Similarly to maturing in our lives, we also mature as leaders. While most immature people demage only their own lives, immature leaders undermine also the success of their colleagues and subordinates, customers and investors. What stages must a leader pass to achieve true maturity? Familiarize yourself with the following stages and honestly answer the question in which of the stages you and the leaders in your company are.
1. Absorbing knowledge and experience
You are a total beginner. You are listening and learning from others to see how it works in the real business world. You have almost no accountability, so you cannot cause any severe damage. You make mistakes and learn from them.
2. Testing new knowledge and experience in practice
You believe that you can already achieve something on your own and want to prove yourself as a capable manager. You have probably already gained an official managerial position.
3. Business success
You have reached something that can seriously be described as a business success. You have earned money for somebody and received a fat reward for it.
4. Failure and finding new ways
You are trying to repeat your previous success using the same procedures but subsequently finding out that you will need more to enter a higher league. You experience new setbacks and disappointments. Finally you start trying not to repeat the failures.
5. Reaching maturity
After several repetitions of the third and fourth stages you realize that you are like everyone else - you are successful in something and unsuccessful in something else, but can you learn from that. You realize that being a mature leader is essentially the same as being a beginner (the first stage). Thanks to your experience you have only got more confidence and perhaps a sense of humor.
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