Striving to maximize the potential of your peers and reports also helps you put the golden rule — do unto others as you’ have done unto you — in play. People are programmed to help those around them when culture permits. Per a survey on sharing, the primary reason to do so is “to help that person because he or she would benefit from it”.
With those sentiments in mind, Farber offered 3 basic steps to cultivate your own and staff leadership potential.
1) Expand yourself.
Complete annual or semi-annual personal inventories to ensure you are developing and strengthening the value and skills you bring to a company, client or reports. That self-review should include everything from innate and learned skills to the belief and value systems that shape you, as well as life altering experiences that have altered your perspective.
From conferences to books to mentoring, there are countless ways to build up your talents, even if you’re a seasoned pro. That inventory should lengthen over time.
2) Give of yourself fully with no strings attached.
Share the resources at your disposal with no expectation of tit for tat. It increases the odds people will take the opportunity to apply what’s available or build on it to do something amazing. You can be the leader that made it possible or a valuable team player in this scenario.
Incidentally, a friend often reminds me to avoid any expectation of reciprocity because you never know how the energy you put out into the world will return to you. Helping a co-worker today could shift energy that allows you to connect with the person who will sponsor your job jump to better and bigger things tomorrow.
3) Replicate yourself.
The only way this process can continue is if all participants choose to pay it forward. While you can seed growth and optimal performance in a handful of people on your own, the ripple effect as the people you impact repeat the process on others around you can transform a workplace culture or change the world.
I’m of the opinion that this type of mentoring isn’t limited to the upper echelons of management. At every tier of the corporate ladder you can spark the magic in someone.
For information on upcoming G5 webinars, check out their event calendar. They offer several 90-minute, online classes each month taught by best-selling business authors who’ve set their sights on enhancing your soft skills. For $129 per year, you can have access to their complete roster of trainings plus workbooks, slide decks and recordings for review at a later date.
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