//NOTE: The following is an excerpt from my book, Leadership Starts With You. Before diving into this post, I would encourage you to first read Two Perspectives You Must Have For Personal Growth (Part 1).

Personal growth doesn’t occur naturally. You must be intentional with it. You can leverage your experiences from the past, learning from mistakes and building on your successes. But looking back is only part of the process. A better way to measure and motivate personal growth is to plan for it. This is the planning ahead option.

Planning ahead is like the windshield. When you’re driving, you stare through the windshield while only glancing at the rear view mirror. You will only move forward in your personal growth to the extent you plan for it and implement that plan. Since you’re the one responsible for your growth, you need to create a plan and then follow it.

Do you have a growth plan? A growth plan is an intentional learning process that results in your personal growth. You make a promise to keep learning and then make a disciplined plan for it. The subject matter is up to you. The format is up to you. A growth plan ensures that learning and personal growth happens intentionally rather than incidentally.

If you need help getting started, here’s a rough outline for a growth plan using the letters P.L.A.N. You will need to fill in the specifics with what’s appropriate for you.

P urpose: What do you need to know? Why?

L earning: Where do you want to learn it from? Why?

A ssessment: How will you know you learned it?

N ext Action: What will you do with what you learned?

Let me explain each element a little more.

Purpose: What do you need to know and why do you need to know it?

There are all kinds of reasons and motivations for learning. At the start of creating your growth plan, identify what you need to learn and why you need to learn it. People don’t stop learning because they run out of things to learn. They stop learning because they lost their drive to learn – learning isn’t connected consequence. You’re responsible for your own growth. You will remain disciplined and committed if you know your reasons, as well as your resources throughout the learning process.

Learning: Where do you want to learn it from?

You can learn from books, the internet, other people, videos, podcasts, classes, or real life experience. It might be helpful to learn from a variety of sources. Create a schedule that designates consistent blocks of time for your learning (i.e., 30 minutes a day, one morning or lunch hour a week, etc). Write down what you plan to learn and how you plan to learn it during those times.

Assessment: How will you know you learned it?

The goal of your learning is personal growth. Assess your progress by the changes you see in your thinking and your actions. If you’re growing, it will become evident in your behavior. Are you able to incorporate your learning into your everyday life? Identify ways to capture your learning (in journals, file systems, online archiving) so you can access it easily when you need it.

Next Action: What will you do with what you learned?

Think about your purpose for learning. Your growth plan should include a strategy to use your learning in way that aligns with your purpose. Perhaps you will take what you are learning and teach it to someone else. Or maybe you will implement what you learned into your performance in school or on the job. Now that you’ve learned it, figure out how you’re going to use it.

One last thing. I believe the best tool for establishing your personal growth plan as a consistent discipline is your calendar. This is where you’ll manage your plan. Don’t make your growth plan a line item on your to-do list, make it an appointment you have each day.

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Interested in discovering simple and practical ways to grow yourself as a leader? Download my latest book, Leadership Starts With You. This book will assist you in developing your own self-leadership skills. It’s available for both the Kindle and the Nook. Visit leadershipstartswithyou.com to take the next step in leading yourself well.

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//NOTE: The following is an excerpt from my book, Leadership Starts With You.

Leaders can’t take an interest in growing others if they choose to take an intermission in growing themselves.

Growing old doesn’t take a lot of work. You can grow old without even thinking about it. Unfortunately, maturity doesn’t come with birthdays.

Learning doesn’t happen naturally like aging. Learning takes work. The disciplined kind of work we’ve been talking about. People want to follow someone who is self-disciplined, not someone who is self-destructive. This is why leaders must be learners.

Consider what motivates you to learn and grow. Growing up, you were forced to learn in school. Teachers and tests made us learn something. Some of us did better with books, others with hands-on interaction. Some subjects sparked our interest. In others, we muddled through, hoping for a passing grade. In school, much of the motivation to learn comes from outside ourselves – from our teachers. Some teachers are better motivators than others. But there comes a point when you realize that you are the one who is ultimately responsible for your learning. It’s not a question of having teachers, it’s a matter of being teachable.

Just because teaching is taking place doesn’t mean learning is happening as well. Teachers have a responsibility to teach. You, as a student, have a responsibility to learn. If you’re going to grow, you have to take responsibility for it. As a keeper of the The Rhodium Rule (Do unto yourself what will inspire the best in others), your motivation to learn is fueled by your desire to lead. Leaders are learners.

One of the promises you must make to yourself as a leader is that you will stay invested in your learning – the kind of learning that leads to growth. You keep that promise to yourself by taking charge when it comes to your own growth.

Without the structure of an educational system, some leaders lack the ability to identify opportunities to learn and grow. I propose two simple strategies to assist with this process. You can measure and motivate your own growth by…

1. Looking back, and
2. Planning ahead

Start by looking back. Take some time to think about your answers to the following questions:

• What were you like a year ago?

• Are you the same person you were then?

• Are you still dealing with the same issues?

• Are you still trying to recover from the same mistakes?

• How many books have you read over the last year?

• How many seminars, conferences, and training events have you attended?

• Do you know any new skills?

• Are your relationships better or worse?

• Have you made any new friends?

• Are you in better or worse shape physically?

Looking back gives you perspective on your personal growth. You can learn a lot from the past if you’re willing to take a look at it, reflect on it, evaluate it, and learn from it. Hindsight has something to teach us. Looking at our past shows us why our present is better or worse than it was, say, a year ago. Evaluating the past is helpful. Living in the past isn’t healthy. Like driving a car, the rear view mirror is a useful tool, but you can’t move forward in your vehicle if you’re fixated on it. The windshield is a lot bigger than the rear view mirror for a reason. When it comes to growth, our past may show us where we’ve been, but it doesn’t have to determine where we want to go.

