If you scrolled as far as ‘the Grey Box’ in last month’s Red Letter, you will have read that we have registered the 9 Dimensions of Leadership Development® as our trademark. This is with much relief – not least since this has been the framework underpinning our work since red10 started in 2008 and underpinning my own work for the past 20 years – but also because there are so many valuable ways we can use the framework to support our clients’ learning and development.
So it seems timely to offer a reminder of the 9 Dimensions and how they can help; not only to serve as a platform from which to build any robust leadership development strategy but also by providing the building blocks for your own personal development plan.
Grab a coffee and see which questions concerning the 9 Dimensions resonate most loudly for you in relation to your own development right now.
Identity
What have you done recently to increase your self-awareness, deepen your understanding of the impact you have on those around you and or experimented with different ways of leading? Or did you decide ten or twenty years ago what made you tick and so file the box marked ‘Me’ in attic of your memory?
Values
Do your values still ‘fit’ with your job role and with your organisation? You are no doubt giving a lot of your life to your job so so it may as well be the right one. Have you stopped to consider whether or how your values have changed in recent years?
Partnership
Who are your leadership allies and partners? Who can you lead in partnership with – you don’t have to be the hero and do it all yourself. Even as a leader, you should decide if you are best batting, bowling or fielding – or not on the field at all. You cannot be all things to all people. We have seen too many clients find out the hard way that they are not indispensable. Oh, and by the way, omnipotence is not a competency.
Reality
If you were your own coach, what questions would you be asking yourself right now about where you are in your career, about the level of satisfaction you experience in your role and whether what you are doing continues to take you down the right path? If there was one question you would like to avoid answering, what would it be? Ask it.
Vision
What are your development goals for the next couple of years, even five years?
What do you see yourself developing into? Too many of us fancy assume we are naturally metamorphosis into the perfect Emperor butterfly only to wake up and find we have turned Kafka’s monstrous cockroach! A little harsh perhaps but you get my drift.
Strategy
Do you have a robust plan for your development or is it a form you fill in once a year to tick a box in some corporate process? Regardless of the organisation’s needs, what is your development strategy? What ‘market’ do you want to be in, in five years’ time? Who or what represents your competition? How is what you are learning every day informing your personal bigger picture?
Connection
Jones and Goffe’s question: ‘Why should anyone be led by you?’ is worth asking yourself from time to time. What connects you with your leadership? Why is it important to you to lead and what do you want those you are leading to get as a result of your leadership? How well are you connected to the people and projects you are leading? How are you measuring that connection and what can you do to develop more?
Execution
What do you do well every day that you enjoy and is necessary and what do you need to stop doing? It may be timely to take a good look at your modus operandi. We all develop bad habits or fall into patterns which may or may not be serving us well. Is it time to take a look at the way you are working and give yourself a bit of a Spring clean. I know it’s only October but heh, be radical.
Learning
We all need to stay current. What new body of knowledge would it interest you to get into? Or perhaps your learning style has changed since you took that test when you were 21. Maybe back then you were a Reflector – (all that angst of youth and too much time on your hands) but maybe now you learn more easily by doing.
So there you have it. 9 Dimensions of Leadership Development® – all waiting for you like a smorgasbord of options for renewal. If you would like support from a coach to create your development plan or to make it happen, let us know. In the meantime, fill your boots.