I recently spent a week learning with an amazing group of school leaders working with Hitendra Wadhwa from the Institute for Personal Leadership for the first session with The Holdsworth Center. His work focuses on maximizing your outer impact by first pursuing inner mastery. As busy school leaders, we spend so much time focusing on the outer work – the doing. How often do we spend time working on the inner pieces that drive the work? Hitendra defines the 5 pillars of personal mastery as purpose, wisdom, growth, self-awareness and love. It was a very different experience from the education leadership training I’m used to planning and attending, and I loved it! I took away many great nuggets of learning, a renewed passion and commitment to the work of supporting Texas school leaders and a change in perspective in how I tend to think about others. The cohort of leaders we are working with are truly remarkable people who shared their passion, dedication, vulnerability, hopes and dreams for their students and districts.

In leadership development we often focus on the bell curve and figuring out where our people are. I truly shifted my thinking when he shared this thought:

People are not ON the bell curve, they are the ENTIRE bell curve. – Hitendra Wadhwa

When I think about myself and how I work, this is completely true. Sometimes I am a high performer, at times average, and can be low when I procrastinate on or don’t have a developed skill set yet. It really depends on the task at hand where I would put myself on the bell curve, and I do represent all areas depending on the task. It should be no different for the students or staff we work with on a daily basis. But when I think about others, I usually plug them into one of those categories and watch for evidence that supports my designation. Sometimes people surprise you (at both ends of the curve) with what they accomplish (or don’t).

This is another reason why a growth mindset is critical. When we slap a label onto ourselves or others, people usually live up to that expectation. Our job as leaders is to create an organization where there is a culture of continuous learning for everyone involved – students, teachers, administrators, parents and community members. Mistakes are going to happen and it is only a failure if you don’t learn anything new from the situation.

It is also important to remember also that no one can be a high performer at everything. We are all working on something to get better at (or should be)! I am currently working to absorb as much information as possible about leadership pipeline and talent management for my new role with The Holdsworth Center. It has been a daunting 3 months in a brand new role and at brand new organization. I am definitely all over the bell curve with my own capabilities. New can be hard, but also fun. It is pretty amazing to be creating a new learning organization with smart, dedicated and passionate people. I’m working on my ability to learn, but am excited about what is to come and each day gets a little bit easier!

The great thing about people is they are all different with unique talents. TEPSA’s former Executive Director, Sandi Borden, used to say everyone has their own set of gift and graces, and warts and wrinkles. It always struck me as a funny statement, but also very true. It is a great reminder to look at the whole person and help them grow on their path. People are complex and when we try to put them at one spot on a curve we are doing everyone (including ourselves) a disservice.

#NeverStopLearning

I saw this tweet a few days ago and it sparked my curiosity. My thoughts began to wonder about my own ability to learn. I’m in a new role at a brand new organization and there is an overwhelming amount of information to learn and put into action quickly! Each day I learn a ton, but also realize how much more there is to know. At times it feels like I’m moving as fast as I can, but am still falling behind. What is my ability to learn? How can I improve it? Is there an internet quiz I can take for this? 🤓

I love learning, I’m open to trying new things, but what is my actual ability to learn? Like most people my perception is that I’m above average, but don’t we all think we are a little above average? My mom used to read and listen to the Prairie Home Companion stories from Garrison Keillor and he always said this:

Welcome to Lake Wobegon, where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average.

— Garrison Keillor

How would we measure ability to learn? Should we? Is it an innate skill or something that can be taught? Can the ability to learn be learned? How can we look for this in individuals seeking leadership positions? What research is there about one’s ability to learn? So many new questions…

For almost a decade I’ve been learning as much as I can about leadership and working to develop school leaders. Ideas abound on this topic and there are unlimited books and resources available. The hard part is actually building better leaders. With the amount of information out there on leadership, we should all be experts! I agree with Dan’s tweet that your ability to learn represents your leadership potential, so how can I apply that in my work?

Investigating this notion I found this article, “Improve Your Ability to Learn” from HBR in 2015. The researchers found 4 qualities of learning agile individuals and one derailer. Here is the section from the article that describes them:

• Innovating: This involves questioning the status quo and challenging long-held assumptions with the goal of discovering new and unique ways of doing things. Innovating requires new experiences, which provide perspective and a bigger knowledge base. Learning-agile individuals generate new ideas through their ability to view issues from multiple angles.

• Performing: Learning from experience occurs most often when overcoming an unfamiliar challenge. But in order to learn from such challenges, the individual must remain present and engaged, handle the stress brought on by ambiguity and adapt quickly in order to perform. This requires observation and listening skills, and the ability to process data quickly. Learning-agile people pick up new skills quickly and perform them better than less agile colleagues.

• Reflecting: Having new experiences does not guarantee that you will learn from them. Learning-agile people look for feedback and eagerly process information to better understand their own assumptions and behavior. As a result they are insightful about themselves, others and problems. In fact, in prior studies, Green Peak Partners discovered that strong self-awareness was the single highest predictor of success across C-suite roles.

• Risking: Learning-agile people are pioneers – they venture into unknown territory and put themselves “out there” to try new things. They take “progressive risk” – not thrill-seeking, but risk that leads to opportunity. They volunteer for jobs and roles where success is not guaranteed, where failure is a possibility. They stretch themselves outside their comfort zones in a continuous cycle of learning and confidence-building that ultimately leads to success.

The learning-agility “derailer” is:

• Defending: Being open to experience is fundamental to learning. Individuals who remain closed or defensive when challenged or given critical feedback tend to be low in learning agility. By contrast, high learning-agile individuals seek feedback, process it and adapt based on their newfound understanding of themselves, situations and problems.

In school we measure student learning of content, but with how quickly the world is changing, we must teach our students to be adept learners. What if we measured learning skills instead of content? What would that look like? What kinds of activities would we see in the classroom? 

Clearly this idea sparked way more questions than answers for me, but I’m inspired to dig deeper. I would love to hear your thoughts on this topic and how to increase learning abilities for yourself and others.

Never stop learning!