Take Charge of Your Learning

What have you learned today?

That's my favorite question. For years it was the tag line on my web site. I occasionally end a conversation or piece of writing with that question in hopes of provoking a moment of reflection that will help to capture and keep that learning. When we reflect on what we've learned we have a much better chance to put it to use.

What have you learned today?

Before every workshop that I facilitate I ask the group to reach some basic agreements. For most groups they are the same or remarkably similar. Occasionally, a group is so specialized or troubled that they'll need additional guidelines or agreements but these are the ones that I've found help the most, the most often:

We agree to:

Respect each other
Focus on the problem
Take charge of our own learning

If we do those three things skillfully the workshop is a wonderful success. If we don't, well let's just say it could be a long day through a troublesome event.

By taking charge of our learning we do not need to be victims. If we miss something, we can ask for clarification. If we feel that we are falling behind, we can ask for help in catching up. We can apply what we've learned and make this day, and every day, well worth while.

What have you learned today?

-- Doug Smith

Front Range Leadership: Training Supervisors for Success

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Comments

How's Your Reputation

How important do you think it is to sustain a positive leadership reputation? It matters to your team. It matters to any future team that you might be leading. Your reputation tells a story about how you operate, how you facilitate and how you achieve your results. Leading positive change builds credibility. Making a difference right now builds credibility. Keeping your promises and showing care for others establishes the kind of character that people want to work with and maybe even follow. What positive change are you currently working on? -- doug smith

Where to Start?

It's harder to solve a problem alone when you are at the center of the problem. Get another perspective. Stay open to your own part of the problem. Sometimes, deep into the search, we discover that we could be the cause. Start with reflection. It could provide direction. -- doug smith

Creatively Human

In a world where anything can be duplicated, create what cannot be duplicated. -- doug smith

Extremes

Do you know what it is like to work for an unreasonable boss? When no matter what you do is ever good enough it can become demotivating, even crippling. We do need to challenge our teams, but not to esteem crushing extremes. Unreasonable expectations cause disappointment. High performance? Yes. Perfect performance? Not attainable. -- doug smith

Dig deeper

Obvious solutions are great, except that they seldom work. The chances are that the solution that first occurs to you has already been tried. Sticky, mysterious, subtle problems evade the obvious. They hide. They mask. They simmer. Mysterious problems seldom surrender to obvious solutions. Dig deeper. -- doug smith

Human Problems

Any problem created by a human can be solved by a human. I wrote that long before AI started solving problems for us. Many days it feels like we will soon not even need to solve our own problems at all because AI will do it for us. Honestly, we know better than that, right? For as long as it's still true, humans can still solve human problems. Let's do that. -- doug smith

More signal than noise

Criticism produces more noise than signal. The recipient will hear mostly noise. Find another way to share the relevant information and it will sound more like advice than insult. Here's one other way -- ask the person you want to give advice to what their advice is for improving performance. Listen. Find the tone. Catch the brilliance. Support the useful observations. When we coach positively with enthusiasm our advice lives longer. What do you think? -- doug smith

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