LEARNING TO LEARN

Learning to learn has never been more crucial, given the ever-accelerating pace of change across various economic sectors. These changes not only influence existing industries but also give rise to new business models, transforming consumer behavior with the evolution and emergence of novel technologies.

Entrepreneurs find themselves under significant pressure, compelled to swiftly understand and respond to these changes, spanning from administrative models to the very nature of work. This pressure necessitates a continuous learning experience.

In this context, resistance finds no room. Organizations must embrace the horizon, seeking growth opportunities. A vital part of this process is professionals acquiring new capabilities while simultaneously executing their tasks. This demands a willingness to experiment, remaining open to being a perpetual learner in constant renewal—an uncomfortably unfamiliar notion for many.

Acting as a coach and consultant for hundreds of executives in various fields, I’ve had the opportunity to be alongside successful individuals in this type of learning. One aspect glaringly evident in analyzing the profiles of these executives is their lack of hesitation in admitting a lack of mastery in certain areas. They possess a clear self-awareness, always seeking a genuine understanding and mastery of new skills. Another noteworthy aspect is their routine practice of specific questioning. They comprehend the dynamics of learning, remaining entirely open to exploring issues and implementing innovative actions precisely because they understand the importance of their own mistakes, which elevates their learning curve.

Summarizing their differences became possible by identifying some simple mental attributes. Hence, I’ll explore the four fundamental attributes mapped with these executives and how to expand them into our daily lives to develop them as skills, experiencing the power of the art of learning to learn:

Ambition, Self-Awareness, Curiosity and Vulnerability

Ambition

Rarely do we ask ourselves: Am I ambitious or not? It’s crucial to remember that ambition is not greed. Be cautious! Ambition comes from the Latin “ambire,” meaning “to move freely.” On the other hand, greed comes from “ganatum,” meaning “gain.” The ambitious person moves out of their comfort zone, seeks what they desire, takes risks, exerts effort, dedicates themselves. In contrast, the greedy one is paralyzed in their quest for excessive gains, driven by avidity, covetousness, cupidity, holding onto everything they receive for themselves. The greedy one is selfish, not sparing any efforts to achieve what they want, regardless of the means. Ambition is about pursuing a conquest beyond the obvious, the common, where the means to achieve them matter. A corrupt individual is greedy, while an entrepreneur is ambitious.

Now, let’s move to the practical. It’s easy to discover if ambition exists in you: are you willing to make an effort to learn a new skill? Are you courageous? Great learners tend always to increase their level of ambition because it becomes addictive. Knowledge is motivating, activating the reward system. Usually, the blame for resisting necessary changes for professional success lies entirely with us.

Now, let’s extend this analysis to the workplace. Have you ever faced a situation where your company decided to embrace a new approach, such as updating reporting systems, replacing ERP platforms, or restructuring management processes, defining new KPIs? When something like this happens, were you eager to put everything into practice? Doubtful. Your initial reaction was probably to find reasons to justify not wanting to take on this challenge and learn something new. For instance: “It will take too long.” “The old way works fine.” “I bet it’s just a fad and won’t improve anything.” Early on, we learn to live a life of routines where we are taught to maintain certain standards within what is most obvious. Therefore, the first obstacle usually arises when confronted with new teachings: we focus on the negative and unconsciously reinforce our lack of ambition with justifications.

However, when we allow ourselves to redefine this type of belief, we can benefit from a natural human condition—stimulating the desire to learn new things. To do this, we must start from the premise that we really want to learn something, focusing on the positive side—the gains that learning will bring to your personal and professional life—and envision a contemplative future where you will reap the rewards. Merely shifting from a negative to a positive perspective helps propel you into action. Behavioral researchers have found that changing the focus from challenges to visualizing the advantages is an excellent way to improve initial ambition to perform activities that were previously considered unappealing.

Many of my clients seek the coaching process to rediscover themselves in their professional lives and pursue something new to breathe fresh air into their ambitions. New knowledge is crucial for them to generate not only new opportunities but also motivation for new achievements. A few years ago, alongside a client who deeply impressed me with his evolution and accomplishments, I developed an entirely new career strategy with him. We mapped out step by step the necessary knowledge to be acquired, aiming to generate new market possibilities and reach a desired professional level. Interestingly, despite his active participation in the strategy’s development, he continuously hesitated to acquire knowledge in agile management. Even though most of his colleagues were moving in that direction, he was convinced he wouldn’t have time for these learnings, considering them unimportant for his career. Eventually, I realized this was an ambition issue and encouraged him to consider how becoming familiar with agile management could personally benefit him.

