"I spend so much time just getting through the day and don't have time to think about long-term planning."

This is a common statement I hear in my leadership development coaching sessions. The challenge is that what got you here as a leader, won't get you to the next level of leadership.

Here are a few ideas to help you transition into your role.

As you seek to enhance your effectiveness, it's important to look back on your life and understand how key experiences, people, and events have impacted your habits and patterns of thinking.

Reflect on three time periods:

1. The past 1-3 years.
2. When you transitioned from school into the workplace.
3. Your earlier years.

How have these experiences, people, and events shaped your thinking? How do they impact how you "show up" in the workplace?

“Are leaders born?”

This is an interesting question that I am often asked in the leadership development programs we run at 5.12 Solutions.

We believe that leadership isn’t about being charismatic and it’s not about some magical qualities that are bestowed upon you at birth. And you don’t have to go through special forces training as a rite of passage. Leadership is about employing key skills and behaviors on a consistent basis.

And those skills and behaviors can be learned.

Do your conversations typically start with "can" or "can't?"

One generates dialogue. The other shuts it down.

If you answered "it depends," you fall into the "can't" category.

As you build your capacities as a leader it is critically important to enhance your level of self-awareness. Self-awareness is often equated to emotional intelligence. It can also be seen as deepening your understanding of how your behaviors impact others and how you are impacted by other people.

Why would you want to deepen your level of awareness? After all, your "I am what I am" attitude has worked well for you.

Deepening your self awareness will enable you to:

Where do You Go From Here?

This series of posts started out with the question, "Are leaders born?"

Our response has been "No." Leadership can be learned. We can learn the key competencies and capacities to elevate our effectiveness.

Here are some recommended next steps to guide your path forward.

In this series of posts, we have been exploring leadership development from two perspectives – competencies and capacities. In our last two posts, we focused on the limiting internal belief of Controlling and Protecting. Today, our focus is on Complying.

In this series of posts, we have been exploring leadership development from two perspectives - competencies and capacities. In our last post, we focused on the limiting internal belief of Controlling. Today, our focus is on Protecting.

Limiting Internal Beliefs: Controlling

Levels of Development

Humans develop through very specific stages over the course of their lives, and along the way they can become better equipped to handle the complexities of today's fast-paced and interdependent business environment.

By understanding the stages through which people develop, you'll be able to set forth a path to increase your effectiveness as a leader.