When it comes to leadership development, how big are you willing to dream?  How about a development journey so comprehensive that it will permanently change your leadership brand?  Welcome to the one-skill-a-year learning experience.  That’s right – a significant focus on one skill, for a whole year.  Let’s say the average leader starts managing people sometime in their late 20’s and has a normal 30 year career.  Even if you worked on just one skill a year, with this plan you’d master at least a dozen top leadership behaviors before your fortieth birthday, just when you’re hitting your stride as a leader.  Would you be interested in having world-class skills in that many facets of leadership?  Here’s how to do it… 

The first thing you need to do is choose the leadership area you’re going to work on.  I recommend picking a leadership behavior - actions you literally take on a daily basis.  For illustrative purposes, let’s pick “Driving Innovation” and plot a 12-month plan that has you moving through three integrated learning phases – study, practice and teach.    

In the first quarter of the year, you’re going to study – you’re going to hit the books, surf the internet, and tap into experts to learn everything you can about innovation.  Spend time in early January lining up your resources, buying three or four books on the subject, bookmarking websites, finding a conference to attend, identifying local companies known for innovation, etc.  Next, take all of your resources and planned trips and get them on the calendar; literally, carve out time every week from January to March to spend time with your favorite research topic.  Then, execute the plan.  By the time April rolls around, you’re going to know everything there is to know about innovation! 

Now it’s time for the next phase – practice.  Dedicate the next two quarters to applying what you’ve learned on the job.  Set up an innovation lab in your department or division.  Set a goal of brainstorming product or process innovations with your team.  Volunteer to lead a task force that is looking at new ways to innovate.  Write a white paper about the history of innovation in your company.  Make a pitch to senior leaders about the best opportunities for a new breakthrough.  In other words, roll up your sleeves and really get into it - make a concentrated effort to have innovation be a big part of your daily work life.   

Finally, in the last three months of the year, move into the teaching phase.  Volunteer to teach a course on innovation at the company university or organize and market a speaker series where you travel around the company giving talks about innovation.  If you don’t work in a large organization but like this development idea, look into teaching a course on innovation at a local community college.  What’s the point of this phase?  If you’ve ever taught a course, you already know – when you have to teach something, you really have to learn it. 

What do you think?  Can you do it?  A full year of development is ambitious, that’s for sure.  It will require a lot of dedication and perseverance.  But if you were able to do this with your three or four weakest leadership skills over a six to eight year period, just think how proficient you’d be – without question, you’d turn those opportunity areas into towering strengths.  Give this plan some thought the next time you find yourself frustrated about not improving a particular leadership skill or behavior.  Maybe all you need is the time and focus to do it right. 

Let’s pretend you find a genie in a lamp on your way to work Monday morning… when you rub the lamp, the genie will grant you mastery of one leadership skill that you can carry with you for the rest of your career.  Here’s my advice – choose the ability to listen.

Listening is an art, yet very few leaders can claim to be great listeners.  In fact, of all the leadership skills, this is one where we tend to get in our own way.  Because listening is so natural, most of us don’t see the need to get better at it.  Of course, by now you’ve learned all the classic techniques for active listening – lean forward in your chair, maintain eye contact, nod your head, paraphrase what you’re hearing, ask questions, pause before reacting, etc.  But the real issue isn’t whether you’re merely demonstrating the behaviors of active listening.  It’s reflecting, absorbing, and acting on what you’re hearing that will establish your reputation as a great listener.  

Here’s a simple way to think about listening – realize that people only want to tell you one of three things: facts, opinions, or feelings.  Your job is to listen for all three, and interpret the message for meaning and purpose.  Here’s the critical link: Effective listening happens when you are receiving and interpreting the message in the same way that the employee intended it.  So how do you maximize the odds of that happening?

First, do some pre-reflection about the person sending the message.  There has to be something they are thinking, feeling, or wanting you to believe that is worth listening to; in other words, ground your listening in a legitimate reason for listening.  Try this – before you sit down for a 1:1 or walk into a staff meeting, remind yourself why you’re going to listen to each person. What is the context?  Where are they coming from?  What’s been valuable about their messages in the past?  Listening effectively starts with getting yourself ready to listen. 

