Adopt a Green Mentality

I’ve written about the importance of learning in leadership often.  Those writings included:

The Learning Zone – Everyday Action for Learning

Learning: Make it Informal

Fixed or Growth, What’s in your mindset?

It’s All About Learning – Part Deux

Learning is an important element of leadership.  I’m not writing today to restate that fact.

However, I find it  interesting when there is a new twist to an existing idea and that is the notion behind my urging to “Adopt a Green Mentality.”

The idea came from Shawn Murphy (Twitter: @Shawmu), the founder of Achieved Strategies when he wrote, 12 Most Necessary Shifts in Leadership Thinking for Today. 

I love a good list of insight and definitions and the tenth item on Shawn’s great list was my favorite.  It immediately resonated with me.  Here are Shawn’s words.

10. Adopt a “Green Mentality”
A colleague once said about professional development:  “If you’re ripe you’re rotting; if you’re green you’re growing.” Professional development never ends. A green mentality keeps your mind sharp and your skills fresh.

My call today is for leaders to adopt a green mentality.  Join me and make it part of your everyday mission.

Thanks for reading.  Lead quietly and think green, be growing.

don

Learning from the Age of Conversation 3 Authors - I'm Addicted

Last week when I posted about my participation as a contributor to the ebook, Age of Conversation 3, a challenge I made for myself was to visit the sites of as many contributors as I could.  From the start of this effort, I became addicted to the learning that was taking place. I immediately discovered new ideas, new tools, and great concepts from the AOC3 contributors.  It is an amazing group of writers, thinkers, and innovators and I wanted to learn and share my discoveries. Consequently, I started planning my AOC3 Learning Quest.

I wanted to accomplish three things in my quest. 

1. Visit the contributor's web site and learn.
2. Follow the author on Twitter.  I created a AOC3 Twitter List if you want to follow along.  Click to access.
3. I wanted to share specific new discoveries at my other blog:  MeshingUp.com

Of course, being a data guy in my day job, I had to organize this information, keep some records, and keep score.   This link will take you to my  my AOC3 Learn Quest Dashboard where I keep track of my progress.  There is a lot of learning from my fellow authors.  

Thanks for reading.  Please Lead Quietly and remember, it's all about learning.

Don

 

 

Posted via email from Meshing Up

Learning: Make it Informal

I have a question for leaders who recognize that learning is a critical element of a team's success. "What can leaders do to cultivate learning across their teams?"

It is a broad question with a complex answer. As I wrote in a previous post, the space is vast and multi-dimensional. This is illustrated in my exploratory mindmap.


I can't pretend that I understand the entirety of this space. However, I discovered a single learning concept that resonated with me. Relative to my question, I found Informal Learning a compelling, thought-provoking and amazingly accessible concept. Simply stated, leaders should build and cultivate informal learning on their teams.

What is Informal Learning?
As Jay Cross writes on his Informal Learning blog, "People acquire the skills they use at work informally — talking, observing others, trial-and-error, and simply working with people in the know."

Informal learning can characterized as learning that:

• Takes place outside educational establishments.
• Does not follow a specified curriculum.
• Will likely be sporadic, incidental, and problem-related.
• Experienced directly as a function of everyday life.

Cross goes on to say that "informal learning is the unofficial, unscheduled, impromptu way most people learn to do their jobs." If you'd like to hear Jay describe informal learning, here is a video he supplied in 2007.

Informal learning is the Rodney Dangerfield of learning. It just doesn't get respect. In fact, Allen Tough in his paper, The Iceberg of Informal Adult Learning suggests that about 80% of learning is informal and quite invisible like the iceberg. However, the other 20%, this is learning that is formal, and institutionally organized, get the lion's share of the attention and the largest share of most organization's training budget.

Some even go so far as to suggest that organizations are spending 80% of their training budget to accomplish a mere 20% of their learning. There is clearly some debate about the validity of this comparison. Despite this, in my experience, organizations don't give much attention to the power and potential of informal learning.

The question for leaders is, "How can you support the growth of informal learning in your team?

In a Lead Quietly manner, I decided to look for common threads and identify a handful of principles where leaders could focus their attention in their effort to build informal learning.

