I’ve been working on my calendar this morning and realize that next week I’ll sit down with a room full of Leadership Reno County alumni at Pizza Ranch to talk about energizing others. No agenda. No keynote. Just leaders around a table, thinking out loud together.
That’s the whole point.
One assumption that comes with the LRC model, and really any holistic leadership development, is that leadership is about learning, continuing to be a student, growing in the craft. We say leadership starts with you and must engage others, so because the object is poeople, there are always challenging elements that will require learning. On top of this, we have blind spots, those vulnerabilities that may make us less helpful that we’d hope.
And, yet, we all can recognize when someone stops learning. I usually sense this when someone spends all their time either on the balcony (being paralyzed as they analyze) or the dance floor, hopping from action to action. To put it simply, this comes when we reach the upper echelons of competence.
Competence is a dangerous place to stop.
When you’ve arrived and are the answer to the problems of your world, you typically aren’t hungry to learn much. You’re ready to allow your expertise and experience to pave the way for the greatness you’re ready to unleash. We’ve felt, that, haven’t we. Whether it’s some elected official or even that volunteer board person who just has answers. They may appear curious, but it’s a game they’re playing to establish their own competence.
We can easily get locked into our own way. As one writer put it, we become, “The leader who was once asking questions is now offering answers — even when no one asked.”
The diagnosis I would offer is that they’ve finally got confidence to do their work. We want confidence. We want skill, expertise, and direction (especially if we’re dealing with technical problems that allow authorities to do their best work). The challenge comes when this confidence gives then wings to fly into a world of competence that means the learning is done.
Cue the restlessness.
When I think of leaders who are curious and learning, there are some habits they share: They read. They ask questions. They show up to events not to be the answer but to make progress in learning something they might not readily understand quite yet. They value others.
Someone summarized this as a “learner’s posture” — not manufactured humility, but a real orientation toward the world that says: I don’t have the full picture yet, but I’m willing to learn.
That posture doesn’t weaken their leadership. It’s what keeps their acts of leadership progressing.
Energizing others starts where people are.
The topic for our May 1st gathering (the lunch I mentioned at the start) is energizing others — and I think the connection is direct. Leaders who’ve stopped learning tend to drain rooms (or maybe they fill them with opponents offering different paths forward). There’s nothing new under the sun as they see the world. They’ve heard it all before. And, the effect is profound in the people they’re rubbing off on.
Leaders who are still learning do something different. An energy accompanies them because they are curious and still engaging to learn something from others. They are asking questions not for “gotcha” moments, but to draw out new insights. And, people experience their work being valued – not simply a stepping stone for the boss. People can tell if their thinking matters to someone.
Energizing others is a complicated work. It can’t happen in a vacuum or echo chamber of your awesomeness. And, one way to bust through the walls of this cell is to engage in learning.
If you’re an LRC alum, come find us May 1st. 12–1pm, in Pizza Ranch’s back room. Cover your own meal. Bring your best question. Let’s learn together how we might be able to energize one another.
If you’re not — let’s build something together. Find people you can learn from. And schedule that lunch, or build that cohort, or start a book you’ve been putting off. Whatever it is, get some conversation partners with whom you can create a conversation to see things differently just a touch different than you do.
Back to school! By being a student and always learning, you can step into a great opportunity to serve the people you lead.
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