Reflect back to your education and to as recent as the previous job you held. Ask yourself how you have reached your current level of leadership and how your skills have developed over time. During this time, you were most likely exposed to a number of activities and experiences that evolved into your own personal lea dership development program. Many of these skills and learning developed over time can be applied to your current workplace. Let's look at how you can make the most out of past experiences and apply them to your current work situation.

PAST - BEING A PART OF A TEAM

You may have been a part of a basketball team, a support group, or a local community effort. This type of active involvement helps to fine tune leadership skills such as delegating, empowering team members, and learning to communicate effectively. Being associated with 'teams' gives an individual a chance to be a part of something, work together among counterparts, and contribute to a shared interest.

CURRENT - APPLYING EXPERIENCES TO WORK

By experiencing a team environment outside of work, you have the opportunity to share many skills and capabilities that will take your people and organization to the next level. As other team members become leaders within your organizations, they will also recall past experiences and what it means to fulfill a selfless work ethic and build healthy relations among work associates. Good leaders will not segregate themselves away from their subordinates, but involve themselves fairly among a workload, and help lead and guide others from their personal leadership development program.

PAST - TAKING OWNERSHIP

Deciding what we want to do with our life (continue school, find a career, or start a business) is when many of us first experienced a true sense of ownership. At some point there was a discovery that really piqued your potential interest. Through a variety of educational classes, job searching, or through trial and error, you narrowed your focus to the best fit or option; then came learning for the experience of others.

CURRENT - APPLYING EXPERIENCES TO WORK

As an apprentice we learned many tricks of the trade by shadowing our mentors or being observant or passionate about their work. Now as mentors, we need to focus on instructing or guiding others to learn effective and efficient work skills to provide credible and productive results for the organization. Law, medical and business schools are prime examples of educating students so that they can take ownership of their profession and eventually contribute to their field.

PAST - STAYING AHEAD OF THE COMPETITION

After formal education, many people are optimistic and confident that they will get the "dream job" fresh out of college. Like hundreds of thousands of students graduating at the same time, you compete against qualifying candidates as well as experienced professionals vying for the same job. The job outlook at the time was probably overwhelming and sometimes frustrating, but your competitive circumstances kept you driven to contend among your counterparts and stay ahead of the competition.

CURRENT - APPLYING EXPERIENCES TO WORK

In our day to day work environment, we must also be competitive to stay ahead of the competition. Through positive encouragement, thinking strategically, and feeling the drive to compete will help us stay ahead. For some it may be of value to provide a lea dership development program that will increase an individual's work potential. This will keep them ahead of the game and help them to be on top of the competition.

Every team provides leadership opportunities for the individuals. By being cognizant of how personal leadership development programs the above three benefits, it will give us the opportunity to help individuals develop leadership qualities essential to beating the competition in our fierce business environment.