Here are the Lead Quietly Principles of Building Informal Learning:

It's Personal
We've always known that different people have different learning styles. My approach to learning; as much as I attempt to build this skill, is not necessarily the optimal approach for anyone else on my team. First and foremost, a leader trying to expand team learning should recognize that any program or learning initiative should account for differences in learning style.

Secondly, leaders should look to understand how their colleagues learn. Although numerous learning style theories exist, I'd encourage leaders to pick a single framework like Fleming's VARK model which divides leaders into four groups:

1. visual learners
2. auditory learners
3. reading/writing-preference learners
4. kinesthetic learners or tactile learners

Recently, I've started asking applicants during hiring interviews, "How did you learn what you know?" The varied responses led me to believe that you can simply ask and observe in order to build understanding.

With information about personal learning styles, you are in a better position to build informal learning opportunities across your team.

It's Social, It's Networked, It's Collaborative, It's about Community.
A paradox of the study of informal learning is that despite the fact that learning style is personal, informal learning is more likely to flourish in an environment based on strong community. Teams easily form communities of practice where they share a passion for a topic or solution. Teams will build community to help each other, share, and learn from each other.

The Lead Quietly blog has focused extensively on approaches to building community and collaboration across teams. And the not-so-surprising finding about community is that the identical community-building approaches apply to both collaboration and learning. Teams that excel at learning, collaboration, and community are teams with a foundation on personal relationships, gratitude, trust, passion, and sharing. The recommendation for leaders, build a strong community for active learning.

It's about Sharing and Conversation.
Jay Cross says in his video, "The most powerful instructional technology ever invented is human conversation." In his book, Informal Learning: Rediscovering the Natural Pathways That Inspire Innovation and Performance (Essential Knowledge Resource), he defines conversation as the "stem cells for learning." Through conversation, learning is created and shared in a single process.

As a leader, you simply want to encourage sharing and conversation. As Catherine Lombardozzi writes in Breathing Life into an Informal Learning Strategy,

Sharing expertise and collaborating with others needs to be encouraged, recognized, and rewarded. Reaching out to others for support of learning needs to be viewed as a savvy strategy for getting up to speed and getting ahead. There has to be some room for informal conversation and sharing experiences. In an economic environment where time is increasingly scarce, interpersonal interactions my be undervalued and underutilized, and that will have serious consequences on learning in our organizations.

Leaders should not only participate in the conversation but should mentor, model, and coach with those conversations. I now recognize that when I sit with a co-worker and spend time discussing and exploring, I am creating an informal learning opportunity for both of us. I need to do more of this.

Support Informal Learning with Tools and a PLE
Almost any discussion of modern trends in learning, be it defined as informal learning, social learning, network learning, or e-learning will end up talking about the tools. As a leader, we should encourage the use of tools that support the discovery, sharing and conversation about learning.

When I propose this, I am not suggesting that your team needs to purchase a sophisticated learning management system. I'm really saying, use the common and readily available tools that are already at your disposal. Jane Hart on her Centre for Learning and Performance Technologies site surveys both learners and learning professionals to identify "Top Tools". Hart's top ten list for learning tools includes common and popular tools like:

• Google Search
• YouTube
• FireFox
• Twitter
• Wikepedia
• Delicious
• Facebook
• Google Reader
• Gmail

The list is likely familiar. As you use these tools they collectively evolve into a Personal Learning Environment (PLE), a set of tools that you can use to support and manage your learning. Your encouragement and modeling will grow the tool and PLE concept across your team. My PLE is based on tools like FireFox, Google Reader, YouTube, ScribeFire, Twitter, BigTweet, and iGoogle.

Final Thoughts
Informal learning doesn't require big investments, a budget, or even a formal plan. With awareness, modeling, strong community, and support of a team's leader, informal learning can become viral. It's all about learning. A team of learners can tackle any challenge.

Thanks for reading. Learning? Make it informal.
Don

Curiosity as a measure of passion

Learning and curiosity is one of the key elements of quiet leadership as defined on this blog. My personal carnival of learning at Lead Quietly would include these posts:

• It's All About Learning
• It's All About Learning - Part Deux
• Fixed or Growth, What's in your mindset?
• Mindset, it will profoundly affect everything.