After a series of self-inquiry questions, he recognized the usefulness of understanding how current project management models were responding to the market. By exploring this topic with his colleagues and team, I suggested he imagine the situation a year later if he mastered these new models. He became enthusiastic, noting, “We would test different approaches in the development teams. We’d have agility within reliable processes and a clearer view of project progress and customer satisfaction. We’d save time and money by quickly discarding less efficient approaches.” I could almost feel his aspiration growing. In a few months, he had enrolled in scheduled courses, earned certifications, and became a continuous learning hub. Soon, he began rethinking his most important and challenging professional strategies in light of this new perspective and skills. Examples:

Self-awareness

The self-help world has spared no effort on this thing called self-awareness. It seems to have become the solution for everything and everyone, but of course, it’s not that simple. Before talking about self-awareness, it’s essential to understand what we’re talking about. After all, we are unique individuals living a unique life in every fraction of time. Therefore, I want to make it clear that the proposal goes a bit further. The intention is to become more familiar with the concept of self-awareness, involving feedback, discovering how others see us. When it comes to learning, our self-assessments—what we know or don’t know, the skills we have or don’t have—are almost always extremely inaccurate. In my work, I’ve found that in people who self-assess more accurately, the process begins within their minds.

They are clear and understand that their perspective often contains biases and imperfections, so they strive for greater objectivity, making them much more open to hearing and following others’ opinions. The secret is to pay attention to how you talk to yourself about yourself and then question the validity of that “self-talk.” Imagine, for a moment, your boss just walked into the room and claims your team isn’t fully competent, and you need to improve your talent development assessment. What will be your reaction? “What? You’re wrong. My team is strong.” Most of us, when pressed, tend to respond emotionally and defensively when our capabilities are questioned. We struggle with criticism.

For this, there’s a very useful exercise that focuses on becoming aware of the situation and asking yourself: Is the criticism true? Do I have facts to defend myself, or should I support it? In the self-reflection process, it’s possible to discover with clarity that you’re wrong, and your boss is right, or that the truth lies somewhere in between—for instance, to cover for some of your subordinates, you ended up doing some things, one of which is inconsistent with the deadline; however, the other two are extremely important. The secret is to learn to listen to yourself, in a way that makes the moment worthwhile for learning, leading to a balanced situation. What I mean is that self-reflection should function as an “impartial witness” so that you can be open to seeing areas where you could improve and then instigate the ambitious side of achievement by drawing strategies on how to do that. I had a client who had a narrow view of himself and spared no effort to convince himself that he was a great leader and executive. It’s true that he was an exceptional technocrat. He knew everything in his field, had a high critical sense of work, and a great instinct for problem-solving, all of which the company’s top management acknowledged. The problem was that he always tended to pay attention only to people who confirmed his self-view and couldn’t, in any way, deal with input about his weaknesses.

Your manager hired me for a coaching process to help this client better handle his team, as he himself couldn’t perceive that his own team didn’t feel committed or inspired. When I finally got him to allow himself to question his assumptions, like: “Is everyone on my team focused and productive? If not, is there something that can be done differently?” he quickly realized the need to talk to the team, and that’s when it clicked. He became much more aware of his development needs and open to feedback. He realized that having strategic insights was not enough if he couldn’t see the reality around him. He began to share them with his subordinates, discuss them with them, and then establish clear priorities—supported by quarterly goals and individual team goals, regular progress checks, and problem-solving sessions.

Curiosity

In John Medina’s book, “Brain Rules,” he describes the importance of learning in people’s lives, as well as how insatiable children are in their continuous pursuit of learning and control. According to him, “this need for explanation is so deeply rooted in their experience that some scientists describe it as an instinctive need, just like hunger, thirst, and sex.” This continuous need for learning is also motivating, as mentioned earlier. The brain craves knowledge; anything novel tends to direct mental focus precisely because it activates the reward system, and this natural condition cannot be subdued when not stimulated or when we are overloaded with responsibilities and concerns. Therefore, instead of falling into the natural temptation to live in the same routine and make life a bubble within the comfort zone, reinforcing the initial disinterest in a new subject, it is necessary to learn to question oneself with curious, intriguing, and challenging questions. Feed your sense of seeking something new that challenges your beliefs and program yourself to take actions accordingly.

There is no shortage of studies in behavioral psychology that have shown, for example, that people can improve their willingness to deal with necessary tasks by thinking of a different way to accomplish them and thus make them more interesting. The strategy lies in creating a challenging vision. In other words, create self-talk to motivate changing from “this is boring” to “what if I could…?”

