Winning leaders are teaching leaders
When you teach others, you’re open to learning. Over the past week, who have you helped to develop, and what have you learned yourself? Do you see developing others as an important part of your leadership?
All people have untapped leadership potential, just as all people have untapped athletic potential. With coaching and practice, we can all get much better at it.
Granted, there are clear differences due to nature and nurture as to how much untapped potential there may be—not everyone can be the CEO of a multibillion-dollar corporation, just at not everyone can be an Olympian, but with coaching and practice, we can all be a lot better than we are.
- Leaders with a proven track record of success take direct responsibility for the development of other leaders.
- Leaders have ideas that they can articulate and teach to others about how to make the organization successful and how to develop other leaders.
- Leaders embody their teachable points of view in living stories—they tell stories about their past learning experiences and create stories about the future that engage others to attain the winning future they describe.
- Leaders invest a considerable amount of time in developing other leaders and have thoroughly developed coaching and teaching techniques.
It’s never too early or too late to take on the challenge of improving your leadership abilities and developing them in others. The scarcest resource in the world today is leadership talent.
We challenge you:
Ask yourself: How are you doing as a leader? The answer is: How are the people you lead doing? Do they learn? Do they champion customers? Do they manage conflict? Do they initiate change? Are they growing and getting promoted?
We promise you:
Someday you’ll remember how many people you developed—how many people you helped have a better career because of your interest and your dedication to their development.
