How do people learn to be leaders?

That’s the question leadership consultant and thought leader Robert J. Thomas answered at a leadership academy event I recently helped organize. Speaking from his book Crucibles of Leadership, Thomas demonstrated that simply taking a course on leadership would do little to transform leadership abilities. In fact, knowledge plays only a small role in a leader’s effectiveness, despite the high price often invested in higher education.

Here is a sample of the elements that transform ordinary people into great leaders.

Experience

The “crucible” of going through challenging experiences (both in life and vocation) has a transforming effect on a person’s leadership ability. I’ve found this to be the case in my own assessment of hundreds of c-suite leaders as well. It’s interesting to note (according to Thomas) that early in life (or career), leaders may find themselves “pushed” into a crucible experience, while later on they tend to “leap.” As they mature, effective leaders learn to recognize, seek and steward the crucial experiences that come their way.

Practice

The half-life of new knowledge is incredibly short. To grow, leaders must form the discipline to transform an “ah-ha” moment into a commitment to practice until they experience a breakthrough. Not only that, leaders are self-aware enough to know the circumstances they need in order to practice sufficiently. To demonstrate this point, the participants in our academy individually identified a skill they practiced to proficiency and compared it to another they gave up. In almost all occasions, talent and knowledge were not the difference. It was the ownership, commitment and supporting circumstances – almost all of which could be recreated in the future.

Purpose

The “why” behind any endeavor usually determines the success of the outcome. But it’s important to note that a specific purpose often changes over time – even for the same goal. What motivates us at age 20 is often different than at age 30. What drives us to achieve initial success may not sustain us to reach the next level. In order to harness the motivation that success (and practice) requires, we need to constantly refresh our sense of purpose.

Coaching

Leadership isn’t “taught” as much as it is “caught.” Teachers, trainers, mentors and supervisors all play a role in developing leaders. But the best leadership “teachers” are the ones who can coach a developing leader to understand the key “moves” that must be made in a given situation. The quality of leadership “teachers” a person has access to varies by the individual. That shouldn’t be an excuse. Thomas posed that “A great student can make a good teacher into a great teacher – and an inarticulate leader into a great teaching leader.”

Community

“No one learns alone,” Thomas wrote in his book. For leaders, that means finding, participating and contributing in communities of leaders who are on a learning journey together. Sometimes these communities are created externally (our leadership academy, for instance). In other instances, leaders must create their own.

Becoming a leader doesn’t happen by accident. Effective leaders are diligent and committed. Still, no one is immune from the serendipity of crucible learning experiences. My favorite quote from Thomas’ book sums it up best: “Sometimes events can conspire to make you a leader.” (Tweet)

So what’s your learning strategy when it comes to leadership?

Nathan Magnuson is a leadership consultant, coach, trainer and thought leader.  Receive his ebook Trusted Leadership Advisor by subscribing to his website or   follow him on Twitter.

I can say firsthand there are some amazing learning events out there. Unfortunately, for every great one, there are several mediocre ones. If you’ve been tasked with building or sourcing training for your team, let me save you some grief by sharing nine factors that can kill your effectiveness.

1. It Doesn’t Meet a Real (or Felt) Business Need

One of the hallmarks of adult learning theory is that professionals are much more likely to want to participate in a learning event they recognize will help them solve a problem or pain-point they already have. This seems obvious, but trust me – I’ve seen enough cases otherwise. Always be clear about what problem the learning event will solve.

2. The Learning Objectives Aren’t Clear

You’ve probably sat through a training session that opened with a preview of the takeaways. This is even more important for the learning designers than it is for the learners. If the business need is the north star, the objectives are the road map. Pick the best route – then stick to it.

3. It’s Boring

This may be my biggest pet peeve with learning events. It’s expensive and hard work to develop them and get people to attend. If you want your learning event to be a hit, make it fun as well. Mediocre content that is very engaging will stick (and create much greater buzz) than perfect content that is boring. If your subject isn’t the most engaging to begin with, invest the time to interject fun aspects, like ice-breakers or energizers.

4. It’s Poorly Facilitated

The quality of your facilitator can usually make or break the learning experience. The more important the event, the more carefully you’ll need to select and prepare the facilitator. The best facilitators are flexible; they can teach, ask questions, spark debate and organize group discussions and activities.

5. The Content Complicates Rather than Simplifies

Just because you’re delivering a learning event doesn’t mean the learners need to know everything they possibly can about a topic. Less is generally more. The top three tips will stick a lot easier than the top twelve. You can always provide resources to dive deeper later on.

