Why great leaders are great teachers

Last December I shared the best advice I had ever received: Never Stop Studying. I heard this advice from my professors, my bosses, even my parents. I’ve taken this advice and have applied it to my style of leadership. I believe that to become a great leader, you must first become a great teacher.

If you hope to move up in your company and take on a position in leadership, you must become a great teacher. Having the ability to teach says a great deal about an individual’s capacity for successful leadership.

To teach someone something about the job at hand, you must think about and analyze the things you do subconsciously on a daily basis and put them into language in such a way as to be completely understood by others. If the processes and methods by which you do your job were always the same, there would be nothing challenging about teaching others. However, in the real world, there are always special circumstances, and you often run into situations which cannot be predicted. Processes and methods must therefore be flexible. If you really think about how you judge situations and how you

deal with issues on a day-to-day basis, you will realize that this kind of flexibility is both incredibly important and incredibly difficult to teach.

Work to become better at guiding, or coaching, your team. This will improve your own abilities as well. Because you are guiding someone else, you must take your own job that much more seriously.

In doing so, you will showcase your own potential for leadership. And once you’ve become a great teacher, you’re on the fast track to being a great leader.

This article is published in collaboration with LinkedIn. Publication does not imply endorsement of views by the World Economic Forum.

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Author: Hiroshi Mikitani is the CEO of Rakuten Inc.

Image: Matteo Achilli (R) works with one of his assistants in his office in Formello, north of Rome July 25, 2013. REUTERS/Tony Gentile.