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“Creating Successful Leaders”

Tag Archives: Improving Leadership

July 24, 2013 Learning Agility In Practice

To wrap up this series on learning agility, I thought I’d provide some examples of how this set of attributes leads to greater success.

We can better understand what learning agility is when we set it up alongside what it is not. As outlined in the post from two weeks ago, learning agility can be broken down into four categories: Innovation, Reflection, Performance, and Risk-taking. The Center for Creative Leadership out of the Colombia Teachers College breaks it down in this way:

Innovation:

Do you challenge the status quo when trying to make improvements, OR, do you make do with what you have at your disposal?

There’s nothing wrong with making do with what you have. But when that becomes your M.O., then you are probably limiting yourself in vision. When it comes to all the major breakthroughs we see in history, they all shared the same characteristic of bravely pushing the envelope on what is possible.

Performance:

Do you stay calm in the face of a stressful situation, OR, do you use stress as energy to get things done more quickly?

This skill can be especially difficult. We all like to think that in stressful situations, we always remain calm and focused. But if we’re honest, we can point to many instances when our stress and emotions got the better of us.

Being an agile performer means that we release the rigid expectations we apply to ourselves and to those around us. The more we stay entrenched in a stubborn view of how everyone else ought to behave, the more stressed out we get. The more stressed out we get, the worse we perform. I’m sure you see how this can become a pretty miserable cycle.

Reflection:

Do you use past failures as lessons, OR, do you quickly put your failures behind you and focus on the next challenge?

If you tend toward the latter, you’re probably repeating many of the same mistakes without even knowing it. Examining how you screwed up is hard, since it shakes up our ego. But a good learner swallows their pride and uses their failures as lessons, which reduces failure in the long run.

Risk-taking:

Do you take on challenges that are ambiguous, new, or otherwise challenging, OR, do you take on challenges where you know you’ll be successful?

Too many of us avoid throwing ourselves into anything unfamiliar, but because an agile learner uses failure as a lesson, they know that new experiences may yield short-term discomfort and failure in return for long-term success. When failure is reduced to a necessary discomfort with a life lesson inside it, the idea of taking on something new becomes much less scary.

All these characteristics enable the agile learner to see opportunities and fearlessly pursue them, embracing failure as  a catalyst for insight, and new challenges as welcome motivation. And this can be you! It starts with the little challenges and reflections, a bit of open-mindedness, and it snowballs from there.

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July 19, 2013 The Agile Learner In The Ever-Changing World

I haven’t chosen to focus on learning agility now merely to say that being agile is a healthy and beneficial attitude to possess. While this is certainly true, I’ve decided to address this topic because there are plenty of studies that show how the global economy is here to stay, and that this new environment of constant innovation demands that leaders be willing and able to adapt.

I’ll give you some examples:

1. Global trade of goods and services will more than triple to $27 trillion by 2030, which tells us that the global economy is only increasing in scope

2. The Internet has radically impacted how we do business, beyond simply e-mailing people more frequently. According to an article from John Hopkins University Press, it “became a catalyst for new business models, strategies, and organizational structures,” which is to say, the Internet turned all business on its head and forced us to rework how we do things from the ground up.

3. The quantity of new information doubles every 2 years. This means that any worker, no matter the job, will need to be retrained as new developments (like the Internet) arrive. It also means that college freshmen will need to adapt once they graduate, as the skills they learned in school will most likely become outdated even in the few years’ time they were in school.

So, we know that when we talk about business, we are talking about something that works on a worldwide level and is constantly being reinvented to meet the requirements of new information and new technology.

It is for these reasons that being agile as a leader and learner is so vital to your success in today’s world. You cannot compete by sticking to one way of doing things anymore. Instead, you must internalize the practice of remaining agile as you encounter change.

What’s more, your performance in the past no longer carries as much weight as your potential for future growth and adaptability. Since the new normal is to be ever-changing, leaders evaluate you by how much you’re able to acutely perform under change. Learning agility, not past performance, is viewed as a key indicator of potential, because “fully 71% of high performers were not high potentials.”

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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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