McCheek Manor 30 Day Leadership Challenge Day 22 – Give one junior leader a best practice tip

You know you need to do it, you know you essentially want to do it but when was the last time you honestly shared – not a corrective tip but a true “if I share this knowledge it will allow the recipient to avoid missteps I made or gain progress that took me longer to achieve?” Honestly, how does today’s challenge make you feel? Is your initial gut response one rooted in scarcity or abundance?

If at your core you feel a sense of no way am I going to share what took me years or multiple tries to understand, you’re coming from a scarcity mentality. If on the other hand your first response to this challenge is “who can I share what with, sounds cool” then you predominantly have an abundance mentality. No judgements here after all unless you call and tell me I’ll never know your baseline view on life.

How a leader disseminates information says a lot about their core beliefs. We’re not just discussing best practice tips here but also the appropriate sharing of business information which if known by the receiver would allow him/her to be more productive and/or rely less on their management. Sadly, I’ve worked with leaders who hold tightly every bit of knowledge that could aid others’ productivity because they believe that sharing it would somehow diminish their standing within the organization.

Conversely, I’ve worked with leaders who freely share – often in team meetings or through group communications – the majority of business news as they receive it. Needless to say (but I will) the leaders who communicate most robustly to provide information that those they lead can run with have the more productive teams which leads to higher productivity levels overall along with happier stakeholders both in and outside the organization.

So today start small, pick one junior team member (no cheating by reaching out to someone you are already mentoring or regularly share intel with) and share something you’ve learned over the years that will truly allow him/her to skip one or two growth steps. I believe doing so will actually expand your knowledge base and that you’ll be glad you did.