6. It’s Too Conceptual or Vague

If your topic involves “thinking differently,” make sure you provide concrete examples as well. Otherwise the participants will have trouble determining how to apply the concepts.

7. There’s No Opportunity to Interact or Practice

Here’s a secret: most participants say their favorite part of learning events is the time they spend interacting with each other. Don’t just include discussions of their experience with the topic. Give them a chance to apply it practically.

Imagine a military who sent its recruits to a boot camp that took place completely in a classroom (or online). They might become educated, but they’d be completely ineffective in battle. Practice makes a huge difference.

8. There’s No Reinforcement

I like to say, “Don’t let what happens in the training room stay in the training room.” For learning designers, this means taking the time to include quality reinforcement opportunities that extend beyond the actual learning event. Create meaningful homework assignments, follow-up activities, discussion guides, etc.

9. Supervisors of Participants Aren’t Asked or Able to Support

Supervisors should always be kept in the loop of their staff’s training activities and included as much as possible. Supervisors are a great source of reinforcement, provided they’re included.

Remember, as a designer or coordinator, your responsibility isn’t just to put on a good event, it’s to impart knowledge, skills and behavior to solve the organization’s problems. Even with all the learning providers that flood each industry, high quality learning experiences can, and will, stand out.

Nathan Magnuson is a leadership consultant, coach, trainer and thought leader.  Receive his ebook Trusted Leadership Advisor by subscribing to his website or   follow him on Twitter.

So how can knowledge actually be a curse? Consider a few of the ways.

Jump to Conclusions

Once we gain a degree of knowledge in a certain area, it’s difficult to resist making assumptions that we now know best what to do. Unconscious bias can cloud our rationale. In times of change (which is all the time), the methods of the past won’t always produce the same results in the future. Just because we’ve experienced success doesn’t mean we can blindly approach new situations in the same old ways.

Lose Inquisitive Spirit

Because the curse of knowledge by definition includes existing insight, it’s impossible for an expert to approach a situation as a newcomer. Where rookies default to research and external thought leadership, veterans default to their own experiences. Maintaining an inquisitive spirit is extremely difficult and can seem like a waste of time if we’re already confident we can score at least a passing grade. At this point, our expertise begins to plateau because we’re operating from memory vs. curiosity.

Fail to Communicate with Followers

If you’ve ever had an expert talk over your head, you know how hard it is to relate. Or maybe you were the expert who found it difficult to get your point across – perhaps to employees or customers. Authors Chip Heath and Dan Heath address this specific issue in an HBR article on the curse of knowledge. As an expert, you must constantly translate your message so it can be understood by the non-experts.

Fall Behind the Change Curve

I don’t know about you, but if I need emergency surgery, I want to be operated on by an expert with the latest knowledge, equipment and technology. It doesn’t matter to me if my physician was valedictorian of his medical school three decades ago – I want him to be an expert by today’s standards. If it’s been a long time since you’ve done something for the first time – and you haven’t accessed the latest thinking and methods, you may have fallen behind.

There is no substitute for knowledge and know-how. But for it to be truly be the advantage it is, we’ve got to employ it with an open mind instead of a close one. Continuous learning is more difficult than new learning, but the need has never been higher.

If you’re the expert, push yourself not just to learn new things, but also to study the latest innovations in your areas of expertise. Push yourself to see if a new approach can net better results. And if you’re an organizational leader, look for ways to capture the observations of new leaders while constantly exposing experienced leaders to new situations.

Nathan Magnuson is a leadership consultant, coach, trainer and thought leader.  Receive his new ebook Trusted Leadership Advisor by subscribing to his website  or follow him on Twitter.

Which session did you learn more from?

Regardless of your function or industry, learning plays a key role in business effectiveness. No one was born knowing how to do any job – and even with all the preparatory training we’ve received over the years (e.g. college), the speed of change demands that we continually learn better ways. (I know I, for one, don’t want to receive the same surgery a “seasoned” surgeon was trained on three decades ago!) So whether you develop training as a profession or you request it as a professional, it’s worth understanding how adults learn best.