You can use the same strategy in your professional life by observing the language you use when thinking about activities that are already of interest to you—How…? Why…? What if…? —and resort to it when you need to become challenging. Then, take one more step to answer the question you posed to yourself: read an article, ask an expert, find a teacher, join a group, research—whatever is easier.

Recently, I worked with a client who had just received an excellent offer from a company that had offered her a prominent position but required knowledge of a very specific technical area—an area that, for her, was “the most boring in engineering.” In fact, despite dealing very well with it, she hated any highly technical area, having a much more managerial than technocratic outlook. Given the discomfort, I persuaded her otherwise and asked her what area she was most interested in and why. “Project management,” she replied. “I’m fascinated by project development, macro management, talking to the team, always seeking solutions, analyzing numbers, analyzing KPIs. For my professional life to be perfect, it needs to have constant challenges. I imagine being in charge of various projects, multidisciplinary teams—it’s a noble way to interact with other professionals, think, always be in action. It’s not a question of power, although I love it, but of feeling empowered by having to be strategic, experiencing challenges all the time.”

I explained that her “challenging language” could be applied within the responsibilities being offered. “Is it surprising that someone might find you interesting?” she jokingly replied when realizing that she was facing an opportunity where she could really make a difference if she used all her managerial will with the teams she had the opportunity to take over.

Like a game of back and forth, I started motivating her to think in a hypothetical world within the role she had the opportunity to assume, how ideal it would be, actually, she needed to describe to me a perfect starting point. She began to think aloud about possible answers and then asked other curious questions. Immediately, she showed a lot of interest and realized her power in dealing with challenges beyond what she herself imagined, and she decided to accept the challenge. Days later, she called me to say that she had a conversation with the executive in charge of her hiring, and he loved her ideas, giving her a blank slate to take over the area and make the changes they deemed important to improve results and the quality of the work environment. In the following months, she learned what she needed to know to feel ready to perform her new role. Simple as that—breaking beliefs!

The next time you are asked to learn something new at work or realize that you should learn something because it will help you perform your activities better, muster the courage to formulate curious and challenging questions about the subject—Why do others know about this, and I don’t? How would this learning facilitate my work? How can I make a difference? —and then seek the answers, put them on paper, relate them to the evolution of your professional skills, and specify the gains you will have with this knowledge. You will only tend to discover one thing: what seems to be a “boring” topic may be the trigger you’ve been waiting for to awaken your desire to go much further, to challenge yourself, and especially to feed your curiosity.

Vulnerability

As we progress in our professional careers, naturally, with experience, we build a sense of empowerment that gives us the illusion that we have become good, or even excellent, at certain things, and we rarely want to lose this status by not being good at others. It’s also part of this professional evolution to learn to adopt justifications, often somewhat creative, when “quick failures” occur at work. This creates the illusion that we know more than we actually do, mainly because over time we come to believe that what we know is more important than other issues or thoughts. Indeed, it’s also part of the human psyche to learn to value our strengths. So, the idea of not doing something well for weeks or months, feeling incapable and slow, asking “silent” questions like “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” needing step-by-step guidance continuously, or even having to return to a classroom to learn or relearn is extremely frightening.

This is where the power of vulnerability comes in. In Brené Brown’s book, “The Power of Vulnerability,” she emphasizes that “people don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.” And this can become a great trap for us. If you truly want to grow and become a great professional, reaching new challenging heights, it’s necessary to allow yourself to be vulnerable enough to accept that there’s a beginner status within you that needs to stay alive.

When we try something new and do it poorly, terrible thoughts usually come to mind: I hate this, I’m incompetent, I’ll never get this right, this is so frustrating! This pulsating noise in our brain leaves little room for learning. On the other hand, when we adopt the idea of being beginners, the ideal way to think is vulnerable and at the same time balanced: to start, I won’t be good at this because I’ve never done it before. And I know I can learn over time. You see, being vulnerable doesn’t mean being a weak or incapable person. In fact, it should be seen as a condition in which you’re not sure how to act or what to do, but still seek ways to face it. It’s like telling your team in response to a question: “I don’t know what to do now, but I’ll look for it as soon as possible.” This brings us to the main positive point of the power of vulnerability, which is fostering continuous learning about subjects and issues we don’t master. And this leads to another advantage, which is stepping out of the comfort zone. The biggest mistake you can make in your personal or professional life, especially as a leader, is wanting to deceive yourself, showing all the time as if you have all the answers. What margin are you opening up to learn something new? If you have a solution for everything, why expand your horizons? How will you feel motivated to go beyond?

