teachHave You Shared Your Expertise Today?

I’ve had the great privilege this past year to work with a Fortune 50 company that is methodically conquering the retail world.  Specifically, I’m working with a group of high-potential mid-level professionals all focused on increasing their contributions and growing their careers.

During our recent time together, the program sponsors arranged for a good number of the senior executives of the corporation to sit down and share insights on how to develop as senior contributors; how to develop executive presence and in general, how to seize the opportunities being presented by the firm’s great growth.  Over the course of 3 development days, we invested approximately 5 hours engaging with executives. The impact was priceless.

It is a testament to this firm and its mostly homegrown store-to-corporate leadership team that the executive-led dialogue was filled with practical, powerful lessons and examples, and the discussions were free of the ego and corporate-speak that we’ve all heard from those with lofty titles.

Without any scripting, the executives shared how they navigated the unknowns of growing up from store personnel to their current levels as senior leaders in one of the world’s exciting firms. They nailed the key messages and lessons that we were discussing in the workshop portion of the program. The executives were authentic, they cared, they provided encouragement for self-development and importantly, they provided priceless examples of lessons-learned and mistakes made during their journeys.

While our program content focused on those exact same issues, there’s something dramatically different about hearing the words and anecdotes come from the leaders versus seeing the words on a PowerPoint slide. In fact, there’s no comparison to the value and weight that the words of these executives presented. Their input brought the rest of the program to life and created a richer experience for all of us.  The buzz from the executive involvement carried the program. And while I served as the program leader…I was very much the student during those sessions.

Senior Leaders: You’re Part of Your Firm’s Professional Development Solution…Get Involved!

Let’s face it, nature abhors a vacuum, and there’s no such thing as an empty executive calendar. It might take extraordinary effort to carve out that hour once a month to sit down and share and exchange ideas on professional development with your aspiring colleagues, but, aside from working with customers, is there anything more valuable that you can be doing? I sincerely doubt it.

The Bottom-Line for Now:

Create opportunities to share, teach and exchange ideas on the key issues of developing as a senior contributor.

Need a starter topic list? What about: leading others, making better decisions, dealing with ambiguity, developing power and influence, leading to the values, building stronger teams and overcoming organizational hurdles? If you need some more ideas, let me know. I’ve got an endless list where your experience can help others recognize and avoid pitfalls and improve performance.

The best development support in your organization should not come from the training department or from external programs. It absolutely should start with you and your senior executive colleagues.