Today’s piece is a guest post by Meredith Bell.  Meredith is the president and co-founder of Performance Support Systems, a software company based in Newport News, Virginia. She’s been an entrepreneur since 1982, when she discovered that she didn’t function well in a bureaucratic, political organization. For the several years she consulted to local businesses, helping managers develop the people skills they need to become effective leaders and build strong teams.  You can learn more about Meredith by visiting her blog, Your Voice of Encouragement.

Anyone who knows me well will be stunned to read the title of this post. How can I say there are negative aspects to ongoing self-development? I’ve always invested heavily in my own personal and professional growth – both financially and experientially. And my software company has been publishing assessment and development tools for the workplace for over 15 years.

But as one for whom learning is a passion, I’ve discovered there are some downsides. The four items listed here are related, but each presents its own challenge.

1. Accumulating a lot of knowledge without applying it in the real world
I admit that I rarely read novels. I prefer business books on topics like marketing, sales, leadership and personal development. That’s because I absolutely love my business, and I’m always interested in learning how to improve systems, relationships and of course, our bottom line. But sometimes I start on the next book before I’ve taken time to analyze and use the insights gleaned from the one I just read.

Lesson: For every book or program you go through, list the ideas that make sense for your situation. Then commit to implementing the one strategy that will make the biggest difference in your business or life, and hold yourself accountable for doing it. Click here to continue reading »”The Downsides of Being a Lifelong Learner”

Over the years, I’ve had the opportunity to work under several bosses and observe the different styles of leadership each of them brought to the position. Some of them proved to be textbook examples of how not to lead a team while others were unremarkable, but nonetheless competent in the managerial role. But then there were those rare few who were invaluable in teaching through their conduct and behaviour how one should approach the role of leadership.

One such example of this was Dan, the president of a biotechnology firm I worked at a few years ago. As the head of the company, Dan displayed an open interest in finding out what unique strengths his employees brought to the business. He then used this information to look for opportunities where he could encourage his employees to use and develop those abilities. It was clear that he viewed it as his responsibility to foster an environment where his employees could develop their potential both for the benefit of the company, as well as for their own professional growth.

Unfortunately, most leaders manage their teams by focusing instead on Click here to continue reading »”Leaders, Are You Developing Your Employee’s Super Powers?”

Bret L. Simmons posted a thought-provoking piece on his blog this week where he talked about human “capacity”.  Simmons defines capacity as “the potential each of us has to do more and be more than we are now”.  Although this lead to some debate over whether human capacity could be viewed as being without limits, as I pointed out in my comment on this piece, the real issue is how do we go about defining or quantifying the limits of our capabilities.

As children, we learned early on about the limits of our abilities, of what activities we excelled at and which ones we struggled with.  Thanks to the varied curricula of the education system, we were able to test our competencies in understanding scientific principles, of creating inspired works of art, and whether we could score a goal in a hockey net.  Even if we couldn’t do some of these well, we were still expected to try, to push ourselves to do the best we could.  Although we took on these challenges in order to Click here to continue reading »”Defining the Limits of Our Abilities”