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“Creating Successful Leaders”

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July 10, 2013 The 4 Components of Learning Agility

For the month of July, I’ve been focusing on learning agility. Last week’s post introduced the concept and gave a brief overview. This week, I’ll go into more detail as to how learning agility applies to your day-to-day leadership skills.

According to The Center for Creative Leadership, a research group out of the Teacher’s College at Columbia University, learning agility can be demonstrated in four attributes: Innovating, Performing, Reflecting and Risking.

Innovating:

This refers to challenging the status quo. Instead of going along with what’s worked in the past, an innovative leader embraces new challenges and is open to new ideas. An innovator asks questions, takes on new tasks and experiences to increase their perspective, and constantly tries to approach issues from multiple angles.

Performing:

To possess learning agility, you must be able to perform under  stress and deal with the inevitable ambiguous or unfamiliar situation as it arises. An agile learner does this by staying present, engaged and a keen observer of new information. This includes listening skills; a good performer must embrace, not avoid, verbal instruction.

Reflecting:

This goes beyond simply thinking about the new things you’ve learned. Reflecting means using new information, skills and experiences to generate a deeper insight into yourself, those around you and any problems you’ll face. Good reflection should always ask the question, “What kinds of changes do I need to make in order to  accommodate  these new experiences?”

Risking

Learning agility is a body of skills and attributes that can be boiled down to one character trait: the ability to put yourself out there. This means that you volunteer for opportunities that don’t guarantee success. In fact, an agile learner values the experience of failure, as it is a much better catalyst for growth than continual success. Risk here means risk that leads to opportunity, not thrill seeking.

If these attributes don’t describe the way you operate, don’t panic. “Being open to failure” isn’t natural, fun or frankly, very common. Don’t think of these traits as a list of must-do’s in order to be successful. To put it in perspective, these are the conclusions derived from studying a large and diverse group of leaders; no one leader perfectly reflects all these qualities.

That said, staying humble and open to change is the most important starting point to attaining agility in leadership and learning. If you can do that, the rest will follow.

Mitchinson, Adam and Robert Morris, Ph.d. “Learning About Learning Agility.” Teachers College, Colombia University, April 2012. http://www.ccl.org/leadership/pdf/research/LearningAgility.pdf

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July 3, 2013 Leading With Agility

Today’s global, interconnected market demands that leaders be agile as they navigate through the diverse range of disciplines, cultures and skill sets that compose it. But what do we mean when we say, “agile?”

According to the Center for Creative Leadership, learning agile leaders “show the willingness and ability to learn throughout their careers, if not their entire lives.” They also assert that leaders who “refuse to let go of entrenched patterns or who do not recognize the nuances in different situations tend to derail.”

Learning agility is as much a mindset as it is a practice. For instance, if you’re in a rut with your career, it’s possible you aren’t taking advantage of learning opportunities. There are many possible reasons for this: perhaps you’re afraid of failure, or worried about getting outside your area of comfort and expertise. However, without allowing yourself to encounter new experiences, you’ll have no shot at developing the necessary life skills to navigate through an increasingly interdisciplinary economy. You can’t expect different results from doing the same thing over and over again; Albert Einstein defined insanity as such.

So, to be agile in practice, you must first retrain your brain to be open to newness. It may not be comfortable at first, but hopefully you’ll find that new experiences are rarely as duanting as we build them up in our minds.

I’ll be focusing on learning agility and how it plays out when applied this month, so stay tuned!

Mitchinson, Adam and Robert Morris, Ph.d. “Learning About Learning Agility.” Teachers College, Colombia University, April 2012.

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June 19, 2013 The Myth of Multitasking

The motive behind multitasking is noble. If we have a lot on our plates, it makes sense to try to take on many tasks at once so we give each task equal time and effort.

The problem is, this doesn’t work. What’s more, multitasking actually lessens the quality of your work.

We multitask to feel emotionally productive, according to a study mentioned in a Huffington Post article, even though we aren’t actually being productive. So while we might feel better about ourselves when we multitask, the truth is it adversely effects our productivity.

Here are a few ways to get yourself out of the habit of multitasking:

1. Prioritize

The worst thing you can do when bombarded by obligations is address them equally and simultaneously, even though we’re naturally inclined to do so. Decide what task is most important, and then do that.

2. Focus and Finish

You might feel yourself getting pulled out of this first, most important task and back into the pile of others things. Don’t get sucked back in! You have one thing to do now; nothing else matters. Do not allow yourself to be distracted until the most urgent task gets checked off the list. Then, move on.

3. Let go of the  little things

Under stress, it’s natural to lump a bunch of unrelated stressors into one big, scary beast that wants you to fail. In reality, most of the time you may have 3-5 very important things to do, and then perhaps another handful of not-so-important things to do. By prioritizing, focusing and finishing, you’ll begin to discern between the big things and the little things, and the scary beast will start to evaporate (since it was all in your mind anyway). Then, you’ll be able to let go of the things that merely add to your stress but don’t necessarily need immediate addressing.

If you’re used to multitasking, at first you may feel less productive after adopting a singularly-focused work-style. But soon you’ll get used to it, and see how much more efficient you are when you give one thing your undivided attention.

Huffington Post. “Multitasking Makes People Feel Better, Even Though It’s Not Efficient: Study.” Posted May 1, 2012. Accessed June 17, 2013. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/01/multitasking-emotional-feel-better-_n_1467945.html

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