Be Brilliant

Facet 12 Accelerate

It continues to amaze me how many of us personally invest in financial planners to build financial freedom, trainers to create that perfect body, nutritionists for better eating or meditation teachers for more balance, yet we still fail to personally invest in our own leadership capability. Worse still, when individuals do invest in learning (either out of their own pockets or at the expense of their businesses) it's always astounding how many don't put into practice the learnings — they fail to do the required work, they don't even commit to making a 1 per cent change. They put the learning into their bottom drawer, give up or move on, searching for the next learning fix.

It's all lost in a sea of excuses: too hard, no time, where to start, what's the point!

It was organisational psychologist Karl Weick who said that the best advice leaders can give is ‘I don't know', because by saying this leaders are challenging themselves and others to think and explore more. Tom Peters calls it ‘cultivating “towering competence”'. Essentially, continually learning more, honing your skills and developing yourself and your thinking to the point that you become known for knowing something is the key.

I get that this learning thing is challenging. It forces us out of the comfort zone of knowing what we know, it challenges us to get comfortable with being uncomfortable, it encourages us to explore and get curious about something new and unknown. It forces us to admit, ‘Hey, ...