In the next post (Part 2), I’ll discuss why looking back is a good perspective, but planning ahead is a better perspective.

____________________________

Interested in discovering simple and practical ways to grow yourself as a leader? Download my latest book, Leadership Starts With You. This book will assist you in developing your own self-leadership skills. It’s available for both the Kindle and the Nook. Visit leadershipstartswithyou.com to take the next step in leading yourself well.

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Linda Kaplan Thaler and Robin Koval write the following in their book, The Power of Nice,

A Yale University School of Management study found that cheerfulness and warmth spread far more quickly through an office than irritability and depression. The best way to spread these good feelings? With a big toothy smile, the most contagious gesture of all.

There’s something powerful about a smile.

I’ve even created an acrostic for the word smile: Small Movement In Lip Encouragement!

If you’ve got a minute, then hit play to find out this week’s tip to increase your influence.

Got A Minute? #4 – S.M.I.L.E.

Got A Minute #4 from tim milburn on Vimeo.

Want more? Check out the Got A Minute? Video Series page.

Related posts:

1. Got A Minute?
2. VIDEO: Got A Minute? #3
3. Video: Got A Minute? #2

Let’s start this post off with a little dose of reality: every person gets criticized.

Just let that simmer for a moment. Every…person…gets…criticized. Once you understand that, once you realize that you are included in this group known as “every person,” it may help you to deal with criticism properly when it comes your way.

I realize the title of this post is deceiving. You cannot choose who criticizes you or what people criticize you about. You don’t have any control over when and where criticism occurs. If that’s where you spend all of your energy, then you’re going to run out of energy quickly. The only thing you have control over is your response to criticism. You get to make some choices. You get to decide how you will handle criticism rather than allowing the criticism to handle you.

Your world is full of people who have a different opinion, a different approach, and a different perspective than your own. That’s a good thing…right up until the moment when they feel empowered to share how their opinion is wiser than yours, their approach is better than yours, or their perspective is more valuable than yours. Or at the very least, they may just point out where you’re wrong without ever offering why they might be right.

So the next time you receive some criticism, be aware that you get to make some choices:

1. Choose to acknowledge the criticism.
When someone gives you criticism, receive it. Tell them, “thank you for that criticism,” (maybe not in those exact words). You may not agree with it or like it, but you show respect and a posture of humility when you acknowledge it. When your first response is to argue instead of acknowledge, you are allowing criticism to control you

2. Choose to respond rather than react to the criticism.
You don’t have to react to what has been said. You don’t have to do anything. You have the ability to choose how you will respond. If you need some time, simply say, “let me think about that.” You don’t have to get angry or get offended or get bitter…if you don’t want to. You decide what the best response will be.

3. Choose to learn from the criticism.
Even the most outlandish criticism can teach you something about the situation or the other person or yourself. At the very least, you are now more aware of a different opinion, approach, or perspective. But there might also be something valuable that you’ve missed. I’ve had student leaders claim to be teachable. I won’t know if that is really true or not until they’ve faced the criticisms in their life with a willingness to learn and grow.

4. Choose to let the criticism go.
This is really hard for some of us (me!). We may acknowledge the criticism, respond well to it in the moment, and even reflect on it to see what we can learn. Beyond that, we allow the criticism to eat away at us. We mull over it and we become paralyzed by it. It’s at this point, we must learn to let it go, to move forward, to release both the criticism and the one who offered it to us. I don’t know why encouraging words have such a short life span yet criticisms can linger on and on in our minds. Perhaps it’s time to forgive someone for saying something that has hurt you or offended you. Or perhaps it’s time to forgive yourself.

5. Choose to take it personally or not.
Some will begin their criticism with the words, “don’t take this personally.” Hogwash. Even when you try to separate the action from the person, there’s always something personal about it. Conventional wisdom may tell you not to take it personally or develop a thicker skin. I think you have to make that call on a case by case basis. There’s some criticisms that you might want to take very personally and others that you let go quickly and move on. Taking criticism personally depends on a lot of different factors (who said it?, do I trust them?, what’s the motive?, etc).

When we can view our response to criticism as a choice, a choice we get to make, it can free us up from some of the angst and anxiety that goes along with receiving it.

What do you think? What kinds of choices have you made when it comes to responding to the criticism of others?

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“Just because you’re at the front of the line, it doesn’t mean you’re the leader.”
-Author Unknown

We’ve all seen a locomotive. It typically sits at the front of a long line of railroad cars. The locomotive is crucial because it has all the power. That power is used to pull all of the other cars down the track. When this happens, we call it a train.

You may or may not be familiar with “The Loco-motion.” The Loco-motion is a dance. But before it was a dance it was a song. According to Wikipedia…

“The Loco-Motion” is a 1962 pop song written by American songwriters Gerry Goffin and Carole King. The song is notable for appearing in the American Top 5 three times – each time in a different decade: for Little Eva in 1962 (U.S. #1); for Grand Funk Railroad in 1974 (U.S. #1); and for Kylie Minogue in 1988 (U.S. #3).

Here is a YouTube video of the song being performed by Grand Funk Railroad. 70′s Warning!: There’s a reason why these guys use the words grand and funk in their name.

Here’s the comparisons. Which one best describes your style of leadership?

You might have guessed that I am more inclined toward “The Loco-motion” style of leadership. I think we need some new metaphors for leadership. We live in an era where leadership is becoming less about “command and control” are more about “inspire and influence. Now that you’ve seen the comparison, which type of leader would you rather be?

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