The Leader's Path to Personal Growth
In a leadership context, personal growth is the constant dedication to growing and developing core new skills needed to succeed in your industry or field.
There are various ways to achieve personal growth and development, including having a mentor, attending training and workshops to develop core leadership skills, listening to seasoned business podcasts, etc. Another reliable way to grow is to read books on leadership.
All these ways will help you improve your personal growth and development significantly.
However, it doesn’t matter how you choose to follow; personal growth demands you set achievable goals by building positive habits daily. In this article, you will learn what to focus on during your journey to personal growth.
Things to Emphasize During Your Personal Growth Journey
1. IDENTITY
The first thing you must lock in on your growth journey is your identity. Your identity is the foundation of both professional and personal development. There are several ways you can strengthen your identity. They include:
1. Knowing your skills and natural gifts: To understand these, identify the activities you are most proficient in. Understand how you feel when you are asked to do some tasks. Also, know why you have specific skills. This knowledge will help in identifying your purpose.
2. Creating a confident self-image: How you talk to yourself is crucial if you want to grow as a leader. If you are always saying negative affirmations like “I might never be the leader my team needs” or “I don’t think I can turn this situation around,” you will live those affirmations. Instead, use positive affirmations like “I lead my team as I ought to” or “Through my leadership, my team experiences a huge turnover in profit like never before,” etc. This will help in building your confidence and also shapes your actions.
3. Being clear about your vision: You have to find a way to connect your personal growth to your goals in life. Doing this will let you know the needed skills to accomplish them. For example, if you want to retire before the age of 40 and start earning passive income, you need to learn different investment strategies to help you achieve that.
2. SUCCESS
The primary reason you are working on yourself as a leader is to be successful. However, you also need to realize that you have to know how to handle failures before you can handle success. There is no success without failure. A survey done on a group by Linkagoal showed that 49% admitted that fear of failure was a vital setback for them. Another 43% said this same fear prevented them from trying again after failing once. Fear of failing can prevent significant personal growth. To conquer this fear, follow the following tips:
1. Shun victim mentality: If you want to eliminate fear, you have to stop letting other people influence how you live negatively. It is your sole responsibility to be happy and prosperous. Even when you have a legitimate reason to be a victim, please don’t allow it to be a part of your identity. You will be preventing your personal development if you do.
2. Have a growth mindset: Another reliable way to conquer failure fears is to change how you see it as a negative experience. Leaders with a growth mindset view failure as a learning opportunity. Instead of letting failure stop you from trying again, understand what went wrong in your first trial and learn from your mistakes.
3. Define success and work towards it: If you want to be successful, you must have your definition of success and work towards it. Don’t let anybody define what success is to you. If you do, you will work towards someone’s definition of success. This will make you feel you have to be a people pleaser. You will find out that fear will not let you take calculated risks because you don’t want to disappoint people. Working on your identity will help you to prevent this.
3. RAISE OTHER LEADERS
One of the most remarkable qualities of a leader is their ability to raise other leaders. However, you won’t be able to achieve this if you don’t prioritize personal growth. For a leader, personal growth and development is not a choice but a responsibility. When you became a leader, you made a commitment to care for those under you and lead them well.
Your team’s success and well-being are dependent on how serious you take your personal growth. You also need to use your knowledge and develop other leaders.
Raising leaders at every level and sector in your organization is how your business will succeed. So, make sure you continue to learn about servant leadership, develop core leadership skills and understand your measure of success.
Final Thoughts
Many people don’t like the idea of personal growth and development because of the toxic and superficial advice numerous writers and speakers have fed them. However, to become a great and successful leader, you must prioritize personal growth. The tips above will help you to improve your personal growth significantly.
As a seasoned author on leadership and personal growth, I have helped many leaders develop core leadership skills related to their respective fields.
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