Maxwell noted that, “If you are a highly talented person, you may have a rough time with being teachable. Why? Because talented people often think they know it all. And that makes it difficult for them to continually expand their talent. Being teachable is not so much about competence and mental capacity as it is about attitude. It is the desire to listen, learn and apply. It is the hunger to discover and grow. It is the willingness to learn, unlearn and relearn. If you stop learning, you stop leading but if you remain teachable and keep learning, you will be able to make an impact as a leader. Talented individuals with teachable attitude become talent-plus people.
So how can we be more teachable as Leaders in an effort to learn and foster growth? It starts by putting ourselves in the frame of mind that we can (and must) learn more.
To be teachable is:
1. To continuously Learn
Have you been a school prefect? Or you currently are? Perhaps you are the Class Captain. I do not care about your portfolio but what I care about is you being effective in whatever capacity you serve as a leader. If you must survive and grow to be an exceptional leader, you must do this one thing, seek out opportunities to listen, learn and apply knowledge not only from like-minded, similarly situated colleagues, but also from those who can offer different perspectives and even contrary points of view. Your learning processes can include, reading books, blogs from authors and websites that are both similar and opposite to your way of thinking. You can excel if you follow this advice of mine.
2. Always seeks to get feedback
You can be so full of yourself not to be willing to allow your ego to be tampered with. More often times, this affects the male leaders than their female counterparts. My sincere advice to you is to seek to get feedback. Put yourself under continuous evaluation, it is easier to grow that way. You can detect your weaknesses and deal with it headlong and you can also know much about your strength and build on it in the same vein. I must confess to you that this might be difficult to do but it pays off eventually.
3. Learn from their Mentors
Mentors are great people. They help to deal with challenges we encounter as leaders. While I was a class captain in my school many years ago, I had the invaluable support of my Chemistry teacher, he guided me in difficult times especially and that was because I was willing to listen. If you are not willing, you cannot get the benefit of mentorship. Ensure to have someone whom you admire and respect to offer you help through problems and opportunities – and be willing to submit to their leadership. We get better by learning from others who have success stories that we aim for.
