Leader Self Development

All development is self-development. If you aspire to be a great leader, then you are looking at a lifetime of self-development.

If you are planning on the organization you work for to develop you, it may be a long wait. Although you may experience some opportunities to attend development programs organized by your company, they will never be enough and they may not be personalized enough.

Think about some of the things required for you to be a great leader. Remember leadership is personal and it?s all about you and other people. There are many self-development opportunities regardless of your leadership development stage.

Here are a few thoughts for your consideration:

• Start or continue learning about yourself. There are all kinds of assessments available on line, some free and some a few dollars. If you haven?t taken any assessments or taken any lately it?s time to do it. Not only is it good to understand yourself as a leader but it also helps in all segments of your life. Relationships always go multiple directions so the more you can know about your side of all relationships the better chance you have of them being successful and fulfilling. Get feedback from others as appropriate, notice yourself in action, be a conscious self-observer.
• Create your leadership philosophy statement, your leadership point of view or your leadership identity whatever you want to call the statement about who you are as a leader. Think deeply about how you want to show up as a leader and what others can expect of you and what you expect of them. Clarity is good.
• Learn as much as possible about human behavior. There are plenty of books, white papers, webinars, podcasts etc. about what causes us to behave as we do as humans. Research some of the older theories from people such as, McGregor, Herzberg, McClelland and others. Review more current viewpoints and research expressed by Dan Pink, Teresa Amabile, Martin Seligman, Dan Goleman and others. You can never know enough about how humans behave and since, as a leader, you are in the people business you may as well know as much as possible. It?s critical to understand people.
• Go back to school ?to get up to date with what?s going on in Leadership education.

There are many, many more ways to continue to work on yourself and these listed will give you a good start.