I think the best leaders expand their influence and leadership potential by continuing to learn and grow in experience. It takes an intentional effort to improve as a leader. You can read books, follow blogs and Tweets, attend conferences, and hang out with other leaders. These are all good practices to improve as a leader.
In my experience, however, my leadership influence grows the fastest when it grows through the people I’m supposed to be leading. Let me explain.
Here are five ways I expand my leadership potential:
1. Invest in other people.
It’s amazing, but when I invest in others, they invest in me. I have had several mentoring groups or relationships where I am supposed to be the mentor, but I feel I learned as much as they did.
2. Allow someone you lead to lead.
When I get out of the way of my team, amazing things happen. Now, first, I surround myself with people smarter than me about their area of expertise, but they make my leadership better. I may even get credit for the overall success of the team—but I’m quick to admit I couldn’t have done it without them.
3. Promote someone else’s agenda.
I’ve learned people have better ideas than me. A lot better ideas. Actually, I’m an idea guy. I have lots of them. But if the team is bigger than one—there’s always one more idea to consider. I’m a better leader—with more potential—when I open the idea-generation task to more people than me.
