What Do Leaders And Winter Have In Common?

I love Summer, I enjoy Spring, Fall is okay but Winter, man I am not a fan. For me Winter is too cold and too long. In my mind, I think let’s just get rid of Winter.

But what would happen if it was Summer all the time? Would I really want my neighbors in my yard year around? Or do I love Summer because we all KNOW that Winter will come so we FULLY embrace Summer? We know that we will get our quiet time in Winter so we don’t mind the constant traffic of Summer.

As a Leader Winter is like your time of LEARNING. It should be your longest season and it should happen EVERY YEAR. I can’t tell you how many leaders I run in to that consider themselves “there.” Like once they have arrived they don’t need any more training.

Who are they kidding? That is when you need it the most.

As a leader your brain shouldn’t even be CLOSE to what it was even six months ago. You should be constantly stretching it. Only by doing this will you gain new insights and the ability to “SEE” things you didn’t before. It is like changing the lens cap on a camera and suddenly new things come in to view. They were there before but not visible to you because they weren’t in your conscious level of that time.

The training is not always about the content. It is about the way it stretches your brain, how you mold it to your past and present, and how to apply it to your life today. You life is never at the same spot so you will never absorb the learning in the same way.

Think about Lance Armstrong. What if he said, “I learned how to ride a bike as a kid so I don’t need any more lessons.” You couldn’t even imagine him saying that because you realize the level he is stretching to is way beyond what he was as a kid. On top of that the equipment he learned on as a kid is not even close to the equipment he has today. His brakes today are probably 1000 times more sensitive then the brakes he used as a kid. There is no way he could apply the same pressure to his brakes today as he did 40 years ago and expect the same results. So why DO YOU?

I encourage all the leaders we work with to constantly read, travel, and stretch. You never know where your next insight will come from.

Anne Warfield, http://www.impressionmanagement.com/