Mastery in Leadership: Get ready for your journey

​Becoming an exceptional leader doesn’t simply take time. Extraordinary leaders hone their skills, develop certain talents and craft their powerful impact with ongoing intention. ​Are you committed to that journey?

Mastery of leadership is a journey
Those that we Judge to be masterful leaders likely knew that for them to become an expert leader in their field, they would need to commit to a process of continuous growth and development. That commitment and the continued effort allowed them to excel. Their journey was similar to that of a master chef’s, a karate master’s experience or the process a master pianist went through. ​It took time, dedication and effort.

It's more than taking some training
Mastery is an ongoing journey of learning and growth. We don't typically talk about mastery in leadership. Instead, we focus on skill development, taking some training or participating in a professional development opportunity. All of those are important, but they are only pieces. Each training is a tool to use on your way to mastering leadership. You must use the tool, practice with it and excel at it.

Your title doesn't make you great
You can become a leader simply by getting a title. Add to that your job description, a group of employees and a budget to manage. All of that puts you in the position, but none of it will make you a great leader. 

Applying your learning is key
Once you realized that, you might realize you need some more training and assistance to work on your leadership skills. Perhaps you read a book on leadership. Maybe you take a course or two on communication, budgeting, and strategic planning. That still will not magically make you a great leader. However, if you read a book and start to apply what you're learning, you're probably going to be a better leader. If you take the courses and work on using the skills you were trained in, you are going to be an even better leader.

Critically evaluate and improve yourself
It is when you continually apply your learning that you begin to master certain skills. By evaluating how you are doing, learning from failures, trying new strategies and continually investing in bettering yourself that you will find you begin to truly excel.  

Don't settle
The problem for many leaders is that they settle. They get to the point of being a mediocre leader or someone with average skills and they stop. They believe they are good enough to get by. They cease to take training on particular leadership skills. These “ok” leaders may focus on other team members their skill development. 

Be the leader who stands out
If you are different, if you want more than that, perhaps it’s mastery you are looking for. If “good enough,” isn’t good enough, consider focusing on mastery.

Mastering leadership takes a long time
To become a masterful leader means that you're going to work on this, quite frankly, for years. Perhaps even your whole life. If you want to be a masterful leader, you know that you are going to continue to grow and develop and learn and train and apply what you've learned and learned some more and take some more. It's about a process. Mastery is a journey of continuing to develop yourself.

There is no endpoint
Know now that you will likely never actually reach the point of being the best or perfect or even a “Master.” If you ever talk to somebody who you consider to be a master at something, they will probably tell you they don't know everything thing. In fact, they've only dipped their toe it. Those that we deem as masters know that there's so much more for them to learn, so they continue to learn and grow.

Commit to a lifelong pursuit of excellence
To master leadership means that you're committing yourself to a lifelong journey. It is like pledging to yourself that you will persistently learn, grow, develop and improve yourself. 
I'm always going to be working on my skills, my strengths, my areas that maybe aren't so great. I'm going to continue to explore where I can grow even more. I'm going to continue to look inside and figure out 

• What's working? 
• Why is it working so well?
• What's not working? 
• Why is it not working the way I want it to? 
• What might I do to develop more of that skill or this skill or this ability or this trait within me?

Start with mastering your confidence
If you want to keep growing and developing yourself, it's important to realize that this isn't always going to be an easy journey. You will make mistakes. You will fumble. It will be weird, scary and downright painful at times. You are going to need to step outside of your comfort zone routinely, to get to the point of excellence. To do that, you'll have to move forward with confidence. The confidence isn't in knowing you can handle it, but the confidence that you will figure it out. If you are looking for a tool to help you master your confidence levels, you may be interested in this book.

Be the best you can be today, and work towards being even better tomorrow
Mastery is committing yourself to a lifelong journey of growing yourself. If you want to become the best leader that you can commit today to continue to grow. Commit today to never-ending this journey of becoming that better leader. Know that you will continuously have the ability to get that much further, to learn a little bit more, to develop a little bit more, to grow a few skills. That's mastery. Continuing  on and on and on. ​

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