More Effective Leadership Means Practicing Leadership Skills with Gene Hammett

Great leadership isn’t just about making decisions—it’s about practicing leadership skills consistently to inspire and guide your team. In this episode, I’ll dive into why the best leaders don’t just rely on experience but actively work on practicing leadership skills to improve their impact. I’ll share insights from my work with top CEOs and executives on how daily habits and intentional development can shape stronger, more effective leadership. Leadership is a skill that requires dedication, not just a title. Join me as we explore how practicing leadership skills can elevate your influence and drive real results.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 1:24Speaker 02

  Practicing leadership skills is really about practice as consistently as possible. When you think about what you're missing, be honest with yourself. But also, practice doing the thing. Not solving the problem yourself, not making the decision, but having conversations that get people to solve the problem, find the options. I've given many tactical ways of doing this, but I'm just, I'm hitting you with this, this big idea. Practice leadership. It's not a position. It's something you practice. It's not the, the, that you're an authority and you are the boss. That's the wrong way to look at this. When you practice leadership skills consistently, you will get better. You may fall on your face a couple of times.

• 2:10Speaker 02

  You may have people that let you down and that's part of the growth of you being the leader that you want to be. Welcome to Growth Think Tank. This is the one and only place where you will get insight from the founders and the CEOs of the fastest growing privately held companies. I am the host. My name is Gene Hammett. I help leaders and their teams navigate the defining moments of their growth. Are you ready to grow? Today, we're going to talk about practicing leadership skills. One of the things I've seen in my practice of CEO coaching for the last 10 plus years is that a lot of people want to be better leaders, but something gets in the way of that. Usually it's the work or usually it's some other mindset issue that is keeping you from letting go and practicing being a leader.

• 2:55Speaker 02

  I have a theory. You don't do leadership. You practice it consistently. One of the things I've seen with my CEO clients that have made the biggest transformation is their willingness to evolve and grow. And that starts in the mindset, which we've talked about in previous episodes before, that you can find to help support you in that journey. But you also have to identify the skills that are getting in the way of you not being the leader that you want to be. And so when I say these skills, it could be holding people accountable. That's a skill. Now, there's some things that go around that to make that easier, but you want to practice that in every place you can. If you don't have people in your business that you can empower, which is another skill to, to, to learn and leverage as a leader,

• 3:39Speaker 02

  you want to make sure that you analyze those people and either coach them up or coach them out, which is another skill, coaching inside of leadership. So practicing leadership skills is really about practice as consistently as possible. When you think about what you're missing, be honest with yourself, but also practice doing the thing. Not solving the problem yourself, not making the decision, but having conversations that get people to solve the problem, find the options. I've given many tactical ways of doing this, but I'm just, I'm hitting you with this, this big idea. Practice leadership. It's not a position, it's something you practice.

• 4:23Speaker 02

  It's not that you're an authority and that you are the boss. That's the wrong way to look at this. When you practice leadership skills consistently, you will get better. You may fall on your face a couple of times, you may have people that let you down, and that's part of the growth of you being the leader that you want to be. But you jumping in and solving the problem, you jumping in with your hard work, jumping in and muscle and creativity even, and innovation, doesn't create the kind of team that can feel like they're building their own confidence. So, you're gonna practice empowering people, practice holding them accountable. And another area that I just wanted to highlight, and you may think it's self-serving,

• 5:05Speaker 02

  I've got the neon right behind me, tough conversations, is you want to practice having tough conversations. Meaning, you want to practice getting better at it. I think tough conversations and all these leadership skills are just like any other skill. If you want to get better at tennis, you go play tennis. When you want to get better at Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, which is what I do, you go roll. That's our word for active engagement of that, but you practice. And so practicing leadership means you are actively trying to not do it yourself, but you're building up the people around you. One thing I'll remind you of too, is that when you think about leadership, it's really easy to be an exceptional leader when things are smooth sailing, when it's easy, when you don't have headwinds.

• 5:51Speaker 02

  But most businesses are facing some type of challenge right now. And if you don't have a challenge, then look out and figure out an area to fix, to make it your challenge. And, but if you actually have market pressures, you have pricing pressures with competition, you have trying to hire people or keep people, all of those things are challenges that you want to make sure that that mindset is practiced consistently as you move through it. So this is just a reminder to practice your leadership skills and to be a more effective leader. You want to make sure that you know what leadership skills you need to improve and work on it. If there's any way I can help you with the tools that we have, the experience I have with CEO coaching, make sure you reach out to me. Send me an email, [email protected].

• 6:34Speaker 02

  Otherwise, when you think of growth and you think of leadership, think of growth thinking. As always, with the courage, we'll see you next time.

• 6:45Speaker 03

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