Return on Experience: Learning Leadership at Work

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• Editorial: Center for Creative Leadership Press
• Año: 2009
• ISBN:
  9781604917338
• Categoría: Business
• Categoría: Leadership

Leadership is best learned from experience, but learning from experience is not always automatic. This guidebook introduces you to a return-on-experience framework. Using the ROE framework, you actively seek to learn from experience in order to build your mastery, broaden your versatility, and benefit your organization. When you understand and apply the framework in your work and organization, everyday experiences can be transformed into an engine for leader development and organizational impact.

Create Your ROE Portfolio

• How do you make your learning visible?

• How do you recognize it for yourself?

• How do you elevate learning to a relevant discussion with others?

• How do you use lessons learned from experience as a point of differentiation between yourself and others?

How? By creating your personal ROE portfolio!

Why a Portfolio?

Work portfolios have been widely used in professional fields such as design, engineering, and the arts. Leaders, too, can create a meaningful portfolio as a way to understand, document, and drive their learning and development.

An architect or designer, for example, puts together a visual portfolio of projects to showcase his skill (mastery) and breadth of experience (versatility). In conversations or proposals, he gives examples, tells stories, and provides client references as a way to show impact. The portfolio serves as a reflection of experience and learning—as a starting point for discussion with others.

The process of putting together a portfolio to show others is also instructive to the professional. It clarifies strengths and differentiators, highlights best practices, and identifies gaps in experience that are important to fill. It can also force thinking about lessons learned and experiences that were valuable—even if the outcomes or processes were less than ideal. For example, the architect could point to a “first” experience—the first time as project manager or the first time he worked with a large-scale project with multiple stakeholders. Perhaps the project missed key deadlines or faced budget shortfalls. These challenges and the management and leadership lessons learned in the process have value that may surface through the portfolio process.

So an ROE portfolio is both a product and a learning process. It allows you to clarify, track, and communicate experiences of mastery, versatility, and impact. It serves as documentation—ideal for keeping up with today’s fast-paced, activity-packed jobs. Just as important, the portfolio process creates space to reflect on learning and demonstrate growth. Creating and maintaining an ROE portfolio can help you grow professionally and, at the same time, serve as a record of your growth.

The portfolio process involves three steps: reflection, portfolio composition, and performance improvement.

Reflection

Before you start planning your future learning opportunities, spend some time understanding how you have learned from experience in the past. Reflect on the questions below. Use a journal to capture your reflections.

• What were key times for learning in your life? Describe situations in which you learned important lessons. How have you used these lessons?

• What experiences have you had that built your skills and leadership capacity?

• What experiences have you had that broadened your skills and leadership capability?

• What experiences have you had that benefited your career, your group, and/or your organization?

Portfolio Composition

The ROE mind-set defines leadership learning as developing experiences that build, broaden, and benefit. By composing your ROE portfolio, you extend the mind-set into a tangible record of learning.

The format of your portfolio is up to you. It can be a simple set of documents or files on your computer, a hard-copy binder or journal, or even a blog or personal Web site. The key is to have something that will be easy to use and maintain. Also give some thought to whether and how you will share your portfolio with others.

Create an overview of your portfolio by listing key experiences and discussing the effect of each experience on your mastery, versatility, and impact. Details, examples, and support materials can be created and included in your portfolio as you wish.

Performance Improvement

To plan how to use your experiences to improve future learning and performance, reflect on the questions below. Use a journal to capture your reflections.

• What are the strategic priorities of the organization?

• What skills and capabilities do I need to learn to be prepared for the next assignment or next level of responsibility?

• What cross-functional jobs, tasks, or moves would be important to diversify my experience?

• What cross-cultural jobs, tasks, or moves would be important to diversify my experience?

• How could I integrate and/or extend my learning through relationships?

• How could I integrate and/or extend my learning through organizational systems?

Bringing It Together

Based on your ideas from the previous section, decide on a high-priority learning goal. Use the worksheet on page 26 to state your goal and map out a plan for g...