According to Eric Hoffer: “In a time of drastic change, it is the learners who inherit the future. The learned usually find themselves equipped to live in a world that no longer exists.”
If your leadership has plateaued and you have no desire to learn anything new, it’s time to do a little soul-searching to figure out why. Just as weightlifting and physical exercise build your muscles, when you’re learning, the nerve cells in your brain are growing with mental training, and these neurons develop greater connectivity.
This is why successful leaders keep their minds open to new things because they know that even with their wealth of knowledge, there’s always more to discover. Leaders who understand the purpose of continuous development raise the tide of everyone around them. You know, Roger Federer said something that stuck with me.
He said: “I always questioned myself in the best of times, even when I was world number one for many, many weeks and months in a row, at certain times during the year I said, ‘What can I improve? What do I need to change?’ Because if you don’t do anything or you do the same thing over and over again, you stay the same and remaining the same means going backward.”