Vulnerability is an act of resilience, which can be defined as a person’s ability to deal with problems, overcome obstacles, recover from unexpected situations, and adapt to changes. This, in turn, is related to courage. To develop all the necessary characteristics to become resilient, courage is necessary. This is because without this ability to face the unknown and go beyond what you’re used to doing, it’s almost impossible to grow, adapt to new conditions, and regain a secure posture in a new scenario.

In behavioral psychology, it’s clear that when people are encouraged to expect errors and learn from them early in the process of acquiring new skills, the result is “increased interest and persistence and improved performance.”

Recently, I worked with a client who is a senior project manager who was recently appointed to coordinate a development team in Germany. He was having a hard time getting used to living in another country and working with colleagues from other cultures, and his response was to emphasize his expertise in management rather than recognizing his beginner status in the new environment. I helped him identify his resistance to being a cultural beginner, and he managed to change his internal dialogue from “this is so uncomfortable, I’ll just focus on what I already know” to “I have a lot to learn about German cultures. I learn fast, so I’ll manage.”

Soon, he realized that the key lies in how the professionals that make up a team work together. When he felt secure, in turn, he transmitted to his team the toughest criterion that definitely needed to be met, and that was entirely related to the role and posture he needed. Anyone leading a group of employees also needs to convey psychological security to them, and one way to achieve this is through the power of vulnerability.

The ability to quickly and continuously acquire new skills and knowledge is essential for success in a dynamic world. Now that you know more about the power of vulnerability and all its importance, the next step is to figure out how to become a positively vulnerable leader. For this, to complete this article, my tips are:

– Say goodbye to your armor: the attitude of knowing everything and not making mistakes.

– Seek your self-awareness: it’s essential that you know yourself more, both as a person and as a professional.

– Ask for help from your team: not acting like you know everything is a way to expand your knowledge.

– Don’t avoid difficult conversations: every relationship is a two-way street.

– Have trust as the foundation of the relationship with your team: when the foundation of the relationship between leader and subordinates is trust, delegating tasks and sharing responsibilities becomes an easy and natural process.

If currently you lack ambition, self-awareness, curiosity, and vulnerability to be an efficient learner, then change your perspective and seek to develop these simple tools. They can help you consider the fact that there is always something better you can learn, and this is not weakness but a way to enhance your performance and strive for better results for everyone. Believe me, these simple 4 steps are already a great start for your turnaround and will genuinely help you get there. So, let’s put them into practice, shall we?

The journey of self-discovery and professional growth is a challenging road, but every step you take towards ambition, self-awareness, curiosity, and vulnerability is an investment in your extraordinary future. Remember, the greatest achievements begin with bold, small steps. Cultivating ambition is giving wings to your dreams, exploring self-awareness is illuminating paths previously unnoticed, nurturing curiosity is opening doors to new possibilities, and embracing vulnerability is building bridges over the challenges that await you.

So, dear reader, don’t see these four elements as mere words but as master keys that will unlock doors to a future where your achievements will surpass your expectations. By adopting these simple practices, you will not only shape an exceptional career but also discover the transformative power of becoming an eternal learner.

The path may be challenging, but the reward is the fulfillment of your maximum potential. Now, with these tools in hand, take the first courageous step towards a new era of growth and success. The future eagerly awaits your inspiring journey. Go ahead, dare, learn, grow, and conquer. Your extraordinary awaits!

I want to suggest some self-reflection exercises for you to practice, and I’m sure they will help you find your best self:

1. Ambition:
   • What do you consider as ambitious goals for your career in the next 6 months, 1 year, and 5 years?
   • How do these goals align with your values and passions?
2. Self-awareness:
   • What are your main skills and strengths? How can you leverage them in your career?
   • What are your challenges or areas for development? How do you plan to address them?
3. Curiosity:
   • What are the topics or areas within your profession that you have always wanted to explore but haven’t yet?
   • How can you incorporate a curious mindset into your daily work routine?
4. Vulnerability:
   • In what recent situations could you have benefited from being more vulnerable or open to asking for help?
   • How can you create a work environment that encourages vulnerability and continuous learning?
5. Reflection and Practice:
   • Take time to reflect on your answers. How can these reflections guide your future decisions and actions?
   • Create a specific action plan with practical steps to implement these ideas in your career.

Remember that consistent practice of these reflections can provide a solid foundation for professional development. Continuous self-analysis is a powerful tool for personal and professional growth.

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