Sharing knowledge and expertise: a win-win for leaders and teams

Recently, I passed a small personal landmark – the publishing of my 50^th blog. The journey of sharing my experience has been a big one for me, helping me reflect on how leaders need to guide others by passing knowledge and expertise on to others.

“Leadership and learning are indispensable to one another.” John F Kennedy.

Recently, I realised something – I’ve written more than 50 editions of my blog! It’s not a huge milestone in the scheme of things, but for me it was really significant.  It has allowed me to think deeply and share the expertise I’ve gained running my business over the past years.

I’d been meaning to write a blog for some time. As someone who was a communications professional in my past professional life, it should have been easy, and yet it wasn’t. I keep offering myself all the usual excuses – how busy I was, how my focus was elsewhere. There was another reason though – it was difficult to put my own knowhow on the page, even though I’d been doing it professionally for others for years.

However, once I started, it was amazing how much insight flowed from my experience. It has been wonderful to share. It reminded me of one of the most important roles of a leader – to teach others and share what they know. And of course, to keep learning themselves.

Positioning yourself as an expert

When I first started blogging, I wasn’t quite so aware of all the ideas I had in my head around leadership and team development. I knew I was proficient at my job, and that I’d been doing it for a while and that I had acquired a lot of knowledge in the process.

Yet, when I started to put them on the page it delighted me how many tips and insights I was able to pull out.

I also realised that I had something to add to the commentary out there (and there’s a lot), particularly around our unique horse-based approach. Sharing lessons learnt from our horses in our professional programs, for example around how horses show us how to work in herds/teams, or help us communicate, or elicit honesty, or remind us to be present.

The technique we use here, which is called Equine Assisted Learning, is something that isn’t understood or known that well until you’ve experienced it yourself. And it has been amazing to showcase what we do in a way that is relevant to our clients who are largely non-horsey.

All leaders should realise the same – that their experience, expertise and knowledge is worthwhile sharing.

Helping others learn

Lifelong learning is essential for everyone – even (or especially) those who are already leaders. It doesn’t have to be formal learning, but can be as simple as an everyday exchange of ideas or knowledge within a team.

As I’ve written before, excellent leaders should take charge of inspiring those around them to learn, as well as, share their expertise. They will also nurture the ideas of their people.

However, sometimes it can be hard for leaders to realise and then articulate what the expertise is and how we can use it to help others. Like me with my blog!

My advice is to trust yourself and just get started putting the words to page. It doesn’t have to be complicated, convoluted or controversial. In fact, the simpler the better.

A few of my favourites

After writing more than 50 blogs, it’s hard to pick just a few, but here they are: some of the ones I’m most fond of and think contain great leadership lessons.

• Do you want an elephant in the room – or a horse. A fun (but insightful) look at why bringing a horse into a room opens up honest lines of communication which can remain hidden for years in a work environment.
• Sh**t happens: What’s important is how you respond. Yes, I actually did it. I wrote an entire. blog about horse manure. However, as always, I had a serious point here about how we when inevitably hit tough times, we have the choice to either wallow or keep going.
• My lucky break: lessons on the power of positive thinking. This is a more recent one, but it’s an important one for me as it shares a lot of lessons learnt from a big personal journey.
• Four leadership lessons from your inner child. Being passionate, direct and open to learning new things. That’s something all leaders need!
• Your presence: the best present you can give this holiday season…and always. Horses teach us a lot about presence, and it is a powerful message to share.

Are you curious to learn more about our expertise? Why not try our unique leadership training with horses. Email info@leadingedgelifeskills.com.au