Second, people vary greatly in their communications style, so understand how each person expresses themselves. Your challenge is to absorb the message and tease out what’s most important.  This is critical - failing to recognize what’s most important is what leads to ineffective listening.  You may have heard what they said, but you missed what they wanted to convey.  This is the classic “crossed wires” feeling that people walk away with sometimes – it’s what produces the “he didn’t hear me” comments.  You can ensure more messages hit their mark by reminding yourself of the three types of information above, and paying close attention to what it is they’re really trying to communicate. 

Finally, once you have absorbed the most important piece of information, act on it.  Part of effective listening is responding appropriately; this tells the person you heard them.  Articulating what you feel is the most important part of their message will take the conversation right to the heart of what matters, and will lead more quickly to agreements or resolutions.  Again, try this – if they’re relaying an opinion, but it seems packed with emotion, ask about the emotion part.  By paying close attention to what’s most important, you can proactively take the conversation where it needs to go.   As a leader, it’s important not to be too passive or use active listening as a crutch; once you feel you’ve identified the most important part of the message, ask about it.  Put it out in the open and deal with it directly.  Put the “active” in active listening by moving on to solutions or a deeper conversation. 

It’s not like you don’t know that you should be listening and paying attention; the issue is that you’re not always doing it.  So try this – practice getting yourself ready to listen by reflecting ahead of time on the person and their communications style.  Next, practice really absorbing what’s most important from their message. Then, act on what you’re hearing.  Work on becoming a better listener – it will change the way people experience your leadership.  

Let’s say you’re sailing along in your leadership role.  Everything’s good, right?  Well, everything except one little thing … your boss.  Somehow your boss, who was an absolute rock of stability, has gone off the rails.  Over the last several months, she’s gone from being a trusted advisor to the CEO to teetering on the brink of irrelevance.  If your boss is seen as ineffective, that’s a problem.  So what do you do about it?

Simply put, you need to ask if you can help, tell her what you’re noticing, and provide some feedback and coaching.  Start by asking about her world in your next 1:1 meeting.  You can do this directly or indirectly – direct questions are as simple as: “how are things between you and the senior team these days”? or “how’s everything going with the CEO?”  Indirectly, you can broach the subject with questions such as: “what’s on your mind today”? Or “what’s keeping you up at night?”  The point is to get her talking about her job, her boss, or the company.  If she doesn’t want to talk about it in this meeting, that’s OK; you’ve established an interest in her well-being, and can come back to these questions next time.  Eventually she may begin to confide in you. 

If she does respond, ask about her emotions, feelings and reactions.  Literally, ask: “how are feeling about that?”  This is a perfectly legitimate question that doesn’t get asked enough “up the chain” (bosses are people, too).  At this point, you may get more than you bargained for, but once you go down this path, stick with it.  You’ve just crossed over into being a confidant or sounding board, and your opportunity to provide feedback is right around the corner. 

This is where you share what you’re noticing about her attitude or behaviors.  Be straightforward, mature and professional, and speak from your own experiences or observations.  Don’t say: “I’ve heard” or “someone told me” – that’s not productive or well grounded.  This has to be what you’ve observed…this is your first-hand feedback.  You might offer: “I’ve noticed lately that you have been upset with Bill” (cite examples) or “I know you didn’t feel fully prepared for that presentation last week” or “it seems to me that the Finance group is ignoring you on this issue – what do you think?”.   Tell her what you’re noticing and feeling – if it’s delivered well, she’ll be interested and want to hear more.  Essentially, you’re creating an opening to share meaningful feedback.  Your responsibility as a leader is to step up and take the direct approach to help her get back on track. 

By taking a genuine interest in her well-being and offering your unfiltered but constructive feedback, you’ll get the issues out on the table.  Then, use your coaching skills to help her work through some solutions.  Ask her: “what options are you considering?” or “how are you going to approach Bill about this?” or “what’s your next move?”   The idea is to start brainstorming with her about ways to turn things around.  Obviously, if you have some thoughts or ideas on how to fix things, this is where you bring them out.  But stay in coaching mode first – ask a lot of questions.  Give her someone to talk to, and guide her to an honest assessment of the situation. 

Giving feedback to the boss isn’t your primary job, but occasionally it’s a necessary part of being a leader.  In a way, telling your boss what you really think might be the best thing you could ever do for her.  Isn’t that what leadership is all about?  Helping others…even if that someone happens to be your boss!