Straight talk for leader who believe they know it all

Sometimes you come to the best conclusions when you remove yourself from your normal surroundings. That happened to me when I was recently on an overseas flight back to the office. With time to kill and no meetings to attend, I thought of the candid comments I’ve heard over the years from other leaders who wonder how they can keep growing in their roles -- even after they’ve reached the corner office. 

By the time the plane touched down, my thoughts on these comments were clear. Whether they are established leaders thinking about their next step, or high-potential up-and-comers who seek progressively senior roles, I’d tell them this, “Embrace continuous learning. Know – and work on – your areas for development. Surround yourself with good people who can help you succeed.”

That counsel might seem unusual, since leaders often believe they need to look fearless and appear to have all the answers. But believe me, if you want to grow professionally, and build a strong organization with the right culture for success, there are a few things you need to get right, based on my own experience and my observations over the years: 

1.    Recognize your strengths: While leaders must be good at juggling many tasks and are often recognized for their expertise in certain areas, they can’t be the best at everything. Instead, they must learn to get the best out of others or actively learn from the best people around them. To recognize areas for development, it’s important to seek genuine feedback from others who know you well.  You then need to consider this feedback carefully and build a plan to target areas for development. This involves honest reflection, self-assessment and action. 

2.    Surround yourself with great people and seek out mentors:  What’s the best way to bolster your own knowledge and build important skills? Surround yourself with people who are better at those things than you are. This means hiring the best people to round out your team. It also means networking and finding mentors who can coach you informally, pose honest, tough questions and challenge your own perspectives. And while there is a lot of talk about finding a traditional senior mentor, they can be a friend, a peer, a colleague, or even a business coach. Over the course of your career, I believe it’s important to seek out a number of mentors who can provide different viewpoints on both the opportunities and challenges you will encounter along the way. 

3.    Commit to life-long, formal learning too: While you must lean on others, it’s also important to fortify your own skills in critical areas. This is particularly true when the world shifts and new challenges turn the old ways of doing business upside down. In my case, I went to Harvard Business School to refine my finance skills through an Executive Education program. While the in-depth learning was a great technical skills booster, this tactic also links back to my earlier point: I chose to study in an environment where I would be immersed among the top academic minds and other global leaders who are facing and embracing similar business issues. That experience provided me with tangible new skills that I took back and applied to my own work. 

4.    Build a culture of risk-taking and growth: Is the heavy lifting done once you’ve trained yourself to continuously assess and develop your own skills? No, because the next step is really instilling that same philosophy across your organization. While it’s natural for new leaders to think they must make every decision and solve every problem, the real key is learning how to work with and through your people and activate them to take on those issues. This involves empowering employees at every level to evaluate themselves, aim to improve their skills and take on new challenges. To create this culture, you need to trust your people and clearly communicate that it’s okay to test new approaches, knowing that some will succeed and some will fail. It’s okay to speak up and ask for help. It’s good to take calculated risks. And it’s important to learn from mistakes to become stronger and better at what we all do together as a team.

So, as I deplaned my early morning flight, I noted the impatient swagger of the other business travelers, as they turned on their phones, gave instructions to staff in distant offices and marched towards awaiting taxis. No wonder many leaders think they must model this behaviour and always exude a fearless air of “I have all the answers.”  

The straight talk I’d share with any leader is to continuously ask yourself the same question I ask myself each day: “Am I being the best leader that I can be, and what can I do better this week to help my team grow and build the best customer offering?” These questions will help any leader be objective about their abilities, determine areas for development, and set the tone for life-long learning. They have also helped me grow as a leader and defined my contribution to helping grow Merit into Canada’s leading specialty travel company.