Grow Your People, Grow Your Business!

The other day, I ran into a friend from high school. After our initial pleasantries and greetings, my friend started to talk about our “good ol’ high school days”.

A few minutes into our chat, I tried to turn the conversation to what was going on in his life now. But he repeatedly turned the focus back to what happened in high school, and was uninterested in talking about the present or the future.

Observation: It seems once we graduate from high school or college, we lose much of the discipline we developed to study for a test, read a book, or write a paper. Therefore, we have to become more intentional, if we want to continue learning and growing after we leave the structure of formal education.

As leaders, it is crucial for us to lift the lid off our own personal growth. And, it is also important that we guide and facilitate the growth of our people.

Recently, I’ve been writing about the ON/IN principle that encourages us to…

[Tweet “Work ON the business while we work IN the business. – Bobby Albert”]

So what is working ON, not just IN, the business? It is three planning strategies:

• Grow yourself

• Grow your people

• Grow your business

Every leader can achieve significant results by growing their people.

Do you want to grow your business? Do you want to achieve successful results that you have never seen before?

Once you have committed to first grow YOU, it is time for you, as the leader, to grow your people.

The Challenge

People in general are so preoccupied with the busyness of life, and are often satisfied with the memories of the past (like my high school buddy). When they get stuck in the rut of the status quo, it limits their expectations of change and a better future.

Their thinking can become too small or narrow in scope. They often see only one solution or no solution to grow a business or make quality improvements.

They have limited their exposure to new ideas by associating with the same people, doing the same thing, and experiencing over and over the same experiences.

They don’t see themselves in a larger way, beyond where they are now, nor being at the next level.

[Tweet ““While we don’t always get what we want, we always get what we choose.” –John C. Maxwell #NsideOutside”]

Because many people will not grow on their own, if you don’t intentionally grow your people, you will experience a “lid” on your business growth.

The Solution

If you are willing to invest in and grow your people, you will experience significant results. But, it will require discipline in you and your organization.

“Discipline is doing what you don’t want to do today, so you can do what you want to do tomorrow.” – Bobby Albert

How do you grow your people?

Your employees need to see you, as the leader, actively investing in personal growth not only for yourself but for them as well.

Think about it… if you do not invest in yourself, who will? Well… if you don’t invest in your people’s personal growth, who will?

For my company, we regularly and carefully selected industry and non-industry leadership/personal development and skill improvement seminars/education sessions/video training for our people to attend.

We planned our major personal growth events and training during our annually reoccurring “slow season”. We also scheduled our training on non-peak days and during typically slower business hours.

I felt so strongly about growing our people, that we would have half-day company-wide workshops every year. This created opportunities for us to learn and grow together as a team, like when we introduced the ON/IN principle.

I also led our people and our leadership team in book reviews. Typically, we would review one chapter per month. Some of the best and impactful book reviews we ever did were The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership by John Maxwell, and both Built to Last and Good to Great by Jim Collins.

Do you want to grow your business? What are you doing to invest in your people’s personal growth? Please share your comments <here> and share this blog post with a friend and co-workers.