Is it worth taking a few days away from work for a leadership course? If now’s not the right time because things are too busy, there’s no one to replace you, or you aren’t convinced on the value, read on.
I did a two-day course on Effective Leadership at the McGill Executive Institute. It gave me a reason to press the pause button and free up space in my life for learning. I came away energized and enthusiastic.
I work in tech, leading a small team of writers and content developers in Marketing. We’re deadline driven, which makes it easy to get caught up in short-term tasks and crossing items off a to-do list. The challenge is, if you’re always heads down, you’re not looking forward.
So how do you reconcile your inner visionary with the pressure to jump into projects faster, make decisions faster, and pump out results now?
By delegating today’s to-do list and freeing up time to think and plan.
Like anything worth having, good leadership doesn’t come fast or easy. It is a journey. During the course, a series of moments reinforced this for me, especially when our coach prompted the class to think about:
- The ratio of time spent managing and doing vs. strategy and planning
- Making decisions based on data rather than personal bias
- Helping people find their own answers by asking open-ended questions [rather than giving them the answers, which creates dependency]