Increas­ing our lead­er­ship capac­ity requires more than just knowl­edge. It truly requires us to be fully engaged and pas­sion­ate in the cause. We must change and grow, which means we must enter into the uncom­fort­able zone. As lead­ers, we need to always start with our­selves when we want to make an orga­ni­za­tion improve. The ques­tion of “how must I change or adapt in order for this ini­tia­tive or improve­ment to take root” is a great start­ing point. Note: This post is part of a series on Increas­ing Your Lead­er­ship Capac­ity. Click here for the pre­vi­ous step.

This step comes from a les­son our Build­ing Cham­pi­ons lead­er­ship team learned a few years back dur­ing a part­ner plan­ning and con­nec­tion ses­sion with our friends at Patrick Lencioni’s com­pany, The Table Group. Patrick shared that one of their con­vic­tions was to be hum­ble and hungry.

As I look at what is required to truly increase my lead­er­ship capac­ity (and then our team’s), I see that I must be hum­ble and hun­gry. A while back I did a post titled “How Lit­tle I Know.” In it, I wrote about how the best lead­ers are really com­fort­able with acknowl­edg­ing where they need help.

It feels so coun­ter­in­tu­itive to most who have bought the old-school com­mand and con­trol lead­er­ship mind­set. But when a leader is both hum­ble and hun­gry, you have a leader who is best equipped to grow and to bring oth­ers along on the jour­ney. This hunger is to not only learn, but to grow, to serve, to improve, to stretch, to impact oth­ers, and to cre­ate some­thing of even greater significance.

Here are 5 prac­ti­cal tips for those of you who desire to grow your lead­er­ship capac­ity and see the oppor­tu­nity to fully embrace humil­ity and hunger as key steps in the process.

1. Ask more ques­tions. Don’t worry about whether they will cause you to appear to not know it all. You don’t — and those around you already know this!

2. Truly lis­ten to the answers and ask clar­i­fy­ing ques­tions to make sure you really have what you need in order to grow. Often this means spend­ing time ask­ing the right ques­tions and really lis­ten­ing to your customer-facing team­mates (those on the front lines deliv­er­ing your prod­ucts or ser­vices), and then spend­ing more time doing the same with your customers.

3. Slow down. Often times lead­ers believe that they must be the fastest movers on their teams.  This is a huge mis­take. We need to slow down so we can con­nect and lis­ten if we want to see the things we would miss when we are mov­ing too fast. This can look like sched­uled mar­gin time with noth­ing on your cal­en­dar other than time to respond, to think, and to be avail­able. (This is one key area for me to grow in the year ahead.) We must remem­ber that we lead­ers are more than ther­mome­ters; we are ther­mostats. Our pace and our inter­ac­tions with those around us will impact our cul­ture, our cus­tomer expe­ri­ence, and our results.

4. Think more — both alone and with those on your lead­er­ship team. A hum­ble leader knows she doesn’t have all the answers and that her prod­ucts or ser­vices could be improved, so she has inten­tional time to think alone and col­lab­o­ra­tively with those on her lead­er­ship team.

5. Invite sharp­en­ing. Ask for those you respect and trust to call you out when your behav­iors and actions don’t line up with who you are and your con­vic­tions. This can look like being okay and grate­ful when one of your team­mates lets you know that your pos­ture or words are com­ing across as defen­sive instead of hun­gry.  (I will do another post on this tip in the weeks ahead.)

Grow­ing means enter­ing into the uncom­fort­able zone. But by being hum­ble and hun­gry, the pain is far less severe than the pain and frus­tra­tion of plateauing.

Note: This post is part of a series on Increas­ing Your Lead­er­ship Capac­ity.
Step 1: Own Your Role
Step 2: Be Healthy
Step 3: 6 Steps to Improve Your Thinking

Related posts:

1. 6 Steps to Improve Your Think­ing (Increas­ing Your Lead­er­ship Capac­ity Series — Step 3 of 8)
2. 8 Steps to Increase Your Lead­er­ship Capac­ity (Series)
3. They Must Leave Bet­ter Than They Arrived
4. Me First!
5. Lead­er­ship Moment: Attack­ing Conflict

Tags: Attitude, Growth, Humility, Improvement, Increasing Your Leadership Capacity, Leadership, Self Development

This entry was posted on Friday, January 13th, 2012 at 7:54 am and is filed under Leadership. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.