Never Stop Learning

I have always been a huge fan of learning.  I readily admit that many of our school teachers are overwhelmed, under appreciated and underpaid.  This often results in classes that are counterproductive to learning.   However, this week reaffirmed my belief that we must "never stop learning."

The classroom is not the only, and often not the best, place to learn and continue our education.  I am not simply talking about picking up a street education or learning common sense.  This week I had the chance to learn from a series of business articles.  The first article dealt with holding yourself back.  It was an interesting article focused on how top leaders often hold themselves back from success.  The key points I learned from this article include:

1. Get over yourself
2. Model the attitudes and behaviors that you want others to adopt
3. Choose impact over image
4. Recognize competitors as people and allies
5. Don't go it alone.
6. Get started.

The article was really good.  It outlined both scenarios where we hold ourselves back, and solutions for stopping these destructive habits.  While I am in a leadership position, I intend to use these key learnings in my everyday life as a husband, father and friend.  I especially thank God that I had the opportunity to find this article.  I pray for the strength to apply what I have read to continue to triumph in life.

Beyond these high level points there were a few key points for having impact that I gleaned.  These points include:

• Get over yourself
• Don't waste your time and energy trying to prove yourself to others
• True leadership is about making other people better
• Place others and their goals first
• Don't define yourself by your title, your goals, or your fears
• Model the attitudes and behaviors that you want others to adopt
• If you want people to care what you think, then make it clear that you care what they think
• Choose impact over image
• Desire to impact something or someone more than you strive to preserve your image
• You must choose between looking powerful and together, or actually having a real impact
• Recognize competitors as people and allies, not enemies
• Don't reduce people to two dimensional characters
• Rethink what you think about people; they are rich with other experiences
• Work to recognize the lessons you can learn from your competitors
• Don't go it alone.
• Success requires a team of wise counselors
• Find the people who believe in your desire and ability to lead
• Meet regularly with these people and fall in love with them
• Get started!  
• You must simply begin.  
• Do something. 
• Don't wait for others, do what you can with whatever informal power you have now

The complete article is available at hbr.org:  Managing Yourself; Stop Holding Yourself Back.  Five ways people unwittingly sabotage their rise to leadership by Anne Morriss, Robin J. Ely, and Frances X. Frei.