Mastery

There’s a proverb that translates roughly to “master yourself, head a family, and lead a nation.” All three challenges are very difficult to master. Few try or get to the third challenge and many are busy in dealing with challenge one and two. There is no clear finish line to mastery of self or success with family (or a unit or department) and yet fewer master leading a nation (or a company). This article looks at actions that are exhibited in a journey to tackle the first challenge: Mastery of self.

The ability to demonstrate initiative has great significance. It is demonstrated in many ways. These include asking for help, recognizing mistakes, exceeding expectations, challenging the status quo and thinking outside the box. InOther Mastery indicators are to listen carefully and take good suggestions and act on them when it is in your circle of influence.

Masters seek to understand differences between gender, culture, personalities, and other diversities the road to mastery becomes easier. The lack of understanding causes conflict that often is very damaging personal growth.

Mastery also means the transferring knowledge and expertise and coaching everyone. It is near impossible to change/coach people unless they want change/coaching. Masters learn the task, improve the task, and teach the task and make themselves totally replaceable. This sounds odd but that is a key to professional growth.

Leaders never stop learning: There is too much information. There is too little useful and actionable information. Leaders pick the information and the challenges that have meaningful impact and within their circle of influence.

Leaders set well defined goals and measures performance: The lack of clarity on expectation contributes to poor results or missed deadlines. Performance measurement is definitely an area for development to improve organizational effectiveness.

Leaders build a network and exercise informal power: The big organization...