I was intrigued when Steve Roesler, a fellow Best of 2008 Leadership Blog nominee at his All Things Workplace blog took a different twist, a better perspective on the work of Dr. Carol Dweck that differentiates between a Growth versus Fixed Mindset. I have discussed this concept previously.

In Curiosity, Passion and Leadership, Steve elevates the value of curiosity, by proposing that a curious mind-set that can be used as a yard stick to measure passion. As he writes,

Leaders value people who display a never-ending curiosity for the many facets of the business. Similarly, successful employees of every ilk display a never-ending curiosity that emerges as "passion" in a meeting room filled with people.

What better measure of passion than curiosity?
You can see it's presence or absence in interviews, meetings, telephone conversations, or luncheon chatter. You can display it and you can discern it.

Steve encourages leaders to hire and promote people with passion where you measure passion by sensing their curiosity.

As leaders, we should show our curiosity, it comes across as passion. And when asked, "What's in your mindset?" Show your curiosity and passion.

Thanks Steve for the new insight.

Thanks for reading. Please lead quietly and show your passion, ahhhh, I mean curiosity.
Don

Mindset, it will profoundly affect everything.

How do you learn? You are voracious? Are you constantly learning, and seeking new opportunities to tackle new stuff? Do you find yourself saying, "I wish I had time to learn more?"

If you answer yes, your thinking about learning is aligned with a key quiet leader principle and you likely have a "growth mindset," a personal characteristic that Professor Carol Dweck says will "profoundly affect all aspect of a person's life, from parent and romantic relationship to success at school and on the job"

A Sunday NY Times article this past week (7/6/2008) summarized the work of Carol Dweck and her book Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. The Time articles was a good reminder of the Dweck concepts we first identified in Fixed or Growth, What's in your Mindset. In her work, Dweck identifies two basic mindset, fixed or growth. You want to have a growth mindset.

Are you curious about your mindset. Dweck provides this diagnostic test.

Read each statement and decide whether you agree or disagree.

1. Your intelligence is something very basic about you that you can’t change very much.
2. You can learn new things but you really can’t change how intelligent you are.
3. No matter how much intelligence you have, your can always change it quite a bit.
4. You can always substantially change how intelligent you are.
5. You are a certain kind of person and there is not much that can be done to really change that.
6. No matter what kind of person you are, you can always change substantially.
7. You can do things differently, but the important parts of who you are can’t really be changed.
8. You can always change basic things about the kind of person you are. Which statements do you agree with?

A person with a fixed mindset will agree with statements 1, 2, 5, and 7, while a person with a growth mindset will agree with statements 3, 4, 6, and 8.

If you find yourself in a fixed mindset, you can learn Dweck's four step recommendation for changing your mindset on the MindsetOnline.com web site.

Finally, I believe that the simplest, quiet leader interpretation of Dweck's work for leaders is to coach, mentor, encourage, and create opportunities for learning for yourself and the people around you. As Kevin Eikenberry notes in his book, Remarkable Leadership, "we must focus on continual lifelong learning as the cornerstone skill on the path to remarkable leadership." It's really all about learning.

Thanks for reading. Please lead quietly and learn, learn, learn. Never stop learning.
Don

Fixed or Growth, What's in your mindset?

I have posited in earlier posts that learning and adapting are key and essential elements of quiet leadership. The hypothesis of an earlier post, It's All About Learning, Part Deux is, "Highly effective, remarkable leaders must be continuous, lifelong learners."

This week, I was introduced to the work of Carol Dweck, professor of Psychology at Stanford University. Her work brain development and learning further validates the importance of learning to success. The short video will give you an introduction to her work.



In her book Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, Dweck identifies two mindsets, i.e. fixed and growth, that impact and influence people's success.

1. People with a fixed mindset believe that talents and abilities are fixed. You are rationed an amount and those are the cards you are dealt.

2. People with the growth mindset believe that talents and abilities are developed through education, work, passion, and persistence.

