“Comfort is no test of truth. Truth is often far from being comfortable.” – Swami Vivekananda
After university studies, during my journey of more than two and half decades in working field, have met with many people of various aspects. What I have observed, except few, a large groups of people are spending inadequate time and effort on self-development. During an interaction with a manager, as he believes, development of people is the responsibility of the organisation, not the individual person. Similarly, some of Senior Managers feel that it is not so important, as they are already in a senior management position because of enough knowledge & skill they already have.
So largely, it is found that irrespective of management levels, from Executive to Senior Management, in a true sense, people have stopped self-learning after completion of college or university.
“Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other.” ― John F. Kennedy, 35th US President
In the actual scenario, as and when people are promoted and uplifted to the upper position of the hierarchical management system, it is required to lead a l arger team and multiple levels of people. As and when people climb up higher levels, requirements of soft skills become much more important than technical skills. Because of limited focus, there is a deficiency of soft skills observed among people in large degree.
Today, in the Information age, continue technological revolution happens on a large scale, and generation gaps also play a big role in mindset differentiation. When people are not much focused on upgradation, learning and development for themselves, possibly a large gap between the old mindset and the new generation gets created. So, people may feel insecure about their self-position, to deal with the same, they may apply authority to win each event in all aspects. That situation also drives to develop a scarcity mentality among themselves, who feel difficulty in sharing information, recognition or credit, power or profit. They want other people to be the way they want them to be. They surround themselves with “YES” people – people who would not challenge them, people who are weaker than they. They look upon differences in opinion as insubordination and disloyalty. In that working environment, people’s growth, as well as the organisation’s growth, is largely impacted. When top management realises that impact – it is already too late.
As of today, many organisations have tried to develop their people through L&D (Learning and Development) department. Management is putting efforts and doing funds allocation, but it Would be then only successful, when people realise and accept the requirements of self-improvement and willingness to learn to fill up the deficiency within themselves. It will be more effective with regular practice of learning till it becomes a habit followed by a developed individual nature followed by a developing working culture.
“You cannot change your future, but you can change your habits, and surely your habits will change your future.” – Dr. A P J Abdul Kalam
Once you have been convinced yourselves for requirements of continuous self-learning and development, you will found that it is a necessity and mandatory to be a respectable and effective leader. There are various ways to achieve the same, viz. Books Readings, Getting Coached, Listening to Audio, Watching Videos, etc. It is always advisable that we should invest a two to five of our time and earnings on a regular basis for self-development.
I agree there is sufficient quality time to be spent for achieving the same, viz.
- For Book Reading, a lot of time and patience is required, as reading habits might have left for many years.
- For Getting Coached, which is the most effective way to unlock a person’s potential to maximise their own performance, still requires patience and courage to face the innermost fears, discipline and willingness to break the limiting belief.
- For learning through Video & Audio, quality time is required to reach the relevant topics as well as the right speaker.
“Employ your time in improving yourself by other men’s writings, so that you shall come easily by what others have laboured hard for.”–Socrates, Greek Philosopher
To overcome our limitation of resources, mainly time, we have created a platform where you can do self-learning with little effort. Here through this website, we will share the various relevant topics, thoughts and messages of great personalities, sharing of self-experience and messages of professionals, book reviews, interviews of successful leaders etc. You need to have little time which needs to invest for reading and learning, also needs to have willingness to take it forward. Like as levers, you can get larger benefit by applying minimal efforts. But only thing you needs to have, belief on yourself and willingness to learn.
That will also help towards self-realisation about where we stand as of now, planning to take forward, practice to make as habit followed by developed individual nature followed by developing working culture. That will surely help to create healthy and happy positive working environment, resulting exponential growth of Individual as well as organisation.