I am so excited!  I just booked a trip to Santa Fe New Mexico for Family Vacation and trust me; this will be unlike ANY family vacation you’ve ever been on.  That’s because this vacay isn’t actually a vacation, it is the name of a coaching retreat in which I’m participating.  Twice a year my coach holds retreats for her all of her clients.  We spend 3.5 days working on personal development.  It is an incredibly intense, sometimes emotional, always gratifying experience.

What does this have to do with leadership you might be thinking?  Everything.  As I’ve written before, our goal as leaders is to help our team members grow into self-actualized individuals.  There are two conditions that need to exist in order for this transformation to take place.  First, we need to ensure a team members’ “survival” ala Maslow’s Hierarchy.  I discuss this in the Vlog, Becoming a Locked On Leader.   However, satisfying Maslow’s lower-level needs only opens the door to self-actualization. To obtain self-actualization, the second condition must be met, that of being aware of what it is we were put on this planet to do.  In other words, you need to know your superpower and that requires a degree of self-awareness.

In my blog post It’s the Little Things that Matter, I point state “ If you don’t want your team to do it, don’t do it yourself.”  The converse is also true, Leaders Model the Behaviors we want from our team.  If you want your team members to grow as individuals, then you must grow as well.  I discovered this for myself in 2011 when I was hired as VP at Priority Moving.  Bryan, the owner at that time, has his MBA and has worked for some amazing thought leaders in his career.  He was and still is a consumer of business books.  He started introducing me to some concepts and then gave me the audiobooks so I could learn them.  My business horizons soared as a result.  From there I graduated to personal improvement books.  My live has been deeply enriched ever since.

Along the way I discovered a fundamental truth, effective leaders make time for personal improvement.  It’s the ultimate triple win.  As we grow as individuals, discover our true values and worth; uncover our superpower and purpose in this world, we interact with our team and others in a more powerful, positive, and passionate way.  You will notice your team improve their response to your leadership.  Some will even emulate your behaviors on their own.  Others will respond positively to your gentle nudges.  As your team transforms, your company will benefit.  Customer satisfaction, production, profitability will all be positively impacted.  Your customers and your vendors will also benefit.  The ripple effect is enormous.

What are you doing to improve yourself?  How are you modeling this for your team?  Need someone to discuss this with?  Reach out to me or, better yet, just get on my schedule for a free Accountability Action Call and we can explore this together.