Malcolm Knowles was an American educator who shaped much of adult learning theory (“andragogy”) with his publications in the 1980s. His works are considered best practice today. What is most important to understand is what makes adult learning distinct. Here are Knowles’ four adult learning principles – and some tips to be mindful of:

Learner Involvement

According to Knowles, adults prefer to be involved in their learning process – planning, goal-setting, evaluation, etc. In other words, they desire an active role, not a passive one. Because every adult’s situation and experience differs, what one learner takes away may be completely different than another. It’s important for educators to facilitate goal-setting among learners and attempt to design the learning process to capture application on an individual level. In many cases, it can also be helpful for educators to position themselves as fellow learners rather than instructional experts.

Bottom line: If you’re not collaborating with adult learners, you’re missing the boat.

Learner Experience

In formative years, education is geared toward learning something new for the future. For adults, their acquired knowledge and experiences provide a starting point – both successes and mistakes. As a result, “trainers” are rarely the only experts in the learning environment. Peers bring expertise as well. In fact, in a recent organizational assessment I recently conducted of several groups of executives, the top rated learning opportunity was “interacting with peers on common problems and sharing best practices.” If your adult learning environment doesn’t include peer interactions of past & present experiences, you’re missing a huge opportunity.

Bottom line: Interact with and incorporate learners’ experiences into the framework of the learning environment.

Relevance & Impact to Learner’s Lives

The topics most ripe for adult learners are those that can have immediate impact on business or personal life. Remember, children learn for the future, adults learn for the present. Because of this, learning assignments should relate to an adult’s stated goals. When learning is relevant and impact is clear (e.g. a sales professional can learn how to close 20% more deals), the learner is inspired and motivated internally.

Bottom line: Adults want to learn when the topic makes them more successful now.

Problem-Centered

Content is no longer king in adult learning – problem-solving is king. If your team has elected to conduct training, ensure the training addresses the actual problem – don’t just settle for off-the-shelf content, even if it’s good. (Incidentally, many learning needs can be solved in ways other than formal training). Since content isn’t king, learners are more apt to learn by doing than by passive listening. Simulations or practice scenarios go a long way.

Bottom line: The learning solution should be specific to the problem or opportunity.

It’s easy to get learning wrong, even if you have the best intentions and pay top dollar. But the best learning environments – the ones that really result in change – incorporate adult learning theory into the bones of the learning experience.

Are there any learning opportunities you might need to approach differently?

Nathan Magnuson is a leadership consultant, coach, trainer and thought leader.  Receive his ebook Trusted Leadership Advisor by subscribing to his website or   follow him on Twitter.

Regardless, if you are going to invest in a leadership event, it’s an opportunity for excellence – whether you are an executive, manager or training expert. Don’t settle for mediocrity. Just having an event doesn’t guarantee success. Incorporate these best practices.

Identify a Real Need

Investing in a leadership event shouldn’t happen on a whim. It shouldn’t happen when the boss runs into a vendor at an event or thumbs through a bestseller in the airport. But whether it’s part of a strategic initiative or more opportunistic, a leadership event should focus on a real-life organizational need. That means there should be some sort of assessment or consultation beforehand. Identify the greatest opportunities in the organization and align the event accordingly. Don’t just focus on a topic of interest. Ask: “What do we want people to do differently as a result of the event?” Do as Stephen Covey says: put first things first.

Give Advance Notice

Events are expensive, especially if you are paying an outside trainer. So don’t wait until the event to let people know what’s coming. Make announcements, distribute pre-read materials and exercises, ask people to come with questions and issues. Prime the pump, so to speak, so your people will come to the event prepared to get the most from it.

Enlist Executive Support

Lack of executive support is a big reason why leadership development initiatives fail. But don’t just get their buy-in, involve them. Ask them to send the communication (drafted by you, of course), deliver the opening remarks or otherwise cast a vision for the leadership imperative. This sends the message that the topic is important. It’ll be a lot harder to build commitment on your own. Just remember that in order for this to work, you’ll need to spend extra time up front consulting the powers that be and including their ideas in the final product.

Make it Interactive

One of the central themes in adult learning theory is that learning events are most effective when they are collaborative. That doesn’t mean there shouldn’t be an instructional component. But make extra effort to include opportunities for learners to discuss the ideas (and practical applications) together. This takes more work, but it’s absolutely crucial. Don’t just rely on a fancy presentation to do the trick. If you are working with outside trainers, push them hard in this regard.

Reinforce the Key Points

When it comes to a leadership event, what happens in the room should definitely not stay there. There needs to be follow-up which you’ll need to prepare in advance. Create some reinforcement activities and think how best to involve the participants in future conversations to share how they’ve applied what they’ve learned. Find a natural place for these discussions to occur (e.g. weekly staff meetings) or else create one temporarily.

