmus test lies in the answers to three simple questions:
- What is the most important thing you have learned about yourself recently?
- What is the most important thing you have learned about your organization recently?
- What is the most important thing you have learned about your business recently?
What have you learned from your answers?
Click here to share your thoughts on these questions with the Bluepoint Leadership Development Group on Linked-In.