Where Have You Been?

This article is written by Steve Arneson

 

“If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there.”  I love this quote – it’s supposed to get you moving if you’re stuck, but I like it for another reason.  I believe it screams “get organized, and have a plan”, which is great advice whether you’re planning a trip or your own leadership development.  Any significant journey worth taking is worth planning.  Let’s pretend you’re taking a six month sabbatical to climb Mt. Everest.

You wouldn’t dream of tackling this adventure without a lot of planning, right?  You also wouldn’t plan this trip without looking back at what you’ve learned from other high peak ascents, both successful and unsuccessful.  You’re going to need every bit of that experience to make this climb, so you better take stock of your lessons learned.  The fact is, looking back can help you see the next adventure more clearly.

 

The same is true when it comes to planning the next step in your journey of leadership self-discovery.  One of the first things you should do is reflect on where you’ve been as a leader.  Are you doing this on a regular basis?  Are you reflecting on your lessons learned?  Because you should be; the leader who doesn’t learn from his or her mistakes is doomed to repeat them.  What were the critical moments that really shaped you as a manager?  How did you react?  What did you do well, and what could you have done better?  How did others respond to you?  When did you start to feel like a true leader?  Most importantly, what did you learn from these moments?

 

Leadership is a definitely a personal experience; the lessons you learn may be common ones, but the specifics of each situation make your leadership story unique.  All of us can remember critical incidents that shaped us as leaders – times when we learned from a mistake or stepped up in a big way.  Maybe it was standing up to a boss when you knew you were right.  Maybe it was failing to pull the trigger on a bad hire, or supporting an employee who turned out to be a star.  Or maybe it was really listening to feedback and recognizing that you needed to change your leadership style.

 

Some lessons involve other people, and can reveal patterns like failing to leverage peers or build relationships.  Other lessons involve your own judgment – a fateful read of the strategy that leads to poor decisions, or opportunities seized because you were willing to take a calculated risk. Your career is filled with times when you made the right call, did the right thing, or learned a lesson the hard way.  These are the touchstones of your life as a leader, the milestones along your leadership path.  The fact is, your own leadership journey provides tremendous insight into how you should continue developing as a leader.  In other words, where you’ve been can help clarify where you need to go.  By reflecting on your lessons learned, you can build a development plan that optimizes your remaining growth areas.

 

Write Your Own Leadership Journey

There is an easy way to document your lessons and build your leadership story.  Start with your first leadership role, when you first began to manage people.  Write down the company, your job title, and the time frame you were in the role.  Remember when you got your first direct report to manage?  Were you excited about the opportunity?  Maybe a little intimidated by the responsibility?  You probably did several things right; but you might have made a few mistakes, too – first time supervisors usually do.  Think back to that job – what were the two or three most critical incidents that happened in that role, and what were the most profound learnings from those experiences?  Write them down.  Take the time to really think about the experience, but capture the essence of the lesson in a few simple words.  Now, go on to your next role and repeat the process.  When you’re done, you should have traced your entire career as a leader and recorded your critical incidents and lessons learned along the way (see Figure 1, below).

 

Bootstrap Takeaways: Document Your Leadership Journey (Figure 1) 1.    Create your own leadership story by mapping your critical experiences and lessons learned.  Pick out the memorable moments and be specific. 2.    Share your leadership journey with others – practice telling your story. 3.    Use the past to plan the future – what do you still need (and want) to learn?

Put your leadership story on a PowerPoint slide or practice telling it from memory.  Share it with your boss, your peers, and your team.  If you have a large organization, share it with your entire department in an all-hands meeting.  Sharing your leadership journey allows you to role model three powerful leadership tools at once – reflection, story-telling, and life-long learning.  Take your audience through your career, and tell the stories that have molded your leadership philosophy.  Stories make your lessons come alive and cast you in a favorable light, as they generally involve you having learned from mistakes.  Share your journey with pride – these are lessons that had a profound impact on you, and sharing them candidly demonstrates that you’re open to learning from the lessons that lie ahead.

In my career, I’ve helped dozens of leaders create and present their leadership journey, and it works every time.  People love the framework because it helps them establish authenticity, which is critical for leaders.  The process is particularly effective with leaders who have a reputation for being “hard to read” - somehow the personal journey showcases them as regular people.  Sometimes, the leaders I work with are reluctant to build a robust story; they think they’re “bragging” about their background, or worse yet, aren’t proud of some of their career choices.  The fact is, your journey is your journey – those were the stops you made along the way.  Don’t apologize for them.  Every experience helped shape who you are today.  Besides, the more important stories involve critical incidents and lessons learned… this is where you want to spend your time and grab the audience’s attention. 

By studying where you’ve been, and what you’ve learned, you can better chart the course of your future development. What leadership lessons do you still need to learn?  What traps do you want to avoid?  What experiences do you need to add to your story?   Reflect on your own journey by writing and telling your leadership story, and you’ll create a more vivid roadmap for self-development going forward.

(c) 2010. Excerpt from "Bootstrap Leadership: 50 Ways to Break Out, Take Charge, and Move Up" by Steve Arneson

About the Author: Steve Arneson is a senior member of our global Leader Excelerator practice and provides executive coaching to Organisation Solutions’ clients in the Americas. Steve has over 30 years of experience in Leadership Development and Talent Management.