As human beings we arrive in life totally unable to care for ourselves and incapable of surviving on our own. From the first breath we take onward we begin a journey of learning: First about our parents and caregivers, then about the expanded world and finally about ourselves.<\/p>\n
Some small percentage of us suffer from organic impediments to learning and develop at an arrested pace or are unable to learn beyond a certain level. But for the vast majority of us, we are capable of learning throughout our entire lives. Yet most of us seem to stop learning well before we breathe our final breath. We see this all around us. We say things like, \u2018you can\u2019t teach an old dog new tricks,\u2019 or suggest that we have lost the skills required for learning we had as children from lack of use. It doesn\u2019t seem that our cognitive function diminishes significantly as we advance through adulthood, and there is evidence that it doesn’t necessarily abandon us as we become elderly. So why do so many people simply stop learning?<\/p>\n
Perhaps it is a rash generalization to suggest that most people do not continue to learn. We read books and articles, we watch educational programs, we attend lectures and we may even take formal classes. But are we really learning?<\/p>\n
Learning isn’t just the process of collecting information: learning is about growth.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
When we learn we change. It\u2019s not the knowledge we gather, it\u2019s what we do with it. If the knowledge we fill our heads with doesn\u2019t somehow change us, and by change I would suggest improve our ability to perform our roles in life, have we learned anything? Certainly for learning to be worthwhile it needs to expand our ability or capacity in life. In the beginning learning is essential for survival, it is every bit as vital as the physical growth and maturity that brings us from helpless infancy to independent, fully functioning adults.\u00a0Is learning any less vital once we have matured into adulthood?<\/p>\n
Dr. Lee Thayer in many of his published writing suggests that learning equals growth and growth equals life. I believe this is more than just a fanciful aphorism. Life requires that we are adaptive to our changing surroundings and even our own changing condition. If we don\u2019t learn what we are capable of, we may foolishly expose ourselves to unreasonable, or even unsurvivable risk, or perhaps even worse, never realize our fullest potential. Learning not only impacts if and how we contribute to society; it informs our relationship to the world around us.<\/p>\n
The greatest satisfaction we experience in life comes from our sense of accomplishment. And any meaningful accomplishment requires some level of learning, either in our preparation or our discovery. It could therefor be said that learning directly contributes to our happiness in life.<\/p>\n
So, back to the question, why do we stop learning? I believe it is fear. The fear of leaving our comfort zone makes change uncomfortable, and therefor makes learning uncomfortable or even undesirable.<\/p>\n
But, I believe it\u2019s more than the inertia of the status quo. I believe we have been conditioned to be fearful, or at least resist being wrong by the formal education we receive from the minute we start school.<\/p>\n
The education we receive is entirely deductive. We are asked questions that our teachers know the answers to. Our job is to \u201clearn\u201d how to get the right answers. When we do we are rewarded. And when we fail to, we are punished. At first it may be a mild punishment in the form of a gentle correction. But as time goes on, if we get too many wrong answers, we fail the test. And if we fail too many tests we flunk out of a class, or are forced to repeat a grade, or we may get expelled from the school altogether. We are rewarded with adulations or treats and eventually with commendations and diplomas for succeeding and ostracized, castigated and stigmatized for not having the right answers. We develop the belief that life is safer and better when we have all the right answers. We aspire to live in this \u201cknowing mode\u201d and go about collecting as much knowledge and information as we can \u2013 so we might always have the \u201cright answers.\u201d<\/p>\n
But as life gets increasingly more complex and demanding, it gets messier. There are times when we don\u2019t have the right answers, or the luxury of the time we might need to find them. And sometimes there are no right answers. As leaders we may find ourselves in the latter two situations more than most other people.<\/p>\n
Being in the knowing mode actually interferes with our capacity to learn.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
When we think we know, or have found what we need to know, we tend to stop searching. We stop learning. We become satiated for knowledge when we are no longer hungry in the same way we tend to stop eating when we are satiated.<\/p>\n
While we are searching for what we want or need to know we are functioning in the learning mode. We may be mildly curious, or starving for knowledge and we are actively engaged exploring. When we explore we might feel vulnerable. We acknowledge that we are outside of the safety and comfort of knowing. The more successful or accomplished we are as adults \u2013 the more we might prefer to equate being in the knowing mode with our comfort zone. In that mode we may do things that resemble learning but don\u2019t make us uncomfortable. We may look for validation in what we know by reading books, watching educational programs or taking classes. We tend to be comfortable getting better at what we are already good at \u2013 and entirely uncomfortable being a beginner or neophyte again. We embellish our understandings rather than allow them to be challenged. We polish and reinforce our beliefs and strengthen our personal resolve rather than plunge ourselves into the dark uncertainty of confusion and searching.<\/p>\n
With a fully formed mind and a little practice we can begin to self-initiate learning by approaching problems inductively \u2013 looking for better questions rather than searching for the right answers. \u00a0When we own the problem of our own learning \u2013 rather than expect others to teach us what we need to know \u2013 we have no choice but to become masterful in the questions we ask. We also become more discriminate in assessing the answers we find. When there is no single right answer we search for the best possible answer, even settling transitively on a solution while continuing to search for a better one. We can thus acquire knowledge while operating in the learning mode, which is different than satiating our desire and settling into the knowing mode.<\/p>\n
Leadership takes courage. It\u2019s not always the courage needed to march into battle or to challenge the deeply-set status quo. It can be as simple as the courage to escape our comfort zone, lean into our fears about the unknown and make ourselves available to learn the way we learned during our earliest years of life.<\/p>\n
When we escape the boundaries of our comfort zone and become virtuoso questioners, we not only raise our own capacity and potential, we raise all of human potential. As business leaders this is what drives innovation and fully develops the potential of people\u2019s talents. It is the way we change the world for the better.<\/p>\n
###<\/p>\n
Phil Liebman is the CEO and founder of ALPS Leadership <\/strong>and a Vistage Chair since 2005. He earned his Master of Leadership Arts and Sciences at The Thayer Institute – studying High-Performance Organizations and Competent Leadership under Dr. Lee Thayer. You can learn more about what it takes to become a more effective leader and building and growing sustainable high-performance organizations by visiting ALPS Leadership at<\/em>\u00a0www.ALPSLeadership.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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