It seems like a simple concept to suggest that people with an openness to learning have greater success and the research of Dweck and others bears this out. It's a pretty simple concept and straightforward relationship.

What can the leader do to increase learning? It appears that encouragement and coaching can have an impact. One study of student achievement by Dweck and others compared the student results across two groups who were learning study skills. The control group received only the standard study skills training. The experimental group received the study skills training and were also taught, "how they could learn to be smart—describing the brain as a muscle that became stronger the more it was used." The skills improvement in the experimental group exceeded the improvement in the control group suggesting that the perception that a person has about their ability to learn impacts learning.

My simple interpretation of the research for leaders is to coach, mentor, encourage, and create opportunities for learning for yourself and the people around you. You are hoping to avoid mindset "lock down" and foster the growth mindset for greater success. Again, it seems that it is "All about learning."

Thanks for reading. Please lead quietly.
Don

Learning to Use the Full Brain

I wrote in September about my development experiment Improve Your Brain Power - Use your right brain. In this post, I wrote about the suggestion that you could develop your brain by the simple act of moving your mouse to the opposite hand.

I continue to be fascinated with left brain/right brain differences.

This week, after a couple of weeks of pretty intense day-job work with no time for blogging or reading, my discretionary reading took me to the Freakonomics blog where I discovered the The Right Brain vs Left Brain test.

Try it. It's fascinating.

I can switch directions with a different focus. What does this mean? When you read the Freakonomics blog comments, it seems that most people get a single direction.

Thanks for reading. Please lead quietly.
Don

Daily Learning with Life Hacks

I'm a fan of learning, continuous learning, at home, at work, anywhere. We should be always reading, listening, and exploring.

I'm a fan of Life Hacks, those little learning tips that make give you new insight, make you more productive, save you money, and keeps you in touch with new tools.

I'm a fan of sharing, a great way to build community.

I'm a fan of Google Reader, at home, at work (work related of course), on my phone. Its part of my daily subscription to learning. I guess I'm admitting that I am a citizen of the "Google Nation."

Putting this all together, I'd like to share my Google Reader "Don's Hacks" folder/label.

My Don's Hack folder in Google Reader includes the following subscriptions:

Digital Inspiration

Dumb Little Man - Tips for Life

lifehack.org

Lifehacker

LifeRemix All

zen habits

You'll see what shows in my Google Reader Don's Hack folder.




I'm certainly not expecting anyone to get really excited over the public page of my Reader's Don's Hack folder. Nevertheless, I learned and discovered quite a bit in this sharing exercise. And maybe the effort will allow someone to discover a useful "life hack,"

Thanks for reading. Please lead quietly.
Don

For the love of learning, you gotta love a good list.

Leadership and learning are an inseparable pair. As John F. Kennedy said, "Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other."

In today's environment, leaders require learning opportunities that are continuous, always accessible, and fast.

As Jack Stack writes in the forward of the book, 1001 Ways to Reward Employees

We like things fast, but we don't have time to study. The world is changing so rapidly that by the time we learn something, it has often changed in some way, shape, or form. We want information in small bites

Learning opportunities come in a variety of forms. Of course there is the classic class or seminar. However, I find that continuous learning is more likely to come from reading, life lessons, discovery, experience, and, a more recent revelation, a good list. For me, the discovery and review of a good list is a great learning opportunity. Let me explain more.

For example, I recently encountered "The Manager's Cheat Sheet: 101 Common-Sense Rules for Leaders" on the Inside CRM site. The Cheat Sheet is a list of tips for managers and leaders.

When you review the list, you might say, "been there, done that" for many of the items. In that case, the validation is useful and important in learning. It is good to know that a concept that you hold dear is validated and valued elsewhere. For example, take rule #8:

Always smile. Smiles are contagious and will make others feel positive when you're around.

I blogged on this idea in a post titled, It Begets It. The "Manager's Cheat Sheet" list validated an existing notion that I had. This is learning.

Other rules might put a new twist on an old concept. For example, rule #77:

Adopt a predictive managerial style. Don't wait for things to happen to make a move. Anticipate problems and provide contingency plans.

