Fourth Thing: Experience is the best teacher.
The only way to learn how to ice skate is to strap on a pair of skates and get out on the ice. You could spend a lot of time reading up on skating and the importance of balance, but it would be difficult to apply any of that theoretical knowledge to your first time wobbling out onto the rink. However, within even a few minutes on the ice, you begin to get immediate and direct feedback about what works and what doesn’t. You suddenly find yourself on a highly accelerated learning curve.
Most people spend less than one tenth of one percent of their work lives in formal structured learning programs. As the head of Carlson Executive Education, I would certainly like to see people spend more time in formal learning programs! But the reality is that, formal structured learning is just one tool for developing yourself. In fact, if you are relying solely on formal education to develop your leadership capability, you may have fallen into the trap of trying to find a quick fix. While formal learning programs, such as those we offer in executive education, are a valuable resource, you should not think of them as the only resource. In addition to looking for programs on leadership, you should be looking for opportunities to do things in your job or through special assignments that will teach you leadership lessons.
Many leadership lessons can only be learned through experience. The challenge is that, while experience can be the best teacher, great learning experiences are scarce. And, the costs of bumbling your way through some experiences (i.e., “learning on the job”) can be quite high. I would rather not go under the knife of anything but the most experienced surgeon, thank you very much!
My point is simply that you should be looking for learning insights in the workplace, and, when the great development assignment comes along, you need to be prepared to get the most from it. In my experience, talking with hundreds of managers and executives about their development paths, few people are actually good at learning from their work experience. Those that are good at it, are often the most successful leaders who see it as second nature, and don’t even think of it as learning.
The subject of experience-based development is a personal passion of mine. If you are interested in getting into this area more deeply, I will be teaching a 4-hour course on the subject in the new Momentum Series offered by Carlson Executive Education this spring. Send me an email (mkizilos@umn.edu) if you want to get on the mailing list for this new series of practical and accessible progams.
Filed under: Creating a high-impact development plan, Self-Development
