Continuous learning as a leader will let you guide your team to new heights of success. Chances are, you already know that. But if you looked at your schedule right now, would you see any time blocks for personal development?
If you’re like most leaders, daily tasks tend to take over. You’re handling multiple different functions — including a lot of lower-level admin work. Everything else seems more urgent than your own growth —and everything depends on you.
That’s an easy trap to fall into, especially in the beginning. But to advance your business, you need to adopt a new approach to your own learning.
In this article, we’ll first discuss the importance of continuous learning and self-improvement for leaders. Then, we’ll talk about how to prioritize your own growth. By making time for continuous improvement, you’ll ensure you can keep steering your company in the right direction as it scales.
The Importance of Continuous Learning for Leaders
Continuous learning isn’t just a nice thing to do when you have the time. It’s something you need to prioritize in your schedule, week after week.
Why is continuous learning important for leaders?
Consider that companies with strong leadership development are 3.4 times more likely to be leaders in their industry. And leadership ability accounts for 70% of the variance in employee engagement, playing a crucial role in company success. Clearly, no business can afford to overlook the need for ongoing leadership development.
In my Leadership Delegation Focus Matrix, notice the two categories that fall on the right side:
- The core business activities that drive revenue growth.
- Self-investment: Ongoing learning that propels you forward as a leader.
Ideally, you should be spending all of your time on these things. Too often, though, the second gets forgotten. We focus our efforts on strategic planning and decision-making, building up our business. But in the process, we neglect to carve out time to keep growing as leaders.
If you don’t keep growing, your business will grow beyond you. You need to keep learning as a leader not just so you can manage the team you have today, but so you can lead the team you’ll have tomorrow, or a year from now, or five. As your business scales, you’ll have a larger team packed with different departments. You’ll have higher-stakes decisions to make. You’ll be hiring people to management positions and mentoring them.
If you don’t consistently reinvest in yourself to grow your abilities, you won’t be able to handle the problems your business will face months or years from now. Keep expanding your knowledge base, your human skills, and your business acumen so you can handle the challenges that come your way.
In The Journey of Leadership: How CEOs Learn to Lead from the Inside Out, authors Dana Maor, Hans-Werner Kaas, Kurt Strovink, and Ramesh Srinivasan talk about how learning can take diverse forms. Here are just a few examples:
- Learning to analyze market changes to gain a better competitive advantage.
- Developing stronger emotional intelligence that fosters close-knit team relationships.
- Learning to motivate people without making them feel stressed.
Plus, creating a culture of continuous learning will help your team become more creative and more agile in response to change. This all begins with the leader.
So, how can you effectively pursue continuous learning when you have a lot on your plate already? Next, we’ll discuss tips and strategies for doing just that.
Strategies for Pursuing Continuous Learning
To succeed in continuous learning, you need to first build it into your schedule. Then, you need to zero in on the areas that will expand your capabilities as a leader. Let’s explore how to get started.
1. Assess your calendar.
Start by keeping a daily log of tasks. Jot down how you spend your time hour by hour. At the end of the week, review your notes, looking at which quadrant of the matrix each task falls into.
Now, be honest with yourself: Are you wasting time on any of these tasks? Are there things you take way too long to do, because you’re not good at them? Are you handling tasks that don’t really need to be done — or that can be automated? Other tasks can be reassigned to an assistant, as we’ll discuss next.
Then, block out a designated time for learning. Making it the same time each week will help you stay disciplined, turning it into a habit. For example, maybe every Thursday morning, you set aside two or three hours for personal growth.
2. Carve out time through delegation.
Making time for continuous improvement means delegating whole functions, not just smaller tasks. Look at all the tasks that fall into the left two quadrants of the above matrix. Then group them into functions, or departments. If you can, hire someone to handle these functions.
Hiring a skilled executive assistant can take a lot of the admin tasks off your plate. Or a virtual assistant with experience in your industry can handle client renewals or data processing, giving you more time for personal growth. Our clients regularly recover 15–20 hours per week for core priorities by hiring a skilled assistant.
A year ago, I never would’ve imagined hiring a content writer. But then I spent some time with a marketing person in a mini-retreat. I told him I wanted to grow my business but didn’t know how. He suggested hiring a content specialist to grow our online presence.
At first, I pushed back. I don’t know how I could do that, I thought. How could I trust someone else to be the voice of my business? But he urged me to think it over, and finally, I realized I didn’t have the time or skill to create all of our content myself. As we started the process and reviewed sample posts from prospective writers, I thought, I get it now.
Six months ago, I never could’ve imagined that we’d be producing as much content as we are today. And now, I’ve gained back hours each week to focus on core priorities — like continuous learning.
3. Create a learning plan.
If you were encouraging an employee to build their knowledge base, you’d help them create a plan, right? Often leaders are really good at doing that for other people but neglect to do that for themselves. It’s time to think strategically about learning. Set targets and benchmarks, showing what you want to achieve and how you’ll know when you get there.
Look at your business strategy to hone your learning focus, predicting what you’ll need to know over the next few years. Consider your own skills gaps as well. Do you need to strengthen your human skills or coaching abilities? Do you need a deeper knowledge of marketing strategy or how to conduct market analysis? Or do you need to grow your ability to lead through change? These are just a few examples of potential areas of focus.
4. Surround yourself with people who think differently from you.
Abraham Lincoln stacked his Cabinet with people who thought differently from him. As a leader, you need to surround yourself with people who can introduce you to new ideas too. Look to people who are further along than you in their professional growth. In essence, you’ll be crowdsourcing knowledge from the best and the brightest in your field, or in the business world.
I follow a range of business owners on social media who openly share their marketing tactics. At first, I’d think, Good for them, but I can’t do that. Some were at a different stage of growth than I’d reached at that point. Others had impressive reputations as influencers.
Then I began asking myself, Why can’t I do that? After all, they got to where they’re at today not by sitting still, but by trying bold new strategies. Shifting my mindset in this way opened new doors.
5. Find mentors you trust.
The right mentor can make all the difference. If you’re lucky, you might even find more than one. Try to meet or talk with your mentor once a month or so, discussing your challenges and successes. You’ll glean bits of insight that will help you navigate hurdles and stay on the right track.
You might also form peer mentorships with other entrepreneurs. These are colleagues who might have skills in different areas than you. Since you have complementary skills, you can each share guidance in your area of expertise. Look for potential peer mentors — and mentors in general — at conferences and industry events, as well as in your existing circle.
6. Read widely, targeting key topics.
To expand your knowledge base, read as broadly as you can. Keep a running list of books and articles you want to read, centered on the main areas that will shape your growth. Ask mentors and people you respect for recommendations of books that have influenced them.
7. Consider formal workshops and programs.
Look at workshops held through industry conferences, professional certification programs, or virtual seminars you can attend from home. Maybe a local college or university offers courses in your area of focus. Learning doesn’t have to happen through formal channels, but sometimes this can offer additional motivation and direction.
Knowing the importance of continuous learning and self-improvement for leaders, don’t put it off any longer. Engaging in continuous learning as a leader will help you become capable of leading your business to success as it scales. Your work will also become richer and more rewarding as you take steps to enhance your knowledge week by week.
To talk more about how an executive assistant can support your business’s growth, set up a call. I’ll be glad to discuss how an EA or a virtual assistant can help you free up your time for continuous learning in leadership. By delegating certain functions to your assistant, you’ll gain back time for strategic priorities and personal growth.