As a leader, your priority is to grow your organization or business.
Have you ever thought, what determines the growth of any organization?
“The growth of its people.”
And what determines the growth of the people?
“The growth of the leader.”
By growth, I mean skills, knowledge, competencies, certifications, qualifications, capability, recognition, etc.
If you are a leader and people are following you, then the people can only go as far as you go or you take them. They cannot go beyond the limits you have set for them, as very few people run an extra mile or do things out of the box.
If you are not growing, your team cannot grow.
Either you grow every single day and let your people grow or they will leave you and go somewhere else where they can grow.
If you want to lead, you must learn. If you want to continue to lead, you must continue to learn.
As a leader, you must invest in yourself first. It may look selfish to some of the people around you and some of them will criticize but they don’t understand how growth works.
I would like to ask you, how do you grow? How do you learn and get trained?
Are you waiting for your company training program? Are you waiting for the annual appraisal, training needs analysis, training budget, training program, and conducting training?
In today’s world, you can grow by reading books, watching training videos, and inspirational talks on YouTube. They are free. How much money and time do you spend on growing yourself?
Best CEOs read 50 books per year? How many books do you read? A book per week or per two weeks? Make your growth budget. Start buying and reading books on self-development and leadership. Spend at least 30 minutes per day watching self-developing videos on YouTube. World’s best speakers at the palm of your hand for free and all that cost you just 30 minutes per day. You can listen to audiobooks while traveling towards your office to effectively utilize the dead time.
And when you learn something new, share it with your team. When you read a good book, introduce it to your team. When you learn something, which may add value, practice it first and let your team follow it as well.
You have to invest in yourself FIRST.
While traveling on an airline, what do you do in the event of air decompression? This is what the flight attendants instruct you during the safety demonstration. You have to put your oxygen mask first before putting them on for your children. Is it selfishness? Not at all. The safety and wellbeing of the children depend on the parents being able to help them.
As a leader, you are responsible for your people. They are depending on you. So you must be in good shape to lead them.
The following examples can help you understand the concept well.
- Kids get better after their parents do.
- Students get better after their teachers do.
- Employees get better after their supervisors do.
- The customer gets better after their salespersons do.
- The team gets better after their managers do.
- Followers get better after their leaders do.
This is a universal truth that “You cannot lead others until you first lead yourself”.
The job of the leader is to grow more LEADERS, not more FOLLOWERS.
Therefore invest in yourself FIRST.