Leadership events are a big deal. They shouldn’t be taken lightly. So many come and go without leaving a mark. Your careful involvement up front can be a difference-maker.

Nathan Magnuson is a leadership consultant, coach, trainer and thought leader.  Receive his new ebook Trusted Leadership Advisor by subscribing to his website  or follow him on Twitter.

Regardless of what you aspire to do, excellence is a worthy goal. But it probably won’t be your starting point. So how do you get there? Try this.

Is it Worth It?

This may be a new idea for you, but you can do anything you want. You just can’t do everything you want. There are always limits to time and resources. That means you’ll have to make some tough choices along the way.

If you could be excellent at your current endeavor, would it be worth doing? Or is it simply a means to another end? Invest yourself accordingly. Don’t bet the pot on side projects. Go big when it counts.

Don’t Compare

Dave Ramsey likes to say that 15 minutes of fame can take a lifetime to attain. Unless you are a prodigy, someone else’s proven track record of excellence will far outshine your humble beginnings. Don’t let that stop you. Their first attempts probably weren’t excellent either. If you have something to contribute, be willing to contribute your best effort now with the understanding that it will improve over time.

Pick Something You Have a Passion For

Dale Carnegie loved performing as an actor – but he wasn’t very good at it. He also wasn’t a great salesman. But when he discovered a complete lack of public speaking and communications training in his market, a match was made in heaven. He quickly develop a training program that turned shy and timid professionals into confident performers in their everyday roles. That training program still exists 100 years later. When you love what you do, it’s much easier to become excellent. If you don’t love it, wouldn’t you be doing everyone a favor by investing in something else? Possess a passion that keeps you moving.

Harness a Commitment for Growth

Individualism is the American way, but it will kill your chances to go from good to great. “But I prefer to do things my way.” “I have a special system.” That’s great. But if the best still invest in coaches, teachers, additional training and more practice, you certainly should as well. Best practices aren’t always set in stone for all-time (otherwise how would best practices change?). But you need to know the “rules” before you break the them. And once you do, maintain a healthy appetite for continuous improvement through growth. Don’t let a taste of excellence deter you from reaching new heights.

Start

I asked a musician friend of mine once how he wrote so many great songs. He said that he wrote one new song a week. Were they all good? No, some were terrible. But others weren’t. That’s when it clicked. Excellence is more about perseverance than genius.

Zig Ziglar put it this way, “You don’t have to be great to start, but you have to start to be great.”

Start.

Start where you are. Start with what you have. Just start.

Nathan Magnuson is a leadership consultant, coach, trainer and thought leader.  Receive his new ebook Trusted Leadership Advisor by subscribing to his website  or follow him on Twitter.

Now comes the tricky part: what should you get mentoring for?

One of the difficult parts of entering a new mentoring partnership – especially for first-time mentees – can be deciding what exactly to invest a mentoring relationship toward. On one hand, it’s great to have a partner committed to your development. On the other hand, it’s hard to know where to start.

There is no question that building a new relationship takes time. Here are a few ideas to get you going until you begin to hit your stride:

Present Business Situation

This should be an obvious first choice. How is your functional area performing? What are the problems and opportunities? What excites you? What keeps you up at night? What can you do to improve things? These would all be great topics to discuss with your mentor.

Individual Development Plan

Your IDP should include both short-term and long-term career goals as well as development areas you plan to focus on to achieve those goals. Invite your mentor to evaluate and provide input on your goals, your plan and your progress.

Leadership Capability

Your leadership experience or future potential may have played a key role in being able to participate in a mentoring relationship. Many mentoring programs are built on this premise and designed to facilitate and accelerate future growth. Talk with your mentor about your leadership opportunities. Ask how your mentor got where she is and what adjustments she made along the way.

Assessment Results

If you’ve never completed a leadership assessment, consider inviting your mentor to go through one with you. You might consider a Myers-Briggs Type Indicator or DiSC personality assessment. StrengthsFinder is another popular assessment. Take the opportunity to compare your results with your mentor, discuss similarities and differences and consider how to use them to build a strong connection. Also make sure to consider the development ideas that are included with the reports.

Program Materials

If you are taking part in a formal mentoring program, don’t neglect to read through any program materials you receive, especially at the outset of the partnership. They will probably include helpful tips about structure, focus and scheduling interactions. And don’t be afraid to reach out to the program coordinator for more resources.