This rules reminds me of the quiet leadership definition of vision. The type of vision that gives you awareness of the events around you and serves the opportunity to be proactive. The rule put a new twist on another concept. Still, this is learning and it is fast.

A good list allows you to quickly discover and validate. For the love of learning, you gotta love a good list.

The Manager's Cheat Sheet is one of hundreds of good lists. Here are a couple more of my favorites:

Rosa Say: Twelve Rules of Self-Leadership
Slacker Manager: Guiding Principles
Nightingale-Conent: The 12 Characteristics of High Performance Teams
Tom Peters - Change this Manifesto: This I Believe

I'd love to learn about other lists readers have found useful. In the interest of learning, please comment with other lists that you appreciate. Remember it's all about learning.

Thanks for reading. Please lead quietly.
Don

It's All About Learning - Part Deux

Kevin Eikenberry contributed a compelling post to Jonathon Farrington's Leadership Turn blog entitled Why Learning Is A Leader’s Most Important Skill. It is highly recommended.

The essential hypothesis of the post was a single statement, "Highly effective, remarkable leaders must be continuous, lifelong learners."

There were a numerous of statements in support of the proposition that resonated with me. For example:

The status quo requires no leadership. ...learning is required to
continually adapt to and work under the changing conditions.

...leaders know that the mastery of these complexities is a lifelong journey with no defined endpoint. The result? The need and desire to be in a continuously learning mindset.

Kevin's assertion that leaders must "Model it for Others" caused me to reflect on the managers that I have had, some of who "got the importance of learning", and, of course, some who didn't. If a leader is an active learner, others will follow. I have had occasions to work for a managers who were active and continuous learners. They naturally encouraged learning and by far, the best leaders. I bet most would agree.

Although I believe that continuous learning should be organic and can occur without a school, course, program, or conference, the post also caused me to reflect on the number of times when I didn't spend my training budget in the beginning of the year. I'm sure many have the same regret when a mid-year change in the business resulted in second half belt tightening. What goes first? I guess I better make those plans!

Thanks for reading. Please lead quietly.

Don

It's All About Learning

In my daily work in data warehousing and business intelligence I frequently use today's title phrase (It's All About Learning) to depict the key success factor for many projects. Learning becomes tantamount when you and your team face a challenge without a clear path to success and success depends on your ability and your team's ability to learn and understand the challenge, tools, techniques, process, and technology. Learning amidst these types of challenges is where you might hear me say, "It's all about learning."

I propose that the link between leadership and learning is inseparable. As President John F Kennedy wrote, "Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other." I feel lucky to work in a field and in a place where learning is closely linked to success. I have frequently said, the perfect job may be the job where an employer pays you to learn. Even on the worst of days when your core energy is consumed with office politics, turf wars, buggy software, or unappreciative users, I hope you can still say, "Well....., I'm learning a lot"

I have also discovered that my favorite people to work with are the people that I label as "a student of their space." These are the folks who are looking to master their craft and constantly expand their understanding. They are the constant learners and experimenters and people who are comfortable working amidst ambiguity. These are the folks who don't mind doing a little throwaway work in the interest of learning.

So what are the recommendations for Quiet Leaders? I have previously cited and am inspired by the the work of consultant Rosa Say and her Twelve Rules of Self-Leadership. Amongst this list there are three rules that speak to the importance of learning as part of your leadership-learning plan:

5. Learn to love ideas and experiments. Turn them into pilot programs that preface impulsive decisions. Everything was impossible until the first person did it.
6. Live in wonder. Wonder why, and prize “Why not?” as your favorite question. Be insatiably curious, and question everything.
11. Be a lifelong learner, and be a fanatic about it. Surround yourself with mentors and people smarter than you. Seek to be continually inspired by something, learning what your triggers are.

Leaders and learners looking for more inspiration, opportunities, and links, should check out the 7 Wonders of Joyful Jubilant Learning at the Joyful Jubilant Learning blog. In recognition of the special date, 07-07-07, this virtual learning community, set as a goal to solicit from the world learning community, 777 learning links. There efforts are indeed "all about learning."

Thanks for reading. Please lead quietly.
Don