One of the books I’m reading at the moment* makes the point that in order to develop one’s leadership skills, it is not enough to read books or articles (hah), or attend leadership courses.
The author argues that experience is the way one improves as a leader:
…anyone who seeks to lead must get firsthand experience: get their feet wet and their hands dirty, seek out challenging assignments, volunteer for foreign postings, work for great leaders (and even for bad ones) – and learn as much as possible.1[emphasis mine]
However, “Experience by itself guarantees nothing.” Learning is the important factor.
Rather than wait for the right moment to arrive, they discover and exploit learning opportunities. Rather than partition their lives into periods of action and periods of reflection, they do both, often on a daily basis, sometimes in precisely the same moment. Rather than complain about the scarcity of time to learn, they make time. Like accomplished performers in sports or music or the arts, they practice as strenuously as they perform. And when, as often happens to organizational leaders, they learn how to practice while they perform – not simply to learn by doing, but to learn while doing.2
Of course, it’s not always easy or possible, when you’re in the middle of trying to sort out some minor crisis, to stop and think about exactly what you’re doing or why you’ve responded the way you have. When I do manage to stop myself for a split second, to reflect, sometimes I amaze myself by coming up with a better approach – or I think of something else I might have overlooked when I was just reacting to the situation. Or I ask a collleague for advice – and get my feet back firmly on the ground. Often it’s also possible to de-catastrophise when I give myself that permission to stop and think. (Thank you Derek for that word – pity it doesn’t roll off the tongue as well as “ommmmmmm….” but I think I do have a tendency to catastrophise sometimes, so remembering its polar opposite is a good practice for me.) I also find it really useful to make a bit of time to stop and think back about the day’s events.
*Book is Crucibles of leadership: How to learn from experience to become a great leader by Robert J. Thomas, Harvard Business Press, Boston, 2008.
1 Thomas, p. 4.
2 Thomas, p. 6.
2 Comments
That reminds me of something someone said somewhere about writing. </vague> You don’t get better just by thinking about writing theory, you have to actually practice writing. But just writing a billion words won’t get you any better either; you have to think about what you’re doing and how to improve it. I think the person made a further analogy to learning the piano – if you don’t practise you go nowhere, but if you practise badly you just get very proficient at playing badly.
Thanks Deborah – that is very true!