A visitor to my website, recently asked me a good question and I thought you might like to hear my answer. Ange asked:

“I teach leadership to secondary students. Can I take that knowledge to industry?”

I guess the answer is somewhere in between Yes, No and It Depends!

The fundamental principles of leadership that you are presumably teaching your secondary students will still apply and translate well into industry (- so Yes).

However, in my experience (I was a chemistry teacher many years ago) adults are very sensitive to anything that seems to be school related so you will need to develop quite different examples and explanations to the ones that you use with your students and that may be difficult for you if you do not have industry, business or office experience (- so No).

Thirdly, industry and business leaders who want to learn about leadership will usually seek out people who have actually held leadership positions themselves, rather than those who just know about leadership but have never really applied what they know. So It Depends – on whether you have actually lead a business, group or team, and can demonstrate the success you have had as a leader.

A really good first step is to volunteer to join the board or management group of a charity or community group and apply what you know there. That will enable you to recognize some of the gaps that exist between knowing about something and being able to put it into effect. And the end of the day that’s what people really want to know about – How to do it! And that’s one of the big things we look at in the Leadership Coaching Club which starts in mid September.

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If you have a leadership question you want to ask, you can Ask it here.