Page 213 - HBR Leader's Handbook: Make an Impact, Inspire Your Organization, and Get to the Next Level

202 HBR Leader’s Handbook

you can volunteer to assemble a team to tackle a recurring problem, offer
to take the lead in resolving a customer or supplier issue, or plan and or-
chestrate the agenda for a visiting executive. If you can’t readily find a busi-
ness issue, then lead a fund-raising campaign in your office or organize a
social event. You also can look outside your current organization for lead-
ership roles in community, religious, or civic groups. All these situations
are microcosms of leadership responsibility, requiring you to rally a group
of people around a common objective. So they are great laboratories where
you can learn how to lead or lead better and differently than you do today.
But in choosing your opportunities, take care that the learning will be
robust, that the situations you’ll take on will be making you at least a little
bit uncomfortable—where you’re not quite sure what to do, and where you
have to figure it out as you go along. Exposing yourself to well-chosen but
new functional and industry challenges will always bring some con-
structive stretching, but so will taking on a lot more responsibility in areas
you’re already familiar with. Look for both kinds of settings along the way.

How to learn on the job
Maximizing the benefit of different assignments is, however, not just about
the diversity, depth, and breadth of exposures. It also comes from the way
you assimilate the experience. So consider not just what you’ll learn and
where, but also how you’ll do it.
In simple terms, this should center on the timeless cycle of human
learning that is core to our concept of leadership as a continuing practice:
taking action, followed by observation and reflection about results and why
you delivered (or failed to deliver) a particular outcome, and then planning
and integrating the necessary personal change into your habits to improve
the next time.
Our most fundamental advice is to be intentional: whatever your job,
be mindful about the decisions and actions you are taking to perform your
work. Take time periodically to observe, analyze, and think about how a
particular initiative worked out. Synthesize and put into words what suc-
ceeded or fell short, and why. Resolve, based on what you see and under-