Teaming - Are we growing professionally?

Personal growth is important is an effort that reflects our desire to contribute to our organisation and team. What will happen if our growth is not in tandem with our organisation, team and colleagues. It produces angst among the team and holding back organisational growth.

One of the most frustrating as a leader is to see a team member procrastinate growth and change till it is too late. It is not that we don't understand the need for change and growth. The problem is we are stuck with a bad habit and keep excusing ourselves. Our constant refrain is ,"I will do it tomorrow."

One of the sure signs of growth is the lack of time. Welcome to the real world! Quoting Jose Mourinho at BBC: "This is modern football. It's going in this tendency - more matches, more competitions, less time to work, even not enough time to have a real holiday for bodies and brains that top football players need. "There's not enough time." This applies to all industries.

World leaders are marked increasingly by this, "There is not enough time." But this does not mean they will produce a shoddy piece of work. By growing and changing we can do a better job will lesser time!

It is the wise use of time that characterise a growing team member. It is the use of the same amount of time with increasing effectiveness by multiplying time by duplicating ourselves and delegation of work. Leaders must expand the work as well as take on greater roles and responsibilities. Expand horizontally and vertically.

Here are some characteristics of people who want to grow:

1) Desire and energy to make it happen.

2) Push the limits of status quo and always wanting to do the best possible job.

3) Use gold standards of the industry to measure own and organisation's work.

4) Constant improvement in the area of communications both written and spoken.

5) Building alliances and expanding network without being froward. These will be point of references for work and life.

6) Recognising others' growth and adjusts to their new approaches and systems and take advantage of the momentum generated rather than wanting to keep to the convenience of the old and conventional ways of doing things.

7) Do things differently. It is not following what's trendy and fashionable. It is the changing of mind-set and requires getting out of the comfort zone. Each expansion of roles and vertical moves will oftentimes require drastic shift.

8) Learn new skills especially people skills. Horizontal and vertical growth requires supervision and enforcement. It involves people. Skills are required to managed, control, direct and get feedback. If we don't have these we will likely be promoted to our level of incompetence.