Experienced leaders don’t simply manage operations. They develop people. Leadership Expert Dave Anderson explains that leaders must continually develop themselves if they expect their organization and employees to reach peak performance.
On the latest episode of Lessons in Leadership, Anderson covers the fifth commandment in his “15 Commandments for Organizational Peak Performance” program: add value or get out of the way.
Anderson begins the discussion arguing that leaders must continually invest in their own growth if they expect their teams to reach peak performance.
“Quite simply, you can’t export what you don’t have.”
He also notes that the core problem for many leaders isn’t the lack of effort, but a misallocation of it. Leaders spend so much time on administrative tasks, such as budgets, forecasts, emails, and phone calls, that they leave little time to actually develop the people they’re responsible for. He calls this “over-managing,” and says it often comes at the expense of leading. Therefore, he encourages leaders to spend more time helping employees leave work better than they arrived.
On the other hand, Anderson pushed back on the idea that growth happens automatically with tenure. He said years of experience alone don’t guarantee wisdom or improvement, pointing out that plenty of longtime professionals repeat the same mistakes throughout their careers.
Real growth, he said, comes from the deliberate application of experience, such as learning from mistakes and adjusting course. That kind of growth can happen early in a career just as easily as it can after decades in the business.
A quarterly growth checklist
Anderson recommends leaders get intentional about their own development by asking a set of questions each quarter:
- What habit needs improvement?
- What skill needs to be elevated or developed?
- What knowledge needs to expand?
- What mindset issues need attention, such as overfocusing on what can’t be controlled?
- What character issues need to be addressed, such as accountability or follow-through on commitments?
Nevertheless, Anderson said leaders who work through those questions put themselves in a better position to raise the performance of everyone around them.
“If your people have stopped growing, it’s probably because you have,” Anderson said. “If you want them to become more valuable, it starts with you.”
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