Page 22 - HBR Leader's Handbook: Make an Impact, Inspire Your Organization, and Get to the Next Level

12 HBR Leader’s Handbook

first chapter in the book, we chose to end with it, as a way to reinforce the
need for leaders to continually learn about all of these areas. In addition,
we wanted to counter the increasingly common belief that leadership is all
about developing inward-facing skills. In our view, leaders need to build
their organizations and achieve sustaining results, while simultaneously
developing themselves.
Every leader puts their spin on these practices and adjusts them based
on their own personalities, proclivities, passions, and situations. But their
essence, as captured in the chapters that follow, remains the same.

Practicing the practices
Repeatedly trying, reflecting, and then improving how you apply yourself
to create impact through the organization is what’s required, and it’s why
we call these areas of development “practices.” Successful leaders con-
stantly do these things and work to improve them.
This journey is different for everyone. It might begin, for example,
early in your career, when you’re first working as a manager with a more
accomplished leader, and joining him or her in doing some of the practices.
Over time, you will likely get an opportunity to take charge of some of the
practices we describe (creating vision, strategy, etc.). You’ll have varying
degrees of success as you take these areas on for the first time—that’s nor-
mal. But by reflecting on your successes and failures at every step, you’ll
keep making positive adjustments and keep looking for more opportuni-
ties to learn.
As you progress, you will reach a level of capability in these six areas
that will enable you to achieve increasingly significant value through the
people who work for your team, division, or company. As you succeed, these
results will begin to build upon one another—you oversee a new product
that becomes a runaway hit, or take charge of a transformational initia-
tive that redefines a major market or puts your company on a new path to
growth.
As you reach new levels of competency in each practice, you will expe-
rience a magnitude change in performance and more followership in your