Can You Learn to Lead without Actually Doing It?

I’ve learned enough in my years to know that I can never judge a book by its cover. I sat across from Jared. He was well dressed, articulate, and had titles from prior positions that many would be envious of. You would expect him to be the full package, accomplished, confident, and, of course, a strong leader. He booked the time with me though, so he must have been seeing some sort of gap. There must have been some place where he felt his skills weren’t measuring up. I came to find out, Jared was recently promoted to a senior leadership role within his company and expected to start in about a month. Even with the prior titles, this was his first official people leadership position.

Like many new managers, Jared had a clear intention for this meeting. He wanted to set up a month of coaching with me and learn to lead before he started the new job. He figured he should learn to influence people before he officially started leading people. (Jared’s totally passive approach not quite your style? You don’t have to be this far to the extreme to gain from taking more disciplined action. Click here to learn more in the YouTube video.)

Can you learn to lead from others?

There are a million ways to learn these days. You can learn to lead from books, podcasts, YouTube videos and blogs like this one. It’s amazing that we have so much access to information now It is a little deceiving though isn’t it. I mean, you can watch video after video on how to change your tires and still bring your car to a mechanic for a rotation. You could read a whole book on training your dog and still not get the behavior you want. You could even listen to a day’s worth of podcasts on mountain biking and not know how to ride a bike. Why would it be any different when you learn to lead?

You can learn the fundamentals of leadership and influence this way. When you immerse yourself in a topic you will learn much more than if you set out blindly. That is why education is valuable. You immerse yourself in a curated collection of the best people’s work in a particular area. (Get your curated collection of leadership books here!) When you do that, you speed up the learning process.

All of that being said, passively absorbing information without applying it will do you no good. Without application you just have theory and what you’d expect to work from other’s perspectives. You won’t actually learn to lead until you apply what you’ve read, heard, or watched. To get everything you need to lead successfully you need to absorb, experience, and apply what you’ve learned. That is how you truly learn to lead in a way that supports your team, encourages their growth and innovation in the organization, and does it in a way that doesn’t have you working constantly.

What will you miss by trying to learn it all before you take action?

You likely already know someone who is over educated but doesn’t have the experience to apply what they read or saw consistently. Leaders who don’t learn and apply simultaneously are often misaligned with their teams, and with upper management. They negatively impact team performance and morale because they are more likely to act out of arrogance rather than acknowledging their blind spots. Managers who don’t learn to lead while actively leading miss opportunities for personal and professional growth. In the end, it can impact productivity, engagement, and ultimately increase turnover. This is part of why people leave their roles, quiet quit, or quit and stay. They just won’t to work with a manager or supervisor who hasn’t learned to lead.

Jared learned the hard way, that he had an easier way out.

Getting promoted to such a high level of management when you’re still green in your leadership journey has its pros and cons. For Jared, he had to ‘get a few lumps’ in the form of natural consequences at work to understand that his company invested in a coach for him for a reason. He was struggling to communicate effectively with his team, causing them to not trust his words. Jared was making decisions based on his limited knowledge without asking enough questions or admitting he wasn’t always the expert. This caused the team to always be guessing what his priorities were. Finally, his boss told him his team wasn’t hitting their goals and it was his job to fix it. Exasperated and out of his own options, he brought it to me.

What happened when he learned to lead through application?

Look, there are a ton of benefits of working with a coach and improving your skills with someone who can help hold you accountable for your actions and hold up the mirror when you need it. But for Jared and his situation in particular, there were a few critical changes in just the first 6 months of working together.

1. Higher employee engagement – Jared learned to engage with his team more effectively. We created and practiced the structures of communication and decision making that he’d read about but wasn’t consistently implementing. His team started to see consistency in his words and actions that made them trust him more. With time, he was able to take a corporate initiative, cascade it to his team, and guide them through why and how to complete the task. The team may not always like the initiative, but with the newfound trust and clarity, they could still engage to get it done and feel good about doing it.
2. Greater confidence – Rember how Jared was acting out of arrogance with his team? Once he was open to my holding up the mirror he began understanding his patterns, strengths and weaknesses. He could be confident in his ability to work with the team based on his strengths and less anxious about areas he was weaker in because he had a safe place to work through them. Jared’s leadership presence was stronger with a combination of confidence and humility to focus on getting it right, without always wanting to be right.
3. Accelerated growth and development – I understand why Jared would think totally immersing himself in content and teaching would help him learn to lead before he stepped foot in the door. The thing is though, you’ll never learn to ride the bike unless you get on it. Through coaching Jared was able to shorten his learning curve and be more effective sooner.

Are these benefits you’d like to see as you lead in your career? If so, I would love to see how I can help. You don’t have to be in a senior leadership position to get the value of increasing engagement in your work, increasing your own confidence and the confidence of those you work with, or to accelerate your own growth. By applying what you learn through coaching you can see your results amplified without sacrificing your boundaries and balance. If you want to increase your impact through influence, click here and set up time to learn how I can help you get there.

So, will Jared need a coach forever?

No, no one will need a coach forever, though many people sustain long relationships with coaches to continue their success. The truth is, that moment when his team didn’t trust him was painful. Then, when his boss had to point out how ineffective he was at leading them, excruciating, but it gave him a choice to make. He decided to invest in himself to grow from coaching. Jared continues to sustain success in his career as he focuses on continuous learning and self-improvement. In our few years working together he developed not only the skills to lead a team successfully and to influence those above him, but to lead himself in a life he loves.