Follow a Peer’s Example

One of the big mistakes of mentoring is doing it alone. Many of the best ideas come from the experiences of others. So take the opportunity to reach out to other mentors and mentees – either from your program or elsewhere – and ask how they schedule their interactions, what they talk about and what they’re learning.

Your Own Intuition

Don’t ignore your own intuition in spite of the structure your program may provide. If there is something you’d like to discuss, brainstorm or explore, make sure to add the item to your agenda. Don’t be afraid of “getting it wrong.” Sometimes, you just need to put the program aside and go with the thing on your mind right now.

Mentoring is a terrific investment in future talent. Don’t treat a mentoring opportunity lightly! Remember, successful leaders don’t arrive on their own – and neither will you. If you keep it up, pretty soon you will be the one sharing your wisdom with tomorrow’s top talent.

Nathan Magnuson is a leadership consultant, coach, trainer and thought leader.  Receive his ebook Trusted Leadership Advisor by subscribing to his website or   follow him on Twitter.

Success is a lousy teacher. The best leaders know this and are always on guard against complacency. I recently received a question from a leader who has just completed a season of success. She is concerned her team won’t stay motivated.  How do you keep your team fully engaged in the wake of success?

This is a very thoughtful question. Most leaders are focused on “What’s next?” as we should be. However, the leader who posed this question has an intuitive sense that a let down could be around the corner. Without her leadership, she may be right.

Success can take a toll on people – mentally, physically and emotionally. It’s good to be aware of the risk; and like any other risk, you need to manage it. Here are a few ideas to help your team cope with success and use it as the springboard for greater things to come.

Stop and Celebrate

Have you ever noticed, work never ends? This endless stream of activity can be exhausting if not debilitating. One of the ways we can manage the pace, energy and engagement of our team is to ensure frequent, appropriate celebrations. These can provide microbursts of enthusiasm for the cause and remind people: they matter and so does the work.

Capture Learnings

Even when your team wins, there are lessons to be learned. If you’ll cultivate the discipline of conducting After Action Reviews (the term the U.S. military uses for the briefing that occurs after every mission) to be sure you think deeply about what worked; what didn’t and what can be improved, this will create energy in the moment and momentum for your next challenge.

Set a New Goal

There’s tremendous power in setting a goal. Work without a goal can seem fruitless. Think of a time you were fully engaged in your work. I’m guessing several factors were present: You were doing work that mattered; you knew how your work contributed; you were operating in an area of strength if not passion. The list could go on. I’m also confident, there was a goal. You knew what you were trying to accomplish.

Pay Attention

Often, our teams will tire before we will. And, individual members of the team have unique needs. If we get too focused, we’ll miss the clues that someone is struggling. Whatever works for you to stay connected with your team members is a good approach. Don’t make too many assumptions regarding the energy and engagement of the team. One of my favorite ways to stay in touch over the years is one-on-one time with individual team members. The time investment always returns big dividends for the organization and me.

Success doesn’t have to serve as the preamble to decline. With focused effort, you can use each victory as a stepping stone to your next accomplishment.

Mark Miller, Vice President of Organizational Effectiveness for Chick-fil-A, believes that leadership is not something that’s exclusive; within the grasp of an elite few, but beyond the reach of everyone else.  In the tenth anniversary edition of The Secret, Miller reminds readers of a seemingly contradictory concept: to lead is to serve. With more than 600,000 books in print, Mark has been surprised by the response and delighted to serve leaders through his writing.

The 10^th anniversary edition of The Secret will be released September 2, 2014.

Why Ask Questions?

Many leaders hesitate to ask questions because they fear it will make them appear weak. Leaders are suppose to have the all the answers, right? Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how you look at it), the world we live in has become so complex that it is simply not possible for anyone to have all the answers, no matter how tenured he or she is. But there are all kinds of benefits to asking questions, regardless of how much you know. Here are a few:

Great questions lead to great discoveries. Author and consultant Bobb Biehl likes to say, “If you ask profound questions, you get profound answers. If you ask shallow questions, you get shallow answers. If you ask no questions, you get no answers at all.”

Great questions are the antidote to advice. Our own advice can be intelligent and fitting sometimes, but lousy or misinformed other times. Giving advice is easy and costs little, at least on the surface. In organizational settings however, a leader’s advice can quickly gets translated into a “direct order” with no room for further discussion.

Great questions develop the critical thinking skills of others. If you’re a leader, the critical thinking skills of your team will likely determine how far you go. When you give answers, you get followers. When you give questions (and coach through the process of determining the best answer), you develop leaders.

