Are you a know-it-all, a learn-it-all, or a little bit of both? Whichever way you tend to lean reveals plenty about the kind of leader you are and the level of success you can achieve.
Damon Lembi is the CEO of Learnit, a global leader in corporate training solutions that has upskilled more than 1.8 million professionals in the past twenty-seven years. After dedicating the initial 22 years of his life to the pursuit of becoming a Major League Baseball player, Damon pivoted in 1995 to help his father, Walt Lembi (Founder of Learnit), by investing his heart and soul in Learnit. His aim was to help individuals gain the knowledge and confidence they needed to attain their professional goals through the value of education.
Long before his brush with fame in a hotel room party with Axl Rose of Guns N’ Roses, Damon was drafted by the Atlanta Braves out of high school. A series of events eventually led him back to the family business, where he found himself unsure of the skills he was bringing to the table. He recognized that while business was in his blood, he had a lot to learn about every aspect of the work.
After years of incredible success, Damon’s key life takeaway is that there is immense value in being your true, authentic self. Whether you work for a billion-dollar business or a startup, the way you treat people matters. Life doesn’t always turn out the way you expected it to, but when it’s time to pivot — whether it’s from baseball or business — the more you are willing to learn from people who are smarter than you, the more successful you will be.
Damon recognizes that he is a know-it-all when it comes to sales, but he is also very open to learning more when it comes to scaling up. He shares the lessons he learned from the pandemic, where he turns when he is ready to learn something new, and the value of approaching leadership in curious and humble ways.
Interview Links:
The Learn-it-all Leader: Mindset, Traits and Tools
Resources:
20,000 Scaleups
Scaling Up Summits (Select Bill Gallagher as your coach during registration for a discount.)
Bill on YouTube
Recruiter.com Short List (use code scaleup)
Scaling Up is the best-selling book by Verne Harnish and our team for Scaling Up Coaches (formerly Gazelles). We share how the fastest-growing companies succeed where so many others fail.
Bill Gallagher, Scaling Coach and host of the show, is an international business coach who works with C-Suite leaders to achieve breakthrough growth.
We help leadership teams with the biggest decisions around People, Strategy, Execution, and Cash so that they can Scale Up successfully and beat the odds of business growth. Scaling Up is based on Verne’s original best-selling business book, Mastering the Rockefeller Habits.
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