Start With You

 

Leadership development culture on a team is rarely built through policy, it’s built through observation. Your team members are watching what you prioritize, what you protect on your calendar, what you talk about with enthusiasm, and what you treat as an afterthought. And one of the things they’re watching most closely—often without consciously registering it—is what you do with your own growth.

When leaders actively invest in their own professional development, something measurable happens: There’s a 37% drop in the number of team members who are likely to seek work elsewhere. Not because the leader announced a new development initiative. Not because they rolled out a formal program. But simply because they modeled that growth is something real leaders do—not something they assign to others while standing still themselves.

The inverse is equally true, and worth sitting with honestly. If your team sees you treating your own development as optional—as something you’ll get to when things slow down, which they never do—they absorb that signal too. It tells them that professional growth is performative, not substantive. That it’s something the institution asks for on forms but doesn’t actually value in practice.

What “Start with You” Actually Requires

The first phase of the growth conversation model is called Start with You for a reason. Before you can have an authentic conversation with a team member about their development, you need to have some clarity about your own. Not because you need to have everything figured out, but because the quality of your presence in that conversation is shaped by whether you’re genuinely in a growth orientation yourself.

This isn’t about logging hours in trainings or accumulating credentials. It’s about being able to answer a few honest questions: What are you working on as a leader right now? What have you learned recently that changed how you think about your work? Where are you feeling the edges of your own capability?

If you can’t answer those questions readily, it’s worth asking why. And it’s worth asking what your team would say if you put the same questions to them—and whether they’d believe you would actually want to hear the answers.

Making It Visible

One of the most practical things you can do here is simply to name your own development out loud. Tell your team what you’re learning. Share something you read that shifted your thinking. Mention a conversation that challenged an assumption you’d been carrying. You don’t have to frame it as a leadership lesson or turn it into a teaching moment. Just let them see that you’re a person who stays curious about your own growth.

This kind of visible learning does something that no formal program can entirely replicate: It creates permission. When your team sees you engage seriously with your own development—including the uncomfortable parts, the places where you’re not yet where you want to be—it signals that this is a place where growth is genuinely valued, not just officially endorsed.

That permission is what makes the conversations from earlier this week possible. Growth conversations with your team don’t happen in a vacuum. They happen in a culture that you’re building every day through what you pay attention to, what you protect, and what you’re willing to be honest about—starting with yourself.

Pause & Reflect

Try this: “I’m a supervisor preparing to have better growth conversations with my team. Help me with a quick leadership reflection. Three adjectives that describe me as a leader right now are: [list them]. Three adjectives I want people to use to describe me as a leader in two years are: [list them]. What’s likely standing in my way, and what’s one specific action I can take this month to start moving toward that future version of myself?” Write your answer before you take it to Sophia. The act of putting it down first matters.

Pro Tip: Take your reflection into Sophia using the prompt above. She can help you identify the gap between where you are and where you want to be and turn it into something concrete enough to actually act on.

Join us July 28 to learn more about Career Growth Conversations, and come practice on October 7.

Leadership Starts with Knowing Yourself.

Are you a new or aspiring leader? The Fundamentals of Leadership for New or Aspiring Leaders in Higher Education workshop builds the foundation: Discover your leadership style through the Five Paths to Leadership® Self-Assessment, sharpen your interpersonal skills, and develop a leadership philosophy you can actually live by.