It Hurts to Think, Doesn't It?

Creating and embracing agile learning environments and opportunities is the responsibility of schools, organizations, and each one of us as individuals. In his