Great questions delegates responsibility. At the end of the day, if you’re the person everyone comes to with every problem, your leadership bar will remain low. Leaders need followers who can solve problems on their own. And keep in mind that a person is always more motivated to act on and own a solution he’s come up with himself than to follow the guidance of someone else.

What do Great Questions Look Like?

It’s true that most leaders don’t become great at asking questions until they become great at listening (something that should cause each of us to pause and consider). There’s a learning process for everything. But in the meantime, let’s consider some examples of what great, powerful questions look like.

Leading vs. Non-Leading Questions: A leading question proposes a solution in the form of a question. A non-leading question opens up the possibility for multiple solutions. Consider the differences between these two examples.

• Leading: “What would happen if you tried having training meetings on Tuesdays?”
• Non-Leading: “What are some different options for conducting training?”

Closed vs. Open-ended Questions: Closed questions require a “yes” or “no” answer while open-ended questions can have many outcomes.

• Closed: “Have you thought about creating a new task force?”
• Open-ended: “What are some ways you could approach this challenge?”

Advice vs. Possibility Questions: An advice question is basically just implied advice in the form of a question.

• Advice: “Couldn’t you address that situation with the sales rep directly?”
• Possibility: “How could you address that situation?”

Why vs. “Tell Me More” Questions: Why questions can feel abrasive and accusatory, regardless of intent. No one likes being interrogated. Using a “tell me more” approach opens up the dialogue.

• Why: “Why did you decide to ship only seven orders?”
• Tell me more: “Can you tell me more about the thought process for this shipment?”

Learning to ask great questions instead of giving advice is probably one of the hardest disciplines leaders encounter. (It’s right up there with active listening!) I know by personal experience and from conducting training with seasoned leaders. The first step is to stop yourself from giving unsolicited advice. The next step is to respond with a question. The final step is to make that question a powerful one. My encouragement is to give it a try and stick with it. Ask someone to give you feedback on your question-asking ability. It’ll be slow at first, but eventually start becoming natural. And the leaders you serve will develop right along with you.

Nathan Magnuson is a leadership consultant, coach, trainer and thought leader.  Receive his new ebook Trusted Leadership Advisor by subscribing to his website  or follow him on Twitter.

There a lots of options out there. The best strategy is to take a integrated approach to learning across five broad categories. Here they are.

On-the-Job Experience

The majority of employee learning comes from on-the-job experience. That is where the most time is spent. In fact, you could argue that until someone performs on the job, he or she hasn’t fully learned the job yet. This doesn’t mean that all time spent at a job is learning-oriented. If you (or one of your employees) have become fully competent, it’s probably time for a new challenge.

What are you learning in your current role?

Formal Learning

Formal learning comes from classes, courses, modules, company programs, learning events and more. Courses are typically taken in a classroom with an instructor, in an online learning system or self-paced. Organizational training departments usually spend the majority of their efforts creating these kinds of formal learning opportunities or bringing in outside vendors.

What formal learning programs are you utilizing?

Development Activities

Development activities are informal learning opportunities. They may be directed by an employee or by someone close to them, like a supervisor. These activities are essentially limitless, such as reading a book, attending a networking event or professional club, joining a cross-functional team or just learning something new. Adept organizations invest in a development library with a menu of options to select from depending on developmental goals.

What are your developmental goals?

Assessment Feedback

There are many, many assessments to help employees identify and diagnose their strengths and preferences. Personality assessments, like MBTI and DiSC are very popular, as is Gallup’s StrengthsFinder assessment. You might take a 360 degree assessment to get feedback from your team. There are assessments for learning styles, job fit, team fit, leadership, etc. You can also find effectiveness assessments from thought leaders and organizations (like these from Mark Miller). Most of us also receive a periodic performance assessment in the form of an annual review. Assessments tell us something we may not have considered and help direct our development goals.

What assessment feedback have you gotten recently?

Other People

Other people can often be the greatest source of learning. Supervisors, mentors, co-workers, network members, friends, family – virtually anyone can teach us something or give us valuable feedback, if we’ll let them.

Who have you learned from recently?

So, what’s your learning plan? And if you are a supervisor, how are you supporting your employee’s development needs? There are all kinds of options out there. Pick one and give it a shot!

Nathan Magnuson is a leadership consultant, coach, trainer and thought leader.  Receive his new ebook Trusted Leadership Advisor by subscribing to his website  or follow him on Twitter.