Flexability | Take every opportunity to learn

Two events that I have recently attended have given me some truly great nuggets of wisdom to hold on to; and some food for thought.

So often we go to conferences and come away momentarily inspired. We might even spend some time securing the networking ties we made, but it is so easy to let the hurly-burly of life get in the way of doing anything useful with the information that inspired us, or made us ponder.

When I was at law school, I’d come home each evening and rewrite my notes. That ritual set me up for tests and exams. It forced me to go over the new concepts presented to me earlier in the day and showed me where I had gaps in understanding and what I should explore more deeply. Perhaps we should do something similar when we attend conferences?

Sure, we should take advantage of the networking opportunities that conferences offer. Email the people you enjoyed chatting to, send that book to the person to whom it was promised. We should also take advantage of the new ways of thinking that we were exposed to.

After all, this is a time of incredible complexity and uncertainty. In many instances, doing things the way they have always been done will not help us deal with the many ways the world is changing, from politics to technology.

So, what did I learn at the two programs I attended? One was the Women Presidents Organization’s (WPO’s) annual conference, known as the Entrepreneurial Excellence Forum, in Colorado Springs in May. The other was Harvard Business School’s Leading Business and Personal Transitions Program, hosted by the Foundation of the WPO.

Both programs taught me many things, but here are the standouts:

Get curious

In a wrap-up session at Harvard one of the recommendations was to “invite curiosity in the midst of judgment”. We’re always making judgements. It’s the human way. But, in these turbulent times it’s wise to take a pause and think about our own biases. They may be holding us back from a breakthrough.

Is our knee-jerk judgment about who a person is and what they know coloring our perspective? We need to fight against that impulse and lean into curiosity. Ask questions – get the person to tell you more about their point of view and where it comes from. Get them to unpack the context from which they approach the problem. Seek to understand instead of to judge.

Understand the urgency

Time is finite. We all know this, but few of us truly live with that thought uppermost in our minds.

One of the Harvard sessions underlined this again, and I have taken it on board. On an actuarial level, I could work out how many weeks I have left in my life. If I had this answer, I would most likely be trying to do and be more with the time I have left.

So, these days I am asking myself whether I am doing everything that I wanted to do? Am I making a difference, every week?

Ask the right questions

In business, especially among leaders, there is a push to always appear authoritative and in charge. We fear that if we seem uncertain we will look weak, but – as was pointed out in another Harvard session – asking the right questions is most often more important than giving the right answers.

This is especially so in a world that is so rapidly changing. Asking the right questions opens up conversation and learning. If our focus is on asking questions, it will automatically switch us into “curiosity gear”.

We need to ask questions that open up what I call the “negative space” around a concept. What aren’t we thinking about? What isn’t here that should be here? We need to look for questions that allow us to respond instead of react.

View complaints as gifts

Along with the Harvard program, I was also privileged to run a workshop at the WPO conference – Bridge to Belonging. As so often happens, I learned as much as I taught.

I learned to view complaints as gifts. What might initially sound like whining or criticism is a chance to learn and to build something better. It’s like the negative space concept I unpacked above – a complaint is an opportunity for a business to look at its product or service through the eyes of a customer.

What comes out of that exercise is very often a way to improve a product or service. If you are lucky, the improvement could turn your offering into a market leader.

Taking a complaint on board can clearly outline the gaps in an organization’s thinking. It’s a way of seeing issues you didn’t immediately recognize, and investigating ways of fixing the problems.

Invite do-overs

The next step, following on from identifying challenges and gaps, is to ask customers and clients – and especially the complainers – whether you can try again.

An interesting question to ask is, “If you were me, what would you do?” We have talked in the past about being “candidly kind” when things are not going so well. This is one of the ways of doing this with yourself! Asking that question can give you great insights that could turn a small failure into a big opportunity.

Be careful not to sound like a parent

In our workshop discussion, we also explored generational differences. Generation X and the generations younger than them react quite negatively to leaders who, in times of trouble, end up sounding like a parent scolding a child. We need to be careful to treat them as the colleagues they are.

Use the “stay interview”

When employees leave organizations they often face an exit interview, but no one thinks to ask their remaining peers why they choose to stay. This is another way in which we’re not curious enough.

Use your inquisitiveness. Explore why people stay as much as you explore why people go. The answers you get may surprise you.

Also, find out how younger employees want to be recognized – there is variety in the answers even within the different generations. Be aware and be ready – it might be that the older staff members need to learn new technological tools and be willing to adapt. This is a fast-changing world – the Darwinian maxim holds: it’s not the strongest, or the physically fittest, or the fastest that survives, it's the one that is adaptable.

That’s the neat thing

That’s the neat thing about going to conferences and embracing other learning experiences – you discover new ways of approaching challenges, and of solving problems. My recent experiences have led me to a new resolution: from now on I will view them as an opportunity to adapt and think differently.