HOW CAN I GROW IN MY CAREER? | JOHN C. MAXWELL

Be better tomorrow than you are today

HOW GROWTH HELPS YOU LEAD UP

There’s certainly nothing wrong with the desire to progress in your career, but never try to “arrive.” Instead, intend your journey to be open-ended. Most people have no idea how far they can go in life. They aim way too low. I know I did when I first started out, but my life began changing when I stopped setting goals for where I wanted to be and started setting the course for who I wanted to be. I have discovered for others and me that the key to personal development is being more growth oriented than goal oriented.

THE BETTER YOU ARE, THE MORE PEOPLE LISTEN

Competence is a key to credibility, and credibility is the key to influencing others. If people respect you, they will listen to you. President Abraham Lincoln said, “I don’t think much of a man who is not wiser today than he was yesterday.” By focusing on growth, you become wiser each day.

THE BETTER YOU ARE, THE GREATER YOUR VALUE TODAY

If you want a tree to produce, first you have to let it grow. The more the tree has grown and has created strong roots that can sustain it, the more it can produce. The more it can produce, the greater its value.

I love this quote from Elbert Hubbard: “If what you did yesterday still looks big to you, you haven’t done much today.” If you look back at past accomplishments, and they don’t look small to you now, then you haven’t grown very much since you completed them.

If you are not continually growing, then it is probably damaging your leadership ability. Warren Bennis and Bert Nanus, authors of Leaders: The Strategies for Taking Charge, said, “It is the capacity to develop and improve their skills that distinguishes leaders from followers.” If you’re not moving forward as a learner, then you are moving backward as a leader.

THE BETTER YOU ARE, THE GREATER YOUR POTENTIAL FOR TOMORROW

The more you learn and grow, the greater your capacity to keep learning. Indian reformer Mahatma Gandhi said, “The difference between what we do and what we are capable of doing would suffice to solve most of the world’s problems.” That is how great our potential is. All we have to do is keep fighting to learn more, grow more, become more.

An investment in your growth is an investment in your ability, your adaptability, and your pro-motability. No matter how much it costs you to keep growing and learning, the cost of doing nothing is greater.

HOW TO BECOME BETTER TOMORROW

Founding father Ben Franklin said, “By improving yourself, the world is made better. Be not afraid of growing too slowly. Be afraid only of standing still. Forget your mistakes, but remember what they taught you.”

The secret of your success can be found in your daily agenda. Here is what I suggest you do to keep growing and leading up:

1. LEARN YOUR CRAFT TODAY

On a wall in the office of a huge tree farm hangs a sign. It says, “The best time to plant a tree is twenty-five years ago. The second best time is today.” There is no time like the present to become an expert at your craft. Looking back and lamenting will not help you move forward.

A friend of the poet Longfellow asked the secret of his continued interest in life. Pointing to a nearby apple tree, Longfellow said, “The purpose of that apple tree is to grow a little new wood each year. That is what I plan to do.”

As Napoleon Hill said, “You can’t change where you started, but you can change the direction you are going. It’s not what you are going to do, but it’s what you are doing now that counts.”

2. TALK YOUR CRAFT TODAY

Once you reach a degree of proficiency in your craft, then one of the best things you can do for yourself is talk your craft with others on the same and higher levels than you. Talking to peers is wonderful, but if you don’t also make an effort to strategically talk your craft with those ahead of you in experience and skill, then you’re really missing learning opportunities. 

3. PRACTICE YOUR CRAFT TODAY

William Osler, the physician who wrote The Principles and Practice of Medicine in 1892, once told a group of medical students:

Banish the future. Live only for the hour and its allotted work. Think not of the amount to be accomplished, the difficulties to be overcome, or the end to be attained, but set earnestly at the little task at your elbow, letting that be sufficient for the day; for surely our plain duty is, as Carlyle says, “Not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do what lies clearly at hand.”

The only way to improve is to practice your craft until you know it inside and out. At first, you do what you know to do. The more you practice your craft, the more you know. But as you do more, you will also discover more about what you ought to do differently. At that point you have a decision to make: Will you do what you have always done, or will you try to do more of what you think you should do? The only way you improve is to get out of your comfort zone and try new things.

People often ask me, “How can I grow my business?” or, “How can I make my department better?” The answer is for you personally to grow. The only way to grow your organization is to grow the leaders who run it. By making yourself better, you make others better. Retired General Electric CEO Jack Welch said, “Before you are a leader, success is all about growing yourself. When you become a leader, success is all about growing others.” And the time to start is today.

 Culled from Self Improvement 101: What Every Leader Needs to Know by JOHN C. MAXWELL

Other chapters include: 

WHAT WILL IT TAKE FOR ME TO IMPROVE?

HOW DO I MAINTAIN A TEACHABLE ATTITUDE? 

JOHN C. MAXWELL is an internationally recognized leadership expert, speaker, and author who has sold over 16 million books. EQUIP, the organization he founded in 1996 has trained more than 2 million leaders worldwide. Every year he speaks to Fortune 500 companies, international government leaders, and audiences as diverse as the United States Military Academy at West Point, the National Football League, and ambassadors at the United Nations. A New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Business Week best-selling author, Maxwell was named the World’s Top Leadership Guru by Leadershipgurus.net. He was also one of only 25 authors and artists named to Amazon.com’s 10th Anniversary Hall of Fame. Three of his books, The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership, Developing the Leader Within You, and The 21 Indispensable Qualities of a Leader have each sold over a million copies.