20 Jun School’s NOT Out for Summer
Like many of you, members of our team belong to professions that require us to be licensed to practice. So every year, we engage in continuing education, just like our friends who are social workers, engineers, estheticians, and architects. We do it to comply with standards of practice, to uphold our credentials and to maintain membership in our professional associations. But mostly, we do it because we want to be lifelong learners.
If there’s anything we’ve learned so far in life, it’s that our best opportunities come when we’re keeping up with new ideas and advances. When we’re intellectually curious, and interacting with people who challenge us, the ideas just seem to flow. And while we value the traditional, structured education we received earlier in life, it’s the unstructured everyday learning that really has made a difference for us.
As a leader, your education is never over. Here are seven ways you can use the world as your classroom and cultivate your growth together.
- Visit masterclass.com and check out categories like Science & Tech or Writing. There you’ll find 180+ classes and original series across 11 categories
- Explore the top 25 Ted Talks at ted.com or wander around the site and find something that piques your interest from the more than 2500 videos.
- Read Peter Thomsen’s “How 50 Cups of Coffee Can Change Your Life,” on inc.com and then make a list of the first five people you’re going to have coffee with.
- Make it a point to learn one interesting thing every day about at least one person you meet. Everyone has a story to tell and we all have something to learn.
- Ask your business associates what they’re reading or scan your friends’ lists on goodreads.com to find new books to read.
- Visit quora.com and ask any question you like such as, “What can I learn right now in 10 minutes that will be useful for the rest of my life?” or sign up to follow topics you’re interested in.
- Practice morning journaling – three pages of longhand stream-of-consciousness writing first thing in the morning. You might be amazed at the insights you can glean from your groggy self.
If you could learn something new, or from someone new, what or who would it be? How would that make you a better leader? Learning doesn’t stop at the schoolhouse door.
Most leaders accept that at some time in the future, their time at the helm will end and the business will be given into the care of the next leader. However, just thinking about the transition can be daunting and overwhelming for the senior leader. If that weren’t enough, most owners experience their own succession just once. Tandem Partners provides the experience and professional guidance needed to move through the strategic, operational and interpersonal issues that are all a part of transition.
For families in business, success is not just measured in fiscal years, but over generations. Yet often, leaders are so focused on the day-to-day that they aren’t able to step back and focus on the issues that impact long-term sustainability. We help leadership teams assess where they are now, where they’re trying to go and how they’re going to get there. Our expertise in the areas of organizational strategy, structure, process and performance is a unique feature of our work, and integral to our transition management approach.
