Continuous Improvement: What Leaders Need to Succeed in Business
Written by Phil Geldart, Eagle’s Flight CEO
Great leaders must strive to continually learn new skills and apply them to their personal and professional lives. Continuous improvement is the next topic within the eight principles of leadership.
1. Learn New Skills
When you learn new skills, it is an investment in yourself. New skills allow you to do new things, tackle old things from a new perspective, and get better results. They give you the ability to deal with issues more effectively, or in a way that you never used to be able to do.
The greater your skill set, the more options you have in terms of how to approach an issue or situation, or how to use your time. Also, as you constantly learn new things, you keep your mental faculties sharp, and your flexibility and willingness to look at new things (or old things in a different way) functioning in high gear.
Constantly investing in and improving your skills is an extremely effective way to contribute to the performance of the organization of which you are a part, as well as your own personal satisfaction and job competence. The more highly skilled you are, the better you’ll be able to deal with people, issues, and opportunities that come your way.
2. The Postmortem
A great way to continue to improve yourself is to set aside time after something has been completed and review it to see what you can learn from the experience. This “postmortem” is effective both after you’ve done something simple and after a major activity or project has been completed. It’s true that we learn best by our experience, but unless we pause after each experience and consider how we can apply our learning the next time, we’re not really learning from the experience; we’re just having the experience.
Very often, a postmortem is best when it’s done together with others who have also been involved in the task or project with you. Given the power of experience as a learning vehicle, and the frequency with which some tasks are repeated month to month and year to year, all completed activities of any significance would benefit from a postmortem. Analysis of what was done well, and what could be done better in the next cycle, produces significant learning based on experience and practicality. Scheduling a postmortem review upon completion of each significant task provides a major opportunity for ongoing improvement of performance.
3. Be Patient
In a world of microwave ovens, internet fiber optics, and immediate coverage of world events, we tend to want everything to occur instantly or, if not instantly, certainly in a matter of seconds. However, self-improvement is more like taking a trip than surfing the internet. It takes time. As a result, you need to be patient with yourself and with others as you begin to learn new skills and work at self-improvement.
“How-to” skills come more quickly, like learning to use new software or a new company process. The more intangible ones, like listening skills and communication skills, tend to take more time and practice, and they require more patience to learn and master. It is sometimes much easier to be patient with ourselves than to be patient with others. We forget that others also need the same time to make the journey of self-improvement.
While the results from personal development are often wanted as quickly as possible, the growth that occurs in individuals takes time, and we need to be patient and allow that growth to occur. Insights need to be tested, experience needs to be incorporated, and learning needs to be integrated with existing procedures. Being patient and allowing this process to occur over time produces long-term, sustained results.
4. Learning Mindset
One of the exciting things about being committed to self-improvement is the opportunity to learn from many different sources. We don’t always have to go to a course, a class, or a college to learn things. There are lots of opportunities around us. One of the best ways to learn is from one another.
The important thing is that we go into events or experiences with a determined, committed, and open-minded approach to learning. Success itself can often be a detriment, in that it can keep us from looking for new ways to do things (unlike failure, which drives us to look for alternate approaches!). Within any organization, each individual needs to have a high degree of commitment to personal development and a mindset that values personal growth and improvement.
Even the most successful leaders can become even more so by learning to do their job faster, better, or more economically. As they increase their own learning or skill, successful leaders set the pace for others within the organization. Know what you want to learn—or learn more about—and find a source of information. Then, go get it, and absorb it.
5. Self-Control
One specific area where we need to be constantly working at self-improvement is our own self-control. It may seem like a strange topic to work on under the category of self-improvement, but self-control is something at which we need to become extremely good, and as such justifies us putting a lot of energy and focus into improving it.
The need for self-control can show up in a discussion with a family member, subordinate, peer, or supervisor. We may find ourselves saying something we later regret, or acting in a way which, on later reflection, we feel was inappropriate. To avoid speaking or acting that way in the first place requires self-control. In this case, self-control means to first ask yourself, “Am I about to say or do something hurtful or inappropriate, or that I’ll later wish I hadn’t said or done?” It’s this kind of review before speaking or acting that requires great self-control.
Lack of self-control, even for a moment, can often undo a great deal of good. Most organizations are looking for those who can demonstrate personal self-control before they are willing to give them control of others, a complicated process, or a significant outcome. By demonstrating self-control, we instill calm in others and confidence in our approach. This allows those around us to focus on the task at hand, not worrying about whether those with whom they’re working, or perhaps following, are going to lose control.
6. Apply It
There’s a big difference between knowing intellectually what was taught at a course on creating stained glass windows, and actually going home and making one—learning how what was taught works in practice. When you begin to apply what was taught, you learn what was meant. This same principle is true with everything that you learn in the hopes of acquiring new skills—if you don’t apply the skills, it’s like never having learned them at all.
This is particularly difficult when you’re trying to learn intangible or “soft” skills like communication, more so than it is for more tangible things, like learning to use a forklift. When we get into the intangible areas, it always seems easier to go back to the previous way. We may recognize that it is not as effective as we would like, but typically at that moment we’re “too busy” to try to apply a new skill. And what’s sometimes even worse, when we do apply it, we feel as though we are even less effective than we were with the old skills. That’s because, like anything new, it takes time to really get the hang of a new skill and get good at it.
Only by persevering and consistently working at applying each new skill will you get the benefit and see the value. The application of learning is crucial and requires self-discipline. Learning about new skills is easy. However, the application of that learning requires focus, time, and an intense commitment of our will to ensure that we actually apply what we have learned. As you acquire new skills, make a point of using them until you see a change in yourself.
These six components of continuous improvement will ensure that your leadership skills never stagnate. Stay tuned for our next post in this series, where we discuss “delivering on promises” as one of our eight principles of leadership.
