Leaders Continue to Improve

No matter how far you’ve come, a leader always asks:

“What’s the next step?”

True to my DiSC® style of a strongly inclined iD — I’m impatient.

It’s been a lifelong tendency of mine to interrupt, or at least formulate my response before the other person is done talking.

A college professor I had called me on this once. Dr. Washut said, “What is it, Alan? You keep doing this thing, man, this sharp intake of breath that makes me think you want to cut in and say something.”

What a great observation — and a great example of dialing down to specific behaviors.

His observation motivated me to stop interrupting. I told my best friends about this goal, so they could hold me accountable.

After some practice, I got so good at not interrupting others that I made another goal to allow others to interrupt me. (After all, this would really show that I didn’t have to always be the one talking.)

But, my best friend and life-long accountability partner, Matt, kept calling me on little behaviors that distracted from my good intentions.

Matt said, “Great, man, you’ve stopped interrupting, but now you’ve just got this annoying smug smirk on your face when I’m the one interrupting. Maybe it’s time to work on that, jerk.”

Good point. There’s always something more to improve.

And, it’s good to have that accountability partner to help you see your blind spots.

Take pride in how far you have come, and have faith in how far you can go.

  1. Sally Wilke
    | Reply

    Gotta love that Matt. It is so hard to be humble and not get the recognition. Ha!

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