Aim for Excellence, not Experience
Have you ever said to yourself, "That guy will be a great leader once he gets a little more experience."? Leaders, after all, use their experiences to know how to lead, right? What if I told you that experience is not the best teacher?
Consider why experience might not be the best way to grow a strong leader. First, experience is a slow, inefficient process. To experience a wide variety of leadership challenges, it could take an entire career. While experiences help, they are often quite limited in their scope and often repetitive-so in essence you repeat the same experience time and again.
| "Experience may not be the best teacher, but it's the most expensive." |
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Second, the right experience is often unavailable just when it is needed. In a corporation, operational concerns often supersede an individual's development; this is appropriate because the work must get done but does not help a leader's growth.
Finally, experiences can lead to the wrong lesson. A top scientist in a university had learned from experience that in order to receive government grants she needed to pay strict attention to details in the proposals. She had won top funding time and again by using this strategy. Unfortunately, when she moved to a corporate environment, the same leader found that in order to get projects going-or get them "funded"-she needed to sell her colleagues on the merits of the projects. Her past focus on detail was useless in this new peer influence environment.
What's the best way to learn to lead if not by experience? Leadership Solutions suggests life-long learning approach. A successful leader should consider what skills are needed for a particular situation and then seek that kind of learning. Are you working in a global environment where you need to strengthen your multicultural skills? Do you need to work on innovation and creativity? Is your job requiring that you lead virtually? Start with analyzing the types of skills you need for your leadership tasks. Here are some things to keep in mind:
- Diagnose successes by the factors that contribute to them
- Be sure to match your needs to your learning style
- Practice; find ways to practice the new skills you need
- Get feedback and reflect on what you learned
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Training and coaching are faster and more focused methods to learn than experience.
Leadership Solutions can help pinpoint your training and coaching needs to make you the leader you want to be. "….the most effective managers will be those who have an appetite for life-long learning." Linda Hill, New Manager Development for the 21st Century, Academy of Management, Executive, August, 2004, Vol. 18 Number 3.
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