What Do I Need to Learn?

A story really hit home with me recently. Mary Mavis was my coach in my former business. She was also a key person in a successful consulting firm.

Mary definitely helped my personal growth. It began when she facilitated a 360 leadership assessment for me and then we reviewed the perceptions of what I was doing well and my areas of potential improvement – it is critical to realize that every one of us has areas that we could improve upon – and then she coached me with my ongoing commitments to improve in certain areas of leadership.

There were two key improvement areas for me, one I expected, knew I could do better, but it was a long-term habit, and I had not really improved, and another which was a surprise, a blind spot.

Thanks to Mary’s help, I did improve in both areas.

But I have digressed, the principle I wish to share in this short article is that Mary tells the story that while with the consulting firm, a very senior leader would come into her office at least every six months and ask “What do I need to learn?” At first, Mary was taken back and a bit hesitant, then realized he was very earnest about learning how he could be even more effective in his leadership and helping the success of his colleagues. She became very attentive in observing his style and principles and sharing her perceptions with him.

Clearly, this leader has the humility – and humility is the foundation of growth!

I do not know exactly how many leadership assessments I have facilitated, at least 100. Virtually everyone has been successful and inspired improvement, with maybe two exceptions, which were when the manager was not really open to learning.

Let’s all be guided by this principle of wanting to know what we should learn, and that we would be doing ourselves and our colleagues a very important favor by asking people with whom we work closely for their ideas.

Thank you, Mary, for “What do I need to learn?”