Why the Best Leaders are Those Who Never Stop Learning

Brief 

The best leaders are those who always seek to learn more from their customers and their employees so they can develop both their teamwork skills and knowledge on how to handle conflicts and challenges, writes Kevin Kehoe, co-founder of Aspire Software. “Developing teamwork is especially important for young companies as roles are often blurred, systems are absent and deep relationships have yet to be established,” Kehoe writes.

Insight

In the past month, it’s been back to school time again. For many of us that last happened many, many years ago. That’s a shame because business leaders should never stop “going to back school”.

Why? Well, for the simplest of reasons…so they can continue to learn. And as a CEO, entrepreneur, founder or manager gets older and assumes leadership roles, they are seven ways they should keep learning and teaching to be able to successfully grow and scale a business.

1. Study your “Best” Teacher

Many of us can readily recall our favorite teachers. I can. They taught us lessons that resonate to this day. Perhaps it was because of who they were, or maybe it was what they said, but we learned something, that gave us a sense of achievement then, and that maybe today still helps us navigate life’s challenges. Take a minute to think about who was your favorite teacher, and why?

2. Become a Successful Learner

To teach your employees, you must first know how to be a successful learner. This holds true for business managers and leaders. The best leaders are in part “the best” because they’re excellent teachers. And they are excellent teachers because they are accomplished learners.

They know how to learn, what to learn, and where to learn it from. It is these skills that entrepreneurs trying to scale a business on a rapidly changing playing field must develop.

I know this to be true, because we’ve all experienced what can go wrong when leaders assume what they know is most important, or when they have the wrong information, or worse, when they over-rely on management scorecards and reports. These are learning mistakes that can cripple a young company making the leap from startup to managed enterprise. You always want to be open to learning more