“Leaders are formed in leading,” wrote Tod Bolsinger. “Leadership formation is a hard and humbling, repetitive process of personal transformation.”
I think we have gotten so busy coping with a global pandemic for two years that we have forgotten that young leaders become better leaders through leading. It is a daily practice and a daily discipline. It happens through personal transformation.
Robert Tannenbaum, organizational consultant and professor at the Graduate School of Management, University of California, Los Angeles, says that too many senior managers who have been on the job for thirty years don’t necessarily have thirty years of experience. Instead, many have a one year experience, thirty times.
This is a big challenge because senior managers are the source of coaching for young leaders. These senior leaders instill information, but miss a critical point in the development of young leaders. As Richard Farson noted, “… much of the job of executive development is an unlearning process - getting rid of barriers to perception, wisdom and judgement.”
When we take Bolsinger’s, Tannebaum’s and Farson’s insights and put them together, we realize that for young leaders to become better leaders, and ultimately exceptional senior executives, they need routine, in-depth and timely coaching and mentoring. This process of unlearning and personal transformation is hard and humbling, but also empowering and important.
My challenge to you this week is to role model this process in your own life. If leaders are formed in leading, then we need to be the change we wish to see in others. We need to transform our lives and our leadership, and we must engage routinely in this hard, humbling and repetitive process.
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