What Is Your Plan For Personal Growth?

A business is only as strong as its leader, which is why CEOs need to identify their swot and keep striving for personal improvement.?

- Peter Switzer

One thing I’ve noticed over the years, first as an educator, then as a father, an employer and now as a thought leader on matters of money, business and wealth-building, is that success and failure come down to leadership. This is why developing strong leaders is crucial to the success of a country, just as it is for a family or a business.

The penny dropped after interviewing and analysing the best in business over 25 years. This eureka moment was that most of us are in leadership roles – either at work, in our families or when we unwisely put up our hand to coach our kids’ sports team. However, few of us ever do any consistent and effective leadership training.

I ask you: have you read a book on leadership and actually changed as a consequence? I bet you’ve read cookbooks, great novels, maybe even the TV guide. But what about arguably the most important skill you could develop to help your career – your leadership?

I’ve often joked in my speeches that the best book I’ve ever read is “my own!” I then hold up a copy of 350 Ways to Grow Your Business (a book I wrote with my business partner and wife), which always brings a hearty laugh.

Of course, there are many excellent books that anyone in business should read, which include Good to Great by Jim Collins, Losing My Virginity by Richard Branson, Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, Nelson Mandela’s Long Walk to Freedom and Tony Hsieh’s Delivering Happiness. There are certainly many more but the one that’s had, and continues to have, an enormous impact on me is John Maxwell’s The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership.

Maxwell has sold millions of books on leadership, and it was when I heard him speak that I understood I had to improve my leadership ability if our business was to grow.