If you’re not moving forward, you’re moving backward

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past few years, you’ll recognise that agility, creativity, the ability to collaborate and emotional intelligence are crucial to effective team leadership.

Managing and pre-empting change, spotting opportunities for continual improvement, relationship-building and self and others-awareness are essential traits for successful 21^st century people managers.

Unsurprisingly therefore, personal development is essential for team leaders – to ensure you’re moving with the times, maximising your own potential and that of your team members. Let’s face it, no-one in a people management role should need convincing of the importance of personal development. Nowadays, if you’re not developing yourself to move forward, you’re not even treading water…you’re being left behind!

So, following the 70/20/10 rule, your personal development approach should look like this:

70% of your development could be done on-the-job – providing you’re thinking creatively, you could get stuck into learning opportunities such as stretch assignments, new initiatives, improvement projects or spending time in another department. You may need the support of others in the workplace to get these in place, but if you’re committed to your own development it’s always possible to create opportunities in the workplace.

20% of your development could be done via coaching and mentoring – finding a coach who will challenge you to become more self-aware, reflect on your performance, explore the challenges you face and develop a plan for the future can massively impact your development in a positive way (Ahem…look no further 😉 ).

10% of your development could be focused on more formal learning – such as development programmes.

So how do you maximise the 10% bit? I’d highlight three alternatives:

In-house

Learning alongside peers from your own organisation enables sharing of common issues, discussion of specific challenges and an opportunity for managers to bond across departments and within the same cultural setting.

This is especially effective if inter-departmental management meetings don’t tend to happen in your business. In house development programmes provide a great platform for managers to interact with each other and share information that’s crucial for the smooth running of the business. Working together to iron out issues, develop new ways of collaborating and improve communication across teams can be hugely beneficial.

Additionally a key advantage of in-house development is that it can be tailored to the specific needs of the company – focusing in on key areas aligned to your internal strategy.

In-industry

Learning alongside peers from organisations in similar or sister industries provides a greater sharing of insights into how others are managing and leading in similar environments. It can be really reassuring to raise issues and find that others in similar companies also face them – then to discuss different ways of tackling those challenges and what’s worked in different settings. Seeing how similar organisations operate and how they’ve tailored their approach to their environment can give you plenty of ideas about how to introduce change and tweak existing practices. These programmes can broaden peoples’ perspectives and improve networking across the industry.

Cross-sector

And finally, learning alongside peers from different organisations across different sectors, can give you a chance to see how the rest of world operates! Sharing stories and experiences with managers from a range of industries – manufacturing, health, financial services, retail, engineering, construction, education, charity, leisure, hospitality – is a fantastic way of expanding your knowledge of how other leaders work. Hearing about fresh approaches and creative ideas which may not have even been considered in your own organisation or be commonplace in your sector, can be inspirational for those who want to take a more open-minded approach to management practices.

So which is best for you?

As an organisation, there are advantages to all three ‘10%’ options, so it’s important to weigh up which would be most beneficial to your people managers.

As an individual leader, you need to carefully consider how you go about developing yourself for the future. Try to get your 70/20/10 development plan in place, maintain momentum and keep an eye on your own progress.

But most importantly, just make sure you’re doing SOME development and not being left behind!