Leadership Is Not a One-Night Stand

It is a continuous building of self-awareness and social skills.

Ivona Hirschi
4 min readAug 2, 2022

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Photo by PNW Production

How many leadership courses have you taken? None, one, a few? What changed after you took the course or read the book?

Many people are excited about leadership. Yet, they have high expectations. One course won’t make a successful leader out of you. You can spend two days training and feel as if you’ve made it. Not yet!

What you did was you took a step. The first step toward building soft skills and self-awareness. Leadership is much more than professional skills. It is a long-term journey to manage yourself and your environment.

Quick learning fallacy

How fast do you think you can learn leadership? One month, one year, two years? You may have a feeling that it won’t be that fast.

I do management training, but training is just one step in the game. The real work starts after the training. You need to stay motivated and continue progressing and experimenting with your soft skills.

The more you communicate with others, the better skills you develop.

Training is a staged environment focused on bringing awareness, driving collaboration, and building interest in acquiring new skills. It is definitely a helpful start for learning about leadership.

The huge advantage is that you get people out of their routine and spark a curious attitude. It can significantly boost your team's morale.

The honeymoon stage won’t last long

When I worked in a corporate environment, leadership training was scarce. We had it once a year. Almost all managers liked attending it as it was interesting and it felt like the company invested in us.

However, a one-time investment won’t build a habit. So, the initial reaction is usually: “Yep, it is interesting, I should try it.” You enter the honeymoon stage. For a short while, you have fun with it.

Nonetheless, to rewire your way of working and thinking, you need more than one training session.

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