How and why do we learn?
We are beings that evolve through learning. Everything we do, and where we are at this point in human evolution, is based on our natural state as learners. And we never stop learning. We are constantly learning all our lives.
In leadership learning is valuable in two ways:
- Are the people around you learning something from their interactions with you?
- What is the recurrence and the intention that you have when you are learning?
Do we actually help people to learn during our interactions?
Most of our working time is spent in a series of recurrent activities, either based on an clear agenda, or based on agenda messed up by someone else, making it a 24-hour workday! 🙂 So, if we are not aware of what’s happening, we may end up tired, out of energy, and frustrated that we did not achieve anything of what we had planned for—in which case our job aspirations are not fulfilled because we did not have time to focus on our important, long-term, personal, valuable and impactful plans. I wonder on whom should we be upset?
I hope your working days don’t look like this, but if they do you need to stop, think and plan for a change. What is your job aspiration and how do you intend to change the world from where you are? And if the most important opportunity you have is growing your leadership, which can then multiply by growing the others around you, what would require your attention next?
Someone said that we are constantly underestimating what we are learning from people around us. I know some people who read approximately 7,000 books in their life. This is quite a lot. But even though it’s a lot, let’s do some math: you’re with your colleagues a minimum of 40 or 50 hours per week, and if you’re an avid reader, you may read about 10 hours per week. So, in terms of learning, if we simply analyze the quantity, you’re spending more time learning from people in your office than the potential avid reader is learning from reading books. This is a particularly valuable achievement one leader can have: a great context to grow others around you most of the time.
I would like you to imagine (or maybe you already know) those babies who are learning how to walk. This is a very complicated learning process. They do not have any know-how in terms of the process, and very little practice with standing vertically. But they learn to walk because they really want it. And they learn with joy and playfulness. They are experimenting. They try, make an error, learn, and try again. Now, imagine that a bunch of consultants come in to talk to the baby. They write on flipcharts, show some slides to explain the muscles, joints, equilibrium and vertical positions to the baby, and then deliver a process flow on the ‘steps’ to be done for the outcome: baby walking. Would it help? Would the baby learn how to walk any faster? What do you think?
Let me share with you some relevant points as conclusions to the above story:
- Lifetime learning is a personal experience and happens in a very personal timeframe, e.g., some babies start walking at 10 months and others at 1.2 years—but most of all will walk eventually.
- You cannot teach anyone anything if they are not yet ready and interested to learn. This is why, in general, we hear so little of what’s being told to us.
- The best help and real moment-of-a-lifetime learning occurs when babies decide they want to walk: at that point they just need a helping hand and some time just to hold on to it so they do not fall again.
- It will always help when you smile and encourage them to walk. If they are smiling back at you, you know that they are happy and, so, they will keep trying.
- We all enjoy both learning and playing, right? When we take ourselves too seriously in our learning experience, we should become aware of that and ask ourselves if that helps or not.
I learned about this from Molly Gordon, to whom I am grateful. The metaphor of babies learning how to walk revealed to me how difficult learning in fact is, and that this is continuously happening over and over again for all of the babies around the world. It was evocative of leadership to me—that is, it showed me that we should be aware of what we should stop, start, and continue doing so as to help the people around us learn.
In a recent study on LinkedIn about the most valuable skills for 2019, the top 3 were:
- Creativity
- Persuasion
- Collaboration
I wonder what makes the people around you learn these skills. Do you need them as well?
What is the most recent learning experience that you had, as a leader?
More than just problem solving and providing answers, asking the right question is key when learning something new. As leaders, we mostly focus on finding answers, either by thinking something over, talking to others, reading, or searching on Google. 🙂 But sometimes a question is more valuable than an answer because if you manage to ask the right question you will challenge the thinking of another person and, potentially, open them up to reflection. Let me give you an example. I was reading a book called More Time to Think by Nancy Kline. One of the questions that I found in the book was ‘If you knew that you are intelligent, beautiful and wise, what thoughts would you dare to have?’
When it comes to discovering how and when you best learn as a leader, and knowing who you really are, I found this question particularly good for thinking more deeply. When you learn, you need to challenge your role, no matter the seniority that you formally have. You may need to become a novice and acknowledge that you don’t know it all. You explore, ask questions, and begin to feel comfortable with discomfort in this sense. This is a great achievement.
Most of the executive teams that I’ve worked with avoid or minimize the time spent on learning together. They consider it as lacking value and believe that they are “losing their time” instead of making money! What they are declaring is paradoxical because, the best teams I’ve ever worked with are also the teams that spend a lot of time learning together. The key word here is ‘together.’
In general, we don’t want to learn when we have to; our wish is to continuously learn with focus and dedication, both horizontally and vertically. Horizontal learning is the classical way in which we learn: it is about acquiring knowledge, and increasing know-how, new skills, new information. It is also called functional learning. The better part of this is the know-how that you need to acquire and being aware that you need to learn. The other part is vertical learning: this is a deeper and more complicated form of learning, because it is about yourself. It raises the question why we do what we do, and how aligned are we with our thinking, feeling and doing? What is your decision making process? What role would you consider for yourself if you could chose any role you wished?
This is the most important part of a leader’s learning. This is how you grow yourself. And, if you can succeed with yourself, I am telling you that you are simultaneously helping others grow.
If you knew that you are intelligent, beautiful and wise, what thoughts would you dare to have about who you aspire to be as a leader?