Welcome to Hacking Your Leadership. I'm Chris and now I'm Lorenzo, and welcome to this week's Thoughtful Thursday. Don't forget to follow us on YouTube at Hacking Your Leadership and leave us a review on iTunes. On this Thoughtful Thursday, I want to talk about a listener question that I received in on Instagram. They were asking what things that you and I have done recently to kind of
further our own learning. You know, we we've spoken many times on the podcast about how the best leaders are students of leadership, constantly doing things to learn about leadership and learn about new leadership theories, new authors, new books, There's a lot out there. This particular listener question was more about the
kind of the formal leadership learning. So is it not just you know, finding a podcast or a book, but you know, do we do anything that actually helps us further our leadership skills or that gives us skills that you know, we might be able to use on a on a resume when you know, leading a new team or applying for a new job. I thought it was a great question because you know, we've we've talked about the informal
stuff. Maybe this the formal stuff is just as important, I think, although maybe it doesn't get as much spotlight because there's not as much of it. Yeah, No, I love the conversation. I think, you know, I've really looked at formal learning outside of just like the things that you can discover, as you kind of mentioned, like podcasts and books and videos
and things like that. There's so much great content out there, but there's an aspect of formal learning that, you know, looking twenty years later from when I left college to say like, oh, like at that time in my life, it was just the thing that you were trying to get done.
Sure, and now fast forward a couple decades later, you're like, wow, Like there's an element of joy and accountability and feeling of progress and feeling confident with what you're consuming and then what you're able to then you know, kind of share, whether it's a paper that you have to write or
a test that you have to take. But there's a really, really great learnings that I've been able to take from that that I think really dial you in to have to pay more attention really and like really like wrestle with some of the premises of leadership and approaches to leadership and things like that, and
so I love that we got this question. And you know, I know that both of us have have done some formal learning recently that I think has been really really helpful for not just the scope of the roles and jobs that we have, but just in general our kind of perspective and are kind of confidence in talking about leadership. Right. There's there's an element of accountability that happens internally when you kind of sign up to do something that's on somebody else's
timeline or somebody else's schedule. So if you enroll in a class, or if you are, you know, going to college, or if you are taking an online course, or you know, whatever it is, if it's not something that you can kind of engage and disengage with on your own, but rather it's a finite amount of time and you have to get this thing done in this amount of time. There's an element of commitment that that takes.
You know, I can pick up a great new leadership book and start reading it, and then if I get really busy, I can put it down and come back to it three weeks later or three months later, and no one is worse off for it. Besides myself. You know, whatever I time, I didn't take to read it. But when other people are counting on you, maybe you have a team of people working together, or groups working together, when you have an instructor or a professor, or someone
who is teaching a class on a specific timeline. You know, all these other accountabilities come into play when you kind of sign up to do something that is formal rather than informal. Most recently, I got my SHIRM Certified Senior Certified Professional Certificate in twenty fifteen, and I've kept renewing it every two years
since I've gotten it, which requires courses. I have to take classes and take a certain number of units to be able to maintain that, and then I take tests in order to maintain the little certificate that I get sent every two years saying that it's been renewed. And I think, I mean, it's not just that it looks good on a resume. I feel like a lot has changed over the last five or six years in the world of human
resources, Whereas if I just didn like a one and done thing. You know, a lot of that stuff is stuff that you don't really need anymore. It's the new stuff that's coming down that you really have to know in order to be you know, relevant and kind of on the forefront and whatever field you have. I love that and I think that I recently took a course on Coursera and and you know, in full transparency, the first thing I saw was the University of Michigan logo and I was like, I want
to take that course, whatever it is. And it was leading teams, which was you know, yeah, yeah, a little bit bias, a little bit biased, right, like Ohio State University could have the greatest leadership platform in the whole world. I would never take a class because I'm petty, but no, it was. It was great, and you know, it was interesting because it was through Coursera, which I found really really enjoyable. I found it easy to you consume the content. I was able to
do a lot of it kind of listening while driving. And then there's like there's there's parts of it where you kind of have to interact answer questions things like that take Quiz's testinal, which I could sit down and be able to do. But being able to listen to the content, listen to the lectures, rewind them, you know, like tag certain things that I wanted to go back to. While while much of it what I would say would be kind of like an intro to leadership and like the basic concepts of leadership,
