3 Es to Strengthen Your Leadership

Continuing your self-development is a hallmark of any effective leader. Learning is never complete. One of the greatest advancements we have in our time is the access to information, other people, and different experiences. The ability to connect with others and data has never been easier. From a developmental standpoint, that is an absolute win for everyone who chooses to continue to expand their horizons.

Honing your skills and expanding your resources is a critical step for every leader to serve their team in the best possible way. Here are three areas where you can continue to strengthen your leadership skills.

Education (not just formal education – how you keep learning)

This is a broad area of the learning spectrum. Once upon a time, when we thought of education, that only meant going back to school or taking courses in a formal way. Today, we have countless other areas we can ‘get an education’ on a topic. Many universities do have online courses that are not specifically driven by a degree program, and can be taken for free or small fees for standalone learning. Additionally, there are sites like Skill Share, Masterclass, Coursera, LinkedIn Learning, and more that can be used to learn specific topics and areas of interest.

That doesn’t even include the vast amount of information that lives on YouTube and other social video sites. I do not discount those in any way; you just have to be a little more selective and specific in how you find information on YouTube versus some of the other sites I mentioned.

Experience (what do you do, where do you go, intentionally trying new or different things)

Experience comes in many forms. Like education, the number of options and opportunities is seemingly limitless. Nearly everything you do in your personal and professional life can be experience towards growing your leadership skills. Being intentional about your experience will accelerate your learning curve.

Many younger leaders may wonder how they can gain experience to grow into new roles. There are simple things like volunteering for projects, or identifying programs outside of work, like community events, volunteering, and coaching teams that are great ways to gain new perspectives on leadership roles. And there are less formal ways of getting experience. We all experience situations, events, and interactions every day. What do you take from each of those? Make a practice of identifying these types of scenarios and write down your thoughts about them. What would you have done if you were in the same position? What were the outcomes? How do you think that might have been different? That is all experience.

Another great way to can new perspectives is to travel or expose yourself to different cultures. Traveling to other parts of the United States or even other countries is easier than ever. I realize that even in a (semi) post-pandemic world, it is not as easy or desirable as it was a few years ago, but it is still very possible. If getting on a plane to visit a foreign country is not available to you right now, you can watch movies from other countries. That can be both for entertainment, as well as capturing new points of view on situations that we may take for granted in our country. This can be an excellent way to expand your emotional intelligence and empathy skills. Seeing how people live in other places is a tremendous experience for any leader to gain.

Exposure (connect with diversity, cultures, environments)

Connecting that last piece of experience to exposure, those cross-cultural interactions will provide many insights into things you may not have considered in the past. Exposure and experience go hand-in-hand to allow you to see beyond what you may consider “normal”. It is amazing, eye-opening, heartbreaking, and inspirational to participate in events and activities that expose you to ways of living that you are not familiar with. I can site numerous occasions where my exposure to people that were different from my regular routines really helped me to understand how I needed to consider so much more than what was in my typical purview.

Each of these is about perspective building and mindset expansion. All three of these categories are really tied to educating yourself about more than what you know today. The moment you believe that there is nothing left to learn, experience, and be exposed to is the day your leadership light begins to dim. The world moves too fast, with too many people doing different things, to believe that you will ever have enough information, experience, or connections to be done. Learning, growing, sharing, developing, and repeating the cycle is one of the most rewarding things that can come from choosing to be a leader.

How do you incorporate education, experience, and exposure into your leadership development journey?

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Photo by Juliane Liebermann on Unsplash