For those of us who love learning and growing this was a super week for Vistage in Los Angeles. We had our Vistage Executive Summit with great talks and break-out sessions for our Vistage members. For one of my Vistage groups, it was even better. We went on our annual retreat where we had a great speaker. Dan Quiggle talked about leadership and attitude based on his experience working as a very young man for Ronald Reagan.
One of the attendees turned to me and said how much he enjoyed the talk and that unlike Vistage Members, he doesn’t get much of an opportunity to hear speakers who make him think and reflect about who he is being as a leader, a parent, and a community member.
That got me thinking: how often do we offer opportunities to our teams to think, reflect and grow? Do we bring in speakers or trainers or classes? Do we provide group access to webinars? Do we watch TED talks together?
Not everything has a price tag. YouTube is a source for free instruction, right? You can hold a monthly lunch and learn and put a group of team members in charge of picking the content. Follow the 18 minute TED talk or the YouTube video with a 20 minute discussion of what was learned and an action plan with a due date. Voilà, you have created an opportunity for your people to sharpen the saw. Don’t you lead it. Let the leaders in your organization step up and shine.
Illustration courtesy of www.toolsforworkingwood.com / gramercy tools.