Leaders are in the business of change, so understanding how people change and grow is an essential skill. To do this, leaders need to learn how to learn, since the way people learn is the way they change, make decisions and work on teams.
Learning happens so automatically and implicitly that it is easy to assume everyone knows how to do it effectively, yet most people neglect to consider what it involves and how to do it. In this article, you will see why it is important to begin with yourself. By understanding the process of learning and how you approach it, you will increase your self-awareness, leadership effectiveness, and expand your personal comfort zone. Here's how:
Learn the ideal process of learning.
Most people believe that learning is a process of thinking, but that's only one step in the larger process of learning from experience. You also have to involve your feelings, perceptions and actions. Here is a simple, four-step process to follow:
1. Experience. Awaken to what is happening in the moment, and pay attention to your feelings, intuition and your five senses. This part is concrete, present-centered, and completely subjective. Ask, "Am I present to what is happening right now?"
2. Reflect. Pause to make sense and connect your feelings to your thoughts. Take many perspectives, and allow time to process. Ask, "Am I considering many perspectives and view points?"
3. Think. Detach to look at things objectively. Apply logic, language and facts. Ask, "What does the evidence show?"
4. Act. Reach a conclusion and take some action to try something that creates your next experience. Ask, "What action can I take now to test this out?"
Try the steps as an iterative cycle, making sure to use each one. You may find that you do not use all the steps with equal ease. That is because experiencing-thinking (ways of taking in information) and reflecting-acting (ways of processing information) require opposite abilities. If you are like most people, you habitually prefer one of these pairs and avoid or underuse the other.
Pay attention to your approach to using the learning process.
As a leader, you can raise your self-awareness every day by zooming out to notice how you use this learning process. Are you guided by your gut-level feelings of experiencing and sometimes overwhelmed by them? Or are you logical, even detached from using thinking? Do you jump into acting to get things done on time, often before taking time to know that you are moving in the right direction? Or, does your penchant for perfection prompt you to linger in reflecting, sometimes missing opportunities?
When you have a favorite approach, chances are that you may overuse your preference, turning a strength into a weakness. The trick here is to use a “both/and” approach so that you are capturing the full cycle.
Rachel, the division leader of a manufacturing organization, favored the thinking and acting parts of the cycle. She was effective at driving efficiency based on data-driven solutions; however, she realized that she did not engage in the experiencing and reflecting steps of the cycle to the same extent. This meant that she was not always sensitive to the needs of her staff, nor did she stop long enough to consider new ways of approaching repetitive problems. As she tried to use the whole learning process, she found it was easier for her to begin pausing to reflect than it was to be present to her own feelings or engage in trusting relationships with her staff. Since this was new awareness to Rachel, she began working with a coach to address what was once a blind spot.
Apply the learning process to life situations.
Once you understand the learning process and recognize your own preferences, you can apply it to all leadership and life situations. For instance, Rachel began to look at teamwork as learning and applied the process when leading team meetings. She was intentional about touching all the bases.
When the team needed to make a decision, she used experiencing as she intentionally chose a quiet room for the meeting and conducted a check-in to gather anecdotal data about the team project. To include the reflecting step, Rachel set a meeting agenda to allow others to come prepared, and then she slowed the pace of the discussion enough to allow all of the members to share their opinions. Rachel included thinking when the group reached a conclusion together based on the evidence they had analyzed. Moving to acting was easy for Rachel, as the team decided who would do what by when.
Rachel could easily see how her willingness to understand her own approach to learning was essential before asking her staff to do the same. She recognized her leadership strengths in her learning approach — that of driving to accomplish her goals. By learning to learn, she also realized those skills that would allow her to raise her leadership effectiveness: connecting to her feelings and engaging in relationships, seeking other opinions and allowing time to include others and their opinions. Now, Rachel can do the thing she loves most: move to action.
