Hey you! Yeah! I’m talking to you. Come over here and let’s get real for a few minutes. Adulting is next level hard, but if we want to get through life in one piece, you should never stop wanting to learn and grow. Life’s always evolving so you need to be at your sharpest. If you’re not spending that time investing in your own personal growth, here’s the truth, you will sabotage yourself. Be it at work, home, relationships, or parenting, it’s time to open up yourself to learning, always.
Stay humble and focus on your personal growth
“…no matter how good you are today…still try to get better every year.”
– Nathan Jamail
In my book, Serve Up, Coach Down, I open up about my love of snowboarding. It’s one of my favorite activities to do and like I explain in the book, my wife Shannon and I make time for it every year- for the last fifteen years. Now here’s the thing, each year we always take a refresher course before we hit the slopes. No, we don’t have short-term or medium-term memory issues, neither are we klutzes (my wife’s a Yoga Teacher Trainer, it doesn’t get any more stable than that!).
Anywho, one year, we invited a friend along and he mocked us to the high heavens as we signed up, as usual, to attend classes. I mean he threw jabs and hurled teases like it was open mic night at the comedy club. Finally, I broke it down to him:
“We only get to go snowboarding a few times or more a season. The kid giving us lessons is out here every day, all season long. He’s a ton better than us, so we can always count on teachers like him making us a little better every year. We think taking a little time to learn and get better is more of a priority than how many trips down the hill we take.”
Then we took up our gear and headed to class, unbothered and excited like it was still our very first time.
Humility is an important part of personal growth. A little modesty leaves the mind open and that means you’ll always be willing to learn. That’s important because yes, you can learn something from a stranger to a competitor or even a child. When you apply this way of thinking in business that’s how you elevate your company and team. Let’s talk about that.
The willingness to seek personal growth in business builds kingdoms
Steve Jobs knew he didn’t have the skills needed to create the first Apple computer. That took humility and wisdom to accept and fix. So, he got Steve Wozniak, an excellent computer programmer, to help turn his dream into reality. Now I won’t go into all the other BS that would go on and happen after that. I’m here to say without that first acknowledgement that he didn’t have the wherewithal to build that first computer himself, there would be no Apple and I for one can’t imagine a world without it.
Here’s the thing about my snowboard story and Mr Jobs’ early days, in the right moments we knew that we weren’t the gold standard but still wanted to get better. Leaders in middle (LIMs) who forgo this approach, will never truly grow because they think they’ve above learning or improving. Come on, we’ve all come across those dinosaurs who hold themselves, their team or their company back (and I am not talking about age here). You and me? We can’t and shouldn’t allow that to be our case, EVER.
“Make the time to improve and at least agree to listen to anyone who has experience that you don’t. We owe it to ourselves, our families, the people we lead, and those who pay us to be our best.”
My own personal growth story
I promised I’d open up, so let me confess something. I used to be like that, I was the kind of leader who believed I was too busy to learn more or already had the job all figured out. Well, I’d keep my eyes on the general news and business stuff in the papers, but I didn’t read self-improvement blogs or books like the ones I produce now. Then my mentor dropped a necessary humility check on me by saying:
“If you want to grow in your career, you must start learning to be better versus learning to be aware.”
And no, he didn’t just mean read more business books, he meant I should expand my mindset on all areas in life. Like Steve Jobs, we wouldn’t be here if I didn’t take a step back and recommit, in the business sense, to even more personal growth. The most successful people in the world will tell you what I’m about to say next and I’ve learned it from my personal experience.
“Read anything and everything…[all] that is new and different and that allows for contemplation and learning.”
Also, don’t be selfish with that knowledge or desire to learn. Enable your team to adopt the same mindset. Coach down to them and ignite that fire for their own personal growth. That right there is the mark of a great leader.
Hey, wait! Don’t go just yet! Check out the rest of my books on Amazon and let’s talk in person. I’m just one, keynote speaker, workshop, or executive coaching session away.
