Hello there to all our wonderful readers.
Welcome to another beautiful Monday and the beginning of another productive week.
I wanted to share today’s daily quote with you.
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Now, to today’s business.
Last week, we started exploring the importance of listening and learning in leadership.
If you’ve not read last week’s post, check it out here. And today, we’ll be continuing down that same line of thought.
But before we talk about learning, please permit me to share a little thought on listening.
People Will Disagree With You
“Most of the time, your job as a leader will be centred around trying to make them see the good and gold in your idea.”
When people disagree with you, what do you do? Go all, Bazookas, defending your idea and trying to prove your point and stand your ground?
It took me a long time to discover that I was very defensive (don’t be like me).
I always believed so much in my ideas and perspectives that when I saw an opposing idea coming from a mile away, I quickly brought out my big guns, ready to defend!
It all began to change when I started studying leadership and applying the principles I was learning.
Leaders must embrace diverse opinions and not try to snuff the life out of them or shoot them down.
Your idea may not always be the best. It might need to be added to, subtracted, or divided. And it may take another opinion from without to help you improve it or even replace it entirely.
Don’t feel threatened when a better idea enters the game. Great leaders know when to accept something better. It shows great strength and not weakness.
You see, as a leader, you’ll be leading all sorts of people with varied backgrounds, experiences and outlooks. They will not always see things the way you do, and most of the time, your job as a leader will be centred around trying to make them see the good and gold in your idea.
You’re not a dictator. You’re a leader leading your team, and you should give their ideas and opinions a chance to be expressed. Even if it is useless, at least you’ve shown them respect by listening to what they say.
We Stop Learning Today, We Stop Leading Tomorrow
“The most notable trait of great leaders, certainly of great change leaders, however, is their quest for learning. They show an exceptional willingness to push themselves out of their own comfort zones, even after they have achieved a great deal.”
Frances Hesselbein and Paul Cohen.
I fell in total love with the art of learning many years ago, and what reinforced my love for it was when I started writing regularly, I discovered that there was a lot I didn’t even know and that there was so much to learn. It intrigued me and made me excited.
Learning is the spirit of great leadership. There’s no doubt about it. We can never get to the peak. There’s no peak; it’s just an endless climb, and the day you stop climbing, you stop learning, and you stop growing.
This is the biggest reason why many great leaders become obsolete. They stopped learning. They stopped being hungry.
Forgetting What Is Behind
There’s so much happening in the world that what we learnt yesterday may become old soon. If you keep operating with old knowledge, you won’t be able to compete in the future.
This is one characteristic that doesn’t only stand leaders out but also great brands.
Why do you think great brands spend a lot of money on research? It’s simple: they want to know the future so they can start positioning themselves to remain relevant in it. They can only do that by learning.
Our yesterday’s learning and achievements are good. They should serve as the foundation and not the ceiling.
How Can We Cultivate The Learning Habit?
Here are some practical tips you can use to cultivate the learning habit.
- Be An Open Vessel: Murder your pride and chase after humility. Those who wear the cloak of pride are too heavy to bend down and learn. Let your mindset be that there’s nothing too small for you to learn. Humility opens the door to new knowledge and growth.
- Surround Yourself With Hungry People: You’ll become one if you associate with fools. Strive to walk with people who prioritise learning and growth. Stay with them often. They don’t even have to be greater or bigger than you. They just need to have the same mindset as you.
- Pursue daily learning: Read books and attend webinars, seminars and workshops. Learn a new skill or update the skills you’ve already mastered. Listen to podcasts, videos and content that teach you new things.
“It is what we think we know already that often prevents us from learning.”
Claude Bernard.
Action Points
To close our discussion on listening and learning, here are some action points that can help you.
- Utilise Feedback: Even if you’re leading one person, ask them to help you rate/gauge your listening skills. Listen to what they have to say with a very open heart. Don’t be defensive. They may not be accurate sometimes; just listen, bring out the vital information you need, and use it to adjust and change.
- Do You Understand them?: You need to be sure you understand what people are telling you, and one way to do it is to repeat what they say to you to them and see if they agree with you. They will correct you if what you said is wrong. Practical.
- Build Tangible Relationships With Your Team: If possible, ensure you’ve physical interactions with those you lead. If it’s not possible, try to forge relationships with each of them (if they are not many). If the team is large, you can do two things regularly: Hold meetings that are not entirely just about business, get closer to team leaders or managers and encourage them to do the same with those they lead.
- Eat The Right Leadership Diet: Books, articles, podcasts, videos, courses, webinars, workshops. Eat them all! You need to keep growing and learning. Consuming new ideas is one way that you can truly grow.
That’s it for today.
In the next article, we will explore the path to emotional intelligence. It will be a brief recap of our emotional intelligence series.
We did a series on emotional intelligence last year. If you want to read it, start here.
On Mondays, I write about leadership, innovation, and entrepreneurship. We usually publish in the morning, but sometimes, we send it out later in the day.
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