20 Habits to Explode your Leadership Growth

Last week’s issue: Running Better Meetings

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Today at a Glance:

• Why you need to take responsibility

• The environment is not enough for success

• Get up early

• Plan ahead

• Atomic Habits by James Clear

• Steven Barlett’s diary journal

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When I started out on this Leadership journey 10+ years ago I was letting my environment and manager influence and teach me what I needed to know.

The problem was, the environment wasn’t exceptional and neither was the manager.

But I thought I knew a lot.

The reality is, I was very naive at the time.

Photo by Element5 Digital on Unsplash

Where it changed is when I began to take ownership and got very intentional.

Your progress has to be your own responsibility.

You can learn so much more by coming off the bench and onto the playing field.

Asking questions, driving changes, creating ideas, reading material and putting your hand up for opportunities.

Do this instead:

1/ Wake up Early - Leaders get ahead of the game. They turn up to training early and ensure they’re prepared for the session. If you arrive at the same time as everyone else you’re already behind. If you can begin planning your day or week an hour before Slack starts exploding, imagine how much extra focus and space in your mind you’ll have?

2/ Read daily - a book, a blog or listen to a podcast. Something stimulating that will feed your mind with positive thoughts, language, inspiration and ideas. When you’re thinking about tough problems to solve think about your learnings and use the language to share those ideas and solutions.

3/ Plan - plan ahead. Line up your next steps for tomorrow, today. When you plan and think ahead you begin to move from being reactive to proactive, moving from solving problems to preventing problems. A 6 month plan can do wonders to your critical thinking skills.

4/ Do more - leadership and learning are investments in your team and future self, the more you do now to learn, gain exposure and stretch yourself, the bigger the payback further down the line when doors start to open, and opportunities begin appearing. Serendipity has a way of rewarding those who stretch themselves, over-deliver and increase their footprint.

5/ Think big - with no vision, there is no direction, with no direction there is no progress. Where do you want to go? Write down where you want to be in 12 months, what does that look like for you?

Photo by Sage Friedman on Unsplash

6/ Execute - get the 3 important things done everyday. If you have more than 3 priorities you have none. Get it done. Completed. Ticked off the list. People who execute make significant progress and stand out from the crowd. Execute. Get. The. Job. Done.

7/ Be kind - to yourself and to others. You are going to stumble and get things wrong, that’s part of it. The important thing is you’re trying and learning. Some days it’s not going to happen, but continue to turn up. Don’t lose traction by not turning up.

8/ Set goals - what are your goals for 2024? When you have a target, you can begin mapping out an action plan to get you there. Every day you are consciously or even subconsciously making small decisions in that direction. If you don’t know where you want to get to, how do you know what steps you need to take?

9/ Get a Mentor/Coach - find someone who can help you and shave time off your development with their wisdom, knowledge and experience. They can also act as an accountability partner to hold you to your plan and help you move quickly.