Our Extraordinary Ability to Learn

Last week I was riding my bike home from my day job, waiting for storm clouds the size of Africa to drown me with giant sheets of water, when I had an epiphany.  Strange time to have an epiphany, I know, but that's what's charming about epiphanies isn't it?  The fact that they arrive at the most unexpected moments.

So I'm riding along and the clouds are getting three shades darker every second and all of a sudden my brain - which had been set to idle immediately after leaving work - slams itself into gear and produces a thought that hits me so hard it feels like The Incredible Hulk used Volume 19 of Encyclopedia Britannica to slap me across the face.  The thought tells me something like this "Do you realize how extraordinary, how remarkable the human ability to learn is?  This is your privilege and your gift.  Take advantage of this gift each moment of your life.  Find the time to reflect on what you have learned frequently.  Apply what you have learned frequently.  And never stop doing it.".  

Why is learning so important?
I may be stating the painfully obvious, but it's crucial that as a leader you are constantly learning, reflecting on that learning and applying it.  Despite how basic this thinking is, it amazes me how often leaders don't follow the rule.  So many take the attitude of "I've learned what I needed to get to this position, so why do I need to know anything more?".  In fact, it's because you've made it to a leadership position that you need to learn more.

Leadership is a tough job.  Whether it's personal leadership or leadership of others it demands an enormous amount of problem solving, future forecasting and educating. If you're serious about leadership you'll spend a lot of time doing these things.  And you can't do any of them without knowledge.  And you can't have knowledge without learning.  Simple, isn't it?           

The greatest leaders are constantly learning - they actively learn by seeking out mentors, reading texts both inside and outside their field, attending seminars and courses, etc, but they also learn through observation - they watch their team, they watch how other leaders lead, they notice subtle changes in people's behaviour, they pay attention to how an audience responds, and so on.  Great leaders cultivate learning experiences at every turn because they know it makes them a better leader.  They make learning their raison d'etre.

Get perspective
Whether you call it "taking stock" or "reflection" or "vision" or whatever, getting perspective is one of the ways I use to collect my learning, explore it and decide how to use it.  Each day, I try to find time to recount the events of the past 12 or so hours, consider observations, interpret thoughts and decipher what I've learned.  More importantly, I figure out how I might use that knowledge in the future.  I create my own knowledge action plan.  Sometimes I test that action plan by visualizing situations where it might come in handy or reworking past events that didn't go the way I wanted them to.  I find this incredibly satisfying, if not uplifting, because I know if I ever encountered those situations again, I'd handle them a whole lot better.

The idea of perspective has a very strong relationship to the practice of mindfulness, which I discussed in my post "Becoming Mindful" - if you haven't read it already then it might be a good starting point.  I believe you need to be mindful person to get perspective.  It's pretty hard to "step away from it all" when you aren't self aware.  Meditation can be a fantastic way to clear your mind, preparing it for some of the deep thinking you'll need to do on what you've learned.  What I love about meditation is that it's an active process that actually teaches you how to learn.  Think about it, has anyone actually taught you how to learn?  It sounds ridiculous, I know, but we can all learn to learn more effectively. 

Give it a try, you'll see.

Take action
In my view, if you learn without ever applying that learning it's like Michael Jordan spending his whole life on the practice court.  When you acquire knowledge you have an obligation to yourself and to others to get in the game. 

When MJ went out on a Wednesday and shot hundreds of free throws, made hundreds of passes and ran through countless plays he didn't just sit on the bench for the rest of the week, he went out and put everything he'd learned into action.  Every one of his six NBA Championships were as a result of knowledge applied, not just knowledge gained. 

So when you do get some perspective on what you've learned today, don't forget to figure out how to use that learning.  Think about what you might do differently tomorrow or next week or next time, but make it concrete and make a commitment to it.  You can take informal mental notes or, if you like, keep a knowledge diary - either serve as a way to compile your learning and plan how to use it.

