How leaders stay sharp

How leaders stay sharp: a corporate governance training guide to ensuring your readiness never falters. 

The burden of maintaining business resilience falls on directors and executives more than ever before. Any idea that these corporate leaders were distant, rubber-stamp bystanders is long gone. Today, responsibility is everything. 

While it’s an incredible achievement to get to the level where you contribute to your business’s resilience in this way, it’s a whole other challenge to keep yourself at that level. Everything about this job is a continuous journey. Because of that, staying sharp in your leadership role should be treated as a strategic priority, never an afterthought.

Continuous learning is non-negotiable. Why? Because the world changes too fast for business leaders to rely on what they learned decades ago as their ticket to success. Think about it: how much of the current global challenges like geopolitics, supply chains and the rapid expansion of AI were on directors’ radars twenty years ago?

Truly prepared execs stay strong because they have learned from seasoned experts in any field where they might need more training. 

Training can take many forms; it doesn’t mean that you’ll automatically be attending night classes or anything. Today’s training environment is a lot more flexible and targeted, giving you the opportunity to focus on what matters most. Microlearning is the pinnacle of this new environment because it allows you to zero in on precisely what you need to upskill on, whether it’s boardroom oversight, AI strategy, or getting up to speed with new reporting requirements. 

Strong leaders pay attention to their internal state. The ways you can do this are very diverse; it depends on what works for you. Journaling is popular, as is regular meditation or dedicated periods of relaxation. Counselling can help too, especially if you’ve been through a particularly turbulent period in your leadership role. 

While this goal is essential, it remains a difficult sell for many corporate leaders, probably because they can’t quantify it the way they quantify business goals, so success feels harder to view. If you’re unsure, ask a colleague or someone in your network how they manage their emotions; you may be surprised at the answers you get. 

Agility can mean many things within even a single year of business:

• It can mean the ability to pivot on strategy
• It can mean the ability to think outside the box in a crisis
• It can mean the ability to empower leadership
• It can mean the ability to disrupt and take action when opportunity arises

Sharp leaders will always maintain their adaptability in order to lead this kind of attitude throughout an organisation. They’ll recognise the value of being able to cultivate flexibility, question the status quo, and roll with change. 

Sharp leaders never walk away from feedback or think they’re above hearing it. This is such a common pitfall in business. Even leaders who are open to feedback most of the time may ignore it at crucial moments because of personal circumstances. 

Without a doubt, the ultimate goal for any leader is to be surrounded by a network of people who can openly give and receive respectful, honest opinions. Good leaders analyse the information others offer, and ask themselves whether it’s helpful. We’re talking about a full 360° viewpoint and being comfortable within it.

Sharp leaders make the extra effort to stay up to date. They understand what parts of global news matter for their business and industry, and they make time every day to watch the news, process it, and make their own conclusions around how it applies to their company. 

This is never a hard requirement for corporate leadership applications, but you’ll probably tell that those who stay clued in are naturally able to instil more confidence in their colleagues and other stakeholders.

How leaders stay sharp is a common question among everyone from boards to executives to management. What you’ll probably have noticed is that the above points do require some extra work, maybe where you mightn’t have expected it before. 

Ultimately, though, the results will show.