If I Were 22: Never Stop Learning and Learn a Little from Everyone

This post is part of a series in which Influencers share lessons from their youth. Read all the stories here.

When I was 22 I made the best decision of my life: I followed my then-girlfriend to Boston and took a job at Bain as a research analyst. I chose my first job to be in the same city as my girlfriend, and she has since become my wife of the past 30 years. I am glad that I allowed my personal life to impact my career choice.

But something I got wrong when I was 22 was my paradigm for how I could best learn and develop my career. I had spent my college years sitting in classes listening to erudite professors absorbing their wisdom. My model for learning was simple: the teacher lectures; I listen and learn. When I entered the real world I assumed I would learn the same way.

So when I started my first job at Bain, I immediately began searching for a wise and all-knowing mentor who would adopt me, take me under his or her wing and teach me everything I needed to know to succeed in business and in life.

There was a fleeting moment where I thought I found him. My first manager embraced me as his protégé and taught me an enormous amount. However, I soon realized my career was not as important to him as it was to me. He had many other priorities and I only received feedback when I asked for it. And, before long, I also realized that there were things that he couldn’t teach me and he wasn’t quite the perfect mentor I had thought.

I continued my search for another mentor, until at some point, I realized the perfect Yoda-like mentor didn’t exist, and no one person had all the wisdom I was seeking. Plus it dawned on me that nobody cared about my career as much as I did. I realized I had the wrong playbook for learning and for developing my career.

I had to take full responsibility for my career and I had to shift my model for learning: instead of trying to learn a lot from a few people, I had to learn a little from a lot of people. I saw that everyone did some things well, but nobody did everything well. Nobody. Instead of trying to extract a lot of wisdom from one person, I could take a little wisdom from a lot of people and build my own career curriculum.

Understanding I was the primary caretaker of my career and being open to learning from many people has since become the consistent framework for learning in my career. I try to learn from everyone I interact with: clients, peers, bosses, mentors, and direct reports. Today, every interaction I have teaches me something, often in ways that surprise and delight me. I now have about 25 CEOs included in my community of ‘mentors.’ Some of them know they mentor me, others don’t even know they are teaching me. And, I try to return the favor to others. We learn from one other. For example, Brian Chesky, the founder of Airbnb, teaches me about design, and I teach him about general management.

Once I recognized that every interaction was an opportunity for learning, I also discovered a secondary reinforcing effect. When I meet someone my mind immediately asks, “What can I learn from this person?” “What are they good at?” It has become a subconscious behavior to look for the good in each person I meet. And people notice this. They notice that I recognize and appreciate their strengths, which in turn creates the foundation for trust and allows me to build stronger followership as a leader.

Having the capacity to learn on an ongoing basis is a critically important business skill. I always look for that skill in leaders within eBay or other organizations in which I’m involved. Here’s a little secret: the more successful you are, and the higher up you go, the more you need to continuously learn and grow. As you gain more responsibility, the demands and challenges rise exponentially. That’s why the one trait I have observed in most successful leaders is that they take their own growth and development very seriously and into their own hands. And, they hone their ongoing capacity to learn.

If I were 22, I would commit to my own learning in a continuous and unrelenting way. Start now, and never stop.

Photo: ra2studio / shutterstock