Let's review

• The ability to learn.  An incredible gift that we all have.  Crucial if you want to be a successful leader.
• Get perspective.  Try to recount and formalize what you've learned every day.
• Take action.  Put your knowledge to work by planning how to use it.

What's the result?
For me, knowledge with a plan works like this: the next time I'm riding my bike home from work and The Incredible Hulk steps out in front of me with all 32 volumes of Encyclopedia Britannica tucked under his Sequoia sized arms I'll know exactly what to do: shout "Hey look, there's Iron Man!!".

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Becoming Mindful

My view of the sky post-meditation

Mindfulness
Mindfulness is a practice that all leaders should seriously consider learning.  For readers who haven't been exposed to mindfulness before or don't have a clear understanding of it, mindfulness in its most basic sense is awareness - awareness of your surroundings and awareness of your thoughts and feelings, both emotional and physical.  It's about being conscious; about being switched-on; about not judging yourself and instead seeking to understand.

The practice of mindfulness has its roots in Buddhism, but before you start thinking you're going to have to shave your head and wear a colourful monastic robe to "do this mindful thing" let me assure you that you don't.  Buddhism is a religion, mindfulness is not.  You can be Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu or Atheist and practice mindfulness.  It doesn't care what your beliefs are.  It's also not some pseudo-science or cult.  Its been practiced for centuries and continues to be widely used in the fields of psychology and psychiatry today.  

How can mindfulness help me be a better leader?
As a leader you want to always be on top of your game, right? You want to be in-tune with yourself, right?  You want to be an open person that's also a good listener?  You want to have poise and calmness in tough situations?  You want to have energy and  longevity?  You want to be able to analyse and interpret information quickly and accurately?  Mindfulness can help you achieve all this and much more.  Remember, mindfulness is all about awareness and awareness can lead you down so many positive pathways to developing as a leader.

I've personally found that mindfulness has not only made me a better leader, but it has also made me a better person.  Those who know me, know that I have plenty of good qualities, but historically patience hasn't been one of them - call it collateral damage from a career in marketing communications.  That changed when I started practicing yoga and mindful meditation.  Now I can wait in supermarket lines without thinking to myself "C'mon! c'mon! what's the hold up!" and I'm able to take my mind to more interesting, more meaningful, places when I'm stuck in a traffic jam.  Now I use time, I don't let it use me.  In a work environment I'm also much more able to focus on the macro issues rather than the micro ones and I get over hurdles far better than I did early in my career.  I'm a better listener, a better speaker and a better leader.       

Above all else, what I've learned from mindfulness is to be non-judgmental.  What the practice teaches you is that although you may enhance self-awareness (and in turn this may lead to self-improvement), you do not need to judge your emotions and actions.  The goal is simply to observe.  It's a beautiful thing to learn to accept who you are . . . warts and all.  And it's incredible how this acceptance can make you a better you.

What can I do to become mindful?
The good news is there's lots you can do become a mindful person and there's plenty of literature around to help.

For those who think they might like a bit more physical activity in their quest for mindfulness, yoga is a great start.  I practice Ashtanga Yoga which is my way of combining fitness with mind/body awareness, but any form of yoga will do the trick.

As far as reading material is concerned I can highly recommend the author Jon Kabat-Zinn who is one of the modern day gurus of mindfulness and established the Stress Reduction Clinic (now the Centre for Mindfulness in Medicine) at UMASS Medical School.  He's got a great down-to-earth style that isn't ever highbrow or finger-in-mouth new age.  He just tells it like it is.  If you can track down his audio book Mindfulness for Beginners you'll be in good hands.  But the hard work will have only just begun.  You didn't think this would be easy did you?

Mindfulness is a lifelong practice that requires action.  It's something you need to do, not just read about.  It's something you need to make time for if you want to be a better leader and a better person.  So do the reading, then do the doing and do it often.