Accelerate Your Leadership Skills

One of the challenges managers have is upleveling their skills most efficiently. Mentoring is one approach, but most of those relationships are up to you to establish and nurture, which can be time consuming. With the pace and volume of work, it’s very easy (even with the best of intentions) to deprioritize your own development.

A good way to accelerate your development is to regularly read psychology and management literature. It doesn’t have to be time consuming. Subscribe to Audible and listen to books during your commute or at the gym. Or listen to them when you’re doing mindless household tasks. It will help you keep perspective by getting your mind engaged with the issues other businesses face, in addition to providing examples for you to emulate. Peter Drucker’s work stands the test of time, so make sure you read at least one of his books.

Watching TED Talks is another efficient way to educate yourself. You can search by category—Leadership, Business, Innovation are good places to start—or by specific topic areas, e.g., Marketing, Microfinance, etc. Set a daily appointment to make sure you actually watch the videos. Starting your day with a TED Talk reminds you that your development is important, it provides a good perspective to start your day, and it helps you develop your skills. Win-win-win.