12 Key Attitudes for Success: Attitude to Learning

9 – Attitude to Learning

There is some very interesting research that has looked at the attitude to learning in young people, which, I think, translates very strongly to anybody, in whatever walk of life they are.?

Fixed v. Growth Mindset

Essentially, they identified two types of young people. Those who believe that they have a?fixed?amount of talent. Often, they were talented, and they believed that this talent would determine their future success. Others believed that they had unlimited access to new capability and that diligence in developing that capability led to success. They had a?growth?mindset. Those with a?fixed?mindset were less likely to work hard or stretch themselves to succeed. Those with a?growth?mindset were ready to work diligently, evolve their skills and find new areas to develop.

You may recognise people who, early in their careers, are successful, but as they put it down to a fixed amount of talent, they don’t continue to invest in developing and building their capability. So, you see them topping out quite early. Often, they end in a career cul-de-sac where they can’t get any further. This can be particularly true of professional people who go to university, get chartered and then rely only on their professional skills but don’t continue to learn other complementary skills of management, leadership, influencing and communication that allow them to build their working life.

Continuous Micro-Learning

However, there is a richer attitude to learning, which is even more powerful in building success. You hold a relentless curiosity so that you see every person you meet, every situation you’re in, every challenge you face, and every disappointment you recover from as an opportunity for learning.

When I started working in big consulting, I was very impressed by one of the senior managers I was working with, who, when we came out of a meeting with a potential client, immediately sat us down and asked, ‘Okay, what went well? And what could we have done differently?’.

Just at the moment, after a one-hour meeting with a client, he wanted to capture the learning, however small. It was a habit. Every single time he had an encounter with a client, he wanted to reflect on the learning.

Openness to New Learning

This practice of reflection on your experiences is a very powerful way to be open to new learning. But how often do you read a new book, listen to an audiobook or engage with the podcast? How often do you read content from a publication whose opinions you would not necessarily agree with? How often do you find a new experience, whether physical, emotional, artistic, or cultural? This is an attitude to experiencing new things and then drawing on the learning opportunity. Just a new experience is not enough. The attitude to learning generates the question, ‘What can I learn from this?’.

Different people look at learning in different ways. Some people want to slot it into a meta-view of the whole universe and use it to confirm their understanding.

Other people are content to see this learning as something relevant to the context that can potentially be applied to another context.

Could Learning Release you into New Joy?

But whatever the way you engage with that learning, the most important thing is you continue to want to learn.

Perhaps you’ve got to a stage where you’re just bored with the day-to-day. Is it time to learn a new language? Or learn a new skill? Or engage with a different group of people? Step out and work in a charity among people you would never otherwise encounter? The richness of this attitude to learning will keep you enlivened and help you to have the right attitude you need for success. Not only now but into the future, as far as you can see.

When complaining children say, ‘I’m bored’, parents tell them, ‘it’s because you are being boring’. They challenge those children to go out and find something new to do. That truth applies throughout life.

Conclusion

Policymakers plead for investment in ‘Lifelong Learning’. Typically, this is a demand for more access to learning from academic institutions that is usually costly, inefficient and time intensive. I am an advocate for ‘Whole Life Learning’. This attitude of relentless curiosity drives habits of continual discovery and reflection in everyday life. I choose to engage with various entrepreneurs and professionals in different sectors across multiple continents. In addition, over the last ten years, I have recruited, developed, and facilitated workshop speakers who have delivered more than 200 workshops. I have developed at least ten courses or workshops myself. I have invested in at least 15 days paid for development each year.