Ever hear from a client or a peer that he or she is “too busy to learn?” Frankly, I think it’s a most ironically frustrating statement. The idea that people in leadership roles can’t (or won’t) take time for self-improvement tells me a lot about that person’s style of leadership.

Hyperspace back 47 years to a guy named John F. Kennedy – the youngest man ever to be elected President of the United States – who said, “Leadership and learning are indispensable to one another.”

Or hyperspace back 220 years to hear a statesman named Benjamin Franklin saying “If you empty your purse in your head, no one can take it away from you. An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest.”

It seems Franklin had a lot more truth in his statement than he may have realized.

In his book Pathways to Performance, Jim Clemmer quotes Doug Snetsinger, who served as executive director at the University of Toronto’s Institute of Market Driven Quality. Snetsinger’s group surveyed 326 Canadian CEO’s to discover if any correlations existed between a senior executive’s personal development and his or her organization’s performance.

What did Snetsinger find?

“Regardless of the size of the business or the industry in which it competes, organizations headed by learning leaders are far more likely to be achieving operational goals than those that do not have that leadership… the higher the learning effectiveness of the senior team, the more likely the firm is prospering.”

Snetsinger is further quoted as saying:

“The CEO’s personal development is not personal. It is fundamental to sustaining and rejuvenating the health of the organization.”

Too busy to learn?

Apparently that perspective is rather expensive.

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Filed in Business, Training, Management, Leadership, Workplace, Corporate Culture