So much happens in a leadership program and especially when a leadership group meets up face to face. I get this and it’s important to gain the most you can when together. However, group dynamics are different to individual activity. I reckon there’s a lot that you can do independently to create connection, impact and establish profile and networks after a leadership program. In fact, this is often where I see leadership development happen the best! Driven by you with accountability to yourself. Use your positive experience in the program to leverage value for yourself. Be genuine and sincere in your approach and actions and always include a call to action where you can. So, who’s up for it?
Here are some suggestions for things that you can do right now. Take a look and create a post leadership program plan to put them into action for maximum impact. Or go freestyle and choose a few when it suits you. Either way, it’s about maximising outcome for you, your work and business / industry.
1. Reflect on your program and ask yourself the following questions;
- Did you give it your best?
- Did you take every opportunity?
- Did you show up as your best self? If not, go over the material again and create or add information to your leadership pathway plan now. It’s never too late.
2. Be accountable to yourself as well as others. You’ve made a huge investment in time and energy and money in a program. Or your business, employer or industry etc has invested in your development. Be respectful of this. Commit to taking post program action to gain benefit for yourself as well as the investors in you.
3. Maintain energy around your leadership development and journey. There’s no stop / starts here, it’s all onward.
4. Write down two or three key messages about your leadership program experience. Chat to others about the program. People are usually genuinely interested in what you’ve been up to and how you’ve been spending time to further develop yourself. And they get to learn how to gain the most from this type of experience in their future.
5. Use your social media. Write some posts about your experience. Or at least pick some posts from other people’s accounts and repost them. Choose people carefully. This is also a great way to shout out a thanks to whoever made the investment in you. Tag them so they see it.
6. Write a short paragraph or two. Make this about learnings (dot points are great) rather than a kind of “I did this and I did that” story. Mmmm, next what to do with it! Offer it up in a post on social media. Pop it into your next work newsletter. Talk about it at a team meeting etc. Email it to your local paper or industry journal with a high quality photo and ask them if they’d like to do a story or print it as is.
7. Write a letter of thanks to those in your program that inspired or taught you the most. It could be another participant, a facilitator, guest speaker, an organiser /coordinator or a mentor. (Actually, if you had a mentor as part of your program, then absolutely craft a carefully thought out email or letter and send it off).
8. Check out some podcasts related to your industry, your workplace, your work. Ask yourself if there’s anything from your leadership program that might be worth talking about. Or a gem worth sharing to benefit others. If there is, reach out to the podcast producer and offer yourself up for an interview.
9. Send photos you took, or were provided with to those who might benefit from seeing them. Create a call to action with the pics and make this suggestion to who you send the photos to. This is really useful if you have been on field visits and saw things that are innovative, leading edge and you have some first hand intelligence around it.
10. And last one. Maintain contact with those in your program that supported you and your leadership. It’s amazing how often you might be in the same place at the same time or you could always arrange to catch up. Time and time again I’ve heard of post program catch ups between some of the participants. I know in one mentoring relationship we facilitated, a mentee was invited onto an overseas trade delegation with their mentor – what an experience huh? And another was hearing about and following the journey of a group of program participants who set a date for a trip to the west to visit a new part of the country and meet up and a group did this into the north as well. Continue to build relationships and networks.
Over to you.
You’ve read this far, so choose a few suggestions and put them into practise soon. Reach out if I can help in any way. I’d love to hear how these work for you. Email me here. Good luck and keep supporting your own leadership development and journey beyond the leadership or mentoring program. You’ll be glad you did.
Until next time!
