All aboard the Leadership Express!
Station Twelve: Growth Central
Welcome Aboard: The Rise As A Leader Journey!
Every great leader embarks on a journey, and today, we continue ours. Each stop along the way reveals new insights, challenges, and discoveries about yourself as a leader.
Our final destination? Your personalized Leadership Development Plan, a roadmap to becoming the leader you aspire to be.
Today, we arrived at: Growth Central– What’s left to develop?
Today, you’ll define the skills that you still can develop to bring your leadership vision to life. This is your personalized growth map.
Reflect. Write. Grow. This is where clarity meets direction.
Let’s dive in!
Reflective Questions
Here are some questions to help you reflect deeper.
If your leadership vision is a puzzle, these are the pieces you haven’t placed yet. Now, let’s refine the gap!
- What qualities do you admire in others that you still need to develop?
- What past challenges highlight areas for improvement?
This is where your next-level potential lives. These aren’t weaknesses, they’re unpracticed opportunities. This list will become your roadmap for development, helping you stay focused and intentional in your growth journey.
Awareness is the first milestone of mastery.
If your leadership vision is a puzzle, these are the pieces you haven’t placed yet.
They don’t make the puzzle incomplete; they just give you directions on what to collect next.
Look again at your master toolkit list. Now list what’s still missing, using these questions:
- What do I admire in others that I don’t yet have?
- What do I avoid because I don’t feel equipped?
- What would help me lead with more confidence, clarity, or peace?
Now that you’ve named them, you’re ready to go find and build them. Do not panic,, I am still here to help you with that next!
A skill is a specific ability that a person defines, learns, and practices until it becomes second nature. It is both measurable and improvable through repetition and feedback.
Example:
Intentional listening is the skill of fully focusing on the speaker, not just on their words, but also their tone, body language, and emotional undercurrent.
For the purpose of this question we are only defining skills. please see the remaining questions as they will help you defferentiate between skills and (tools, habits and or competencies).
A tool is a technique, strategy, or method that helps you develop or apply a skill. Tools are how you practice, refine, and reinforce what you’re learning.
Example:
Paraphrasing is a tool that helps you practice intentional listening. By restating what the speaker said in your own words, you confirm understanding and build connection.
Think of your journey like climbing a mountain. You’ve seen the peak, but now you stop to check your backpack.
What’s missing? What tools would make this climb easier?
The better your tools, the more empowered you are.
A habit is an action performed so frequently that it becomes automatic. Habits form the foundation of consistent leadership behavior, shaping how you show up daily.
Example:
Starting each meeting with a moment of silence and intention, setting is a habit that centers your focus and creates presence.
A competency is a broader capabilities made up of multiple, interrelated skills. It is an area that is made up of multiple related skills, behaviors, and knowledge areas.
In the context of this leadership journey, we are not just identifying general competencies, we are breaking them down to discover the precise skills they contain. This helps make development more focused, trackable, and practical.
Think of a competency as the category, and skills as the ingredients that bring it to life.
An example:
Communication is a competency, but it is not a single skill. It includes a cluster of skills, such as:
- Active listening
- Nonverbal communication (eye contact, posture, gestures)
- Empathy and emotional awareness
- Clear and concise writing
- Storytelling and public speaking
- Adapting your message to different audiences
Next stop: [Baby Steps] – The party is about to start! Let’s put your plan into action. The pieces are in place. Now it’s time to move forward, one step at a time.
Your leadership vision is in motion—let’s keep riding toward bringing it to life!