I really enjoyed it because I have never had formal leadership education. All of my educational leadership is either either come from experience or coming from you know, different maybe certifications over time or classes that I've taken with with with with the organizations that I've worked for, you know, books, free content online. So it was the first time where to your point, like I was being
held accountable to learn about leadership. And what I liked about it was while the concepts were very familiar, the words, the definitions of the words, things like surface diversity that you know, like I maybe never connected the dots on that. I thought about that as a means of defining the things where we you know, the physical attributes that may be different in diversity versus kind of like the deep diversity, which can be more around experience, background,
perspectives. Things like that. I learned a ton of language, and I liked all of the data and research because I think so many times, sure, we know concepts in leadership, but to say, like here's a data point or here's something from a research standpoint that really kind of like solidifies that perspective. I find it really helpful. Yeah, that's right. And I want to ask you a question around So, if a person is listening right
now, where should they start? You know, whether they want to go, you know, seek out the same places that we've done, or go elsewhere. If they want to do something to kind of further their education in leadership development or elsewhere in a formal way, where should they begin? So I want to ask you up at first, I'm gonna get it for one of our sponsors. All right, Lorenzo. People are listening right now and
they want to further their formal education, where should they start? I think first and foremost, especially if you're you know, a leader in an organization, or maybe you're not a leader, but you're looking to aspire to be a leader. Does your organization or company provide any kind of tuition reimbursement,
free classes, free certification? So the first thing I would say you to do is start there is there any way that you can get some element of formal education, either paid for or sponsored by your organization or maybe they have partnerships with different companies where you can get some of these certifications. So start there, because I think that any way that you can kind of get it for free, I'm a huge proponent for and a lot of organizations, especially
for full time employees, offer those types of benefits. If not, then I would definitely just hit the search engine, hit your favorite search engine, and just start typing in, like you know, free leadership courses, free leadership classes. I think what you will find out is that there are many that are out there that while not formal in the fact where you have to enroll or where you have to pay a fee, they definitely have timelines.
They have you know, quizzes, they have courses, some of them have discord channels where you can kind of take these classes with other people that are doing it. I like the idea of the formality where you have a semester, or you have four weeks or six weeks or eight weeks, and you're kind of on the hook for making sure that you not only consume the content, but that you learn it and that you're ready to apply it. That
to me, I really like, I really like that more. But if you don't have that capability right now, there are definitely more places that you can find that will give you more of a formal learning without maybe it has to be done in this timeframe or through this school or through this software, through this company, But that's kind of where I would start first. It
is like, see, see what all of your options are. Once you've kind of done that, now, start thinking about what are the things that you want to develop in in your in your organization or in your role. Is it things like project management and you're trying to figure out how to how to prioritize and how to you know, build out schedules and systems to help you get work done. Is it people leadership? Is it understanding people and
leading people, inspiring motivating people. Is it things like in HR and policies and procedures that you need to know for your role? Is it inclusion and diversity and understanding how do you lead different teams in different ways? Like like really taking taking into account where you're at right now and what are the things that you feel that you need to you know, kind of upskill in to then create opportunities for yourself in your current organization or into the to the next
job somewhere else. Right right. I was just going to say that if you if your next step in your career is not at your own organization, or if it's just a steppingstone into something else, you need to be really focused on talking with people who are doing the thing that you want to do next, whether that's the next step above you in your org or in a
completely other company. Talk to the people who are doing that and find out the skills that they have have or that they believe are important to success in doing that role. And there will there will always be courses that you can take that that kind of help you level up in that particular set of skills to make you just kind of a more formidable applicant when it does come time to, you know, take that next step in your career. Absolutely,
and with that it brings us to the end of this episode. This is hacking your leadership. I'm Lorenzo and I'm Chris, and have a great day.