(upbeat music)
- Judging your growth as a leader will require you
to consider a few informal indicators.
Just start by asking yourself, what can you do
or what do you know that is new
that last year you could not do or did not know?
Remember, growth is not about doing a great job
on the same tasks you did last year.
It's about stretching
into new performance space and excelling there.
Let's start thinking
about the two major informal growth indicators.
Those are applied skill development
and your educational activities.
Now, by applied skill development, what I'm referring
to is on the job skills stretching
or skill enlargement that might be initiated
by you or your supervisor, and it might be engaged
by you alone or under the supervision
of a peer or your supervisor at least for a while.
For example, maybe one of your tasks is to
brief a certain set of clients periodically
about the status of various work products.
If you take on new clients who are quite unlike the ones
with whom you normally work, or if you're covering issues
and topics new to you, that's skill growth.
Or you could be an account manager
but you take on more accounts, new types of accounts
or possibly a large important account.
These represent opportunities to grow new skills
both in terms of people related skills
and technical or product skills.
Or maybe you're responsible
for the analysis that supports one part
of a monthly report supplied to upper management.
Great.
Then ask for the opportunity to write that section
as well or maybe the analysis in writing
for an entire first draft of all sections of the report.
That would definitely represent new skills.
Okay, now let's consider the evidence
that you've embraced valuable forms of education.
There are so many options available
books, blogs, podcasts, seminars, webinars,
certification or credential based programs, internal
or external classroom training, tons of online courses,
traditional educational degrees and more.
The role of educational pursuits
is both knowledge acquisition and skill building.
Though sometimes there's a lag time
between knowledge acquisition
and the chance to apply it at work, that's okay
but it is important to engage educational activities
that will likely give you real opportunities to
apply what you've learned sooner rather
than later due to knowledge decay.
Now, in terms of the focus of your educational activities
a good rule of thumb is
that by the time you've reached middle management
one half to two thirds should be focused
on leadership related content, not technical skills.
So do you see evidence of growth in these areas?
It helps to compare your evidence
to your supervisor's expectations for you
and to the work you see being accomplished
by your peers to provide context.
Next, let me push you a little,
try to answer these three questions.
First, have you become a go-to person
in a particular skill area in the last year?
That's a person others seek out for advice.
Next, when you look up down left and right inside your unit
and the larger organization, do you understand new areas
of the business now versus last year?
Finally, if your supervisor asked you to name
the top three things that prove
you've experienced skill growth
what would you say?
Then there's the final step.
It's time to move
past this little thought exercise we've been discussing
and make a plan for moving forward.
Make it a goal that next year when you're doing this task
examining your skill growth
that you will have clear and compelling answers.
(upbeat music)