So Much of Our Time Developing Leadership Skills Is Spent Waiting:
- Waiting for our boss to tap us to attend a personal leadership development course
- Waiting for leadership development to be a track at a conference or event
- Waiting for the right book title to grab our attention so we can stumble upon leadership development
Don’t You Ever Get Sick of Waiting?
Jump Start Your Personal Leadership Development
What if you were to go on the offense and develop yourself as a leader? Do you ever wonder what that would look like?
The fact that you’re reading this article is a clear indicator that you’re ready to initiate your personal leadership development. You might be curious, though, as to where to start.
We Wrote Spark and Created the Spark Experience With You in Mind
We wanted to provide you all the resources you’d need to ignite your personal leadership development, as well as provide you with a clear, step-by-step process for building your fundamental leadership skills.
We also knew that reading a book, alone, wasn’t going to help you achieve your potential as a leader. While a book is a great starting point as it gives you direction on the skills you need to develop, the real work is done by you reflecting on the material you’re learning and discovering areas where you’d like to take action.
SPARK and the SPARK Experience are companion tools that give you the right information, direction, and reflection exercises to help you launch a whole new era of your leadership development.
- A Top Bestseller In
The Three Myths of Leadership
- As you will see in SPARK, the very first thing we want to accomplish before introducing you to specific leadership skills is helping you recognize that leadership isn’t about a job title – it’s about a person’s ability to influence outcomes and inspire others.
- You don’t need to be a boss, have a fancy title, or a corner office to lead – you can lead where you’re at right now!! In fact, some of the most important leaders are those who may not have authority, but are responsible for getting things done.
- To prepare yourself to lead intentionally, we want you to confront three myths on leadership that might be holding you back (one of them being, that you don’t need a title to be a leader). In the Grow You section of the SPARK Experience, you can download the chapter one exercises that help you learn about those myths and explore if there are any barriers to your development.
SPARK is a myth-destroying book that will make you rethink both the theory and practice of leadership.”
Understand Your Personal Strengths and Opportunities for Development
After you realize the many ways you’re probably already leading right now, we want to introduce you to leadership behaviors by helping you expand your self-awareness. Self-awareness allows you to better understand yourself, your strengths, and opportunities for your personal leadership development.
To lead, even if you’re just leading yourself, and to expand your self-awareness, you must know your values. We created a great handout just for you in Grow You. There, you can download the chapter two exercises. It’s a self-reflection tool that allows you to read about commonly held values and choose for yourself which ones are most important to you.
There are questions that follow the values exercise that help you understand areas in your life where you’re living your values, as well as opportunities where you can be more focused on activating your values each day. Values are important. When manifested, they share your character.
Ace the Three C’s:
Credibility, Confidence, and Consistency
The next area of focus for your personal leadership development is your credibility. It’s helping you assess to see if you’re setting the right example as a leader and being consistent with your actions and words. Credibility is important on your journey to build trust with others. Trust is the currency of influence; if people trust you, they follow you. Go to Grow You to find these downloadable materials for chapter three.
You’ll notice throughout the SPARK Experience that there are videos on key leadership behaviors. These videos will help you explore how to:
- Demonstrate personal accountability to be seen as a problem solver in your environment
- Ways you can serve others and build up your team around you
There are also exercises that allow you to build your confidence, which is your opportunity to set higher goals for yourself and put a strategy in place to help you surprise people – even yourself – on what you can achieve with the right focus and attention.
SPARK also talks about the importance of developing habits that help you build consistency. In the Spark Experience, we provide you with a handout to help you understand how to build consistency by using the guidance promoted in SPARK.
Set the Leadership Example for Others by Being a SPARK
Personal leadership development is both accessible and achievable with the right focus and commitment. Don’t underestimate what you can achieve by spending a short period of time each day being intentional about your ability to influence and inspire. Through time, you’ll begin to notice changes and, more importantly, you’ll be happily surprised by how your confidence in your ability to lead grows with each day that passes.
Before you know it, you’ll be sparking the leadership development process among others. One bright spark in any organization can share a positive example for others to follow. You might not realize it, but your leadership example has the potential to shift and change your workspace in many exciting, positive ways.
Best of luck on your personal leadership journey! We’re here to support you with exercises, activities, resources, and encouragement every single step of the way.
In addition to the resources on the SPARK Experience, visit https://www.leadstar.us for more leadership resources and learn how to bring SPARK’s authors into your organization to help inspire greater leadership.
Copyright 2021 Lead Star
