Use These 2 Strategies to Unlock Your Greatest Leadership Potential How successful leaders optimize their personal growth, accomplish their goals and live a rich life.
By Sabrina Philipp Edited by Amanda Breen
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The hot and cold approach to growth as a leader is not sustainable and leads to burnout. Successful leaders understand the key to accomplishing their goals, and living a rich life happens through consistently doing the personal-growth work.
The idea behind what personal development represents should be more than a social-media meme. Successful leaders use personal-development strategies to build a strong mindset and create greater freedom.
If you study any successful leader — Jeff Bezos, Oprah, Michelle Obama, Richard Branson, etc. — you'll see a pattern of consistency and the development of healthy habits. You'll see leaders that understand the importance of high-performance-optimization principles. They're hungry for growth and committed to their development.
As a leader, everything you'd like to accomplish in your life, work, business and relationships happens on the other side of optimizing your habits. If you're going to create more success, you have to commit to the long-term personal-growth work.
Related: True Leadership Requires Letting Go of Control
Here are two essential strategies successful leaders use to optimize their personal growth, accomplish their goals and live a rich life. Use these growth strategies as you put in the work to become a better you and take action consistently.
Study successful routines but personalize the execution
It's inspiring to have access to information and see optimized success routines. Successful leaders understand that modeling success is a great way to create opportunities for growth in their life. However, while they study successful routines, they personalize the execution — meaning they don't copy.
Human beings are an interesting species. The strategies and methods for growth that work for someone else may not work for you.
Morning-routine videos tend to be popular on YouTube because that's an area where people struggle. But there's something else to consider when thinking about modeling what you see.
Personal growth happens through the optimization of habits and routines in a way that works for your archetype. Tim Cook wakes up at 3 a.m. every morning while Jeff Bezos prefers to wake up naturally without an alarm clock. And neither of those times may be best for you. We're all built differently.
The path to growth and optimization starts with self-awareness and testing. You have to know how you best work and what you respond to. You have to test what's best for your goals and the way you want to pursue them. You then develop a routine that's personalized to you.
You create consistency with a personal-growth plan that you enjoy and will implement. It takes away the resistance that comes from doing things that don't align with who you are and the way you tick. Successful leaders always personalize the execution.
It helps if you have a routine that has you working consistently and incorporates fun and self-prioritization.
Related: Power With Purpose: The Four Pillars of Leadership
Relentlessly focus on your progress — not other people
Jeff Bezos talks about why Amazon is so successful. Amazon's secret is that it spends most of its time and effort relentlessly focusing on its customer — not the competition. Successful leaders focus on their goals and specific path to get there — not how other leaders are getting there.
Social media and the internet have given us the ability to connect and observe what other people are doing. But, you rarely see the whole picture, and it's not needed to create success in your life.
Your goal should be to relentlessly focus on doing the daily growth work, accomplishing your goals and optimizing how you utilize your time. Other people and what they're doing are a distraction. Before you know it, you'll end up spending time on things that move you away from your goals.
Experiencing progress is excellent motivation to continue doing the work consistently. Creating success is not reaching some finish line — it's a long-term path of work and progress. Focus on your journey to your goals.
It's a great time to create consistent growth and optimize yourself as a leader. Nothing is stopping you from putting in the work that helps you become better at what you do. Model success but personalize it. Make a firm commitment to your goals and all the things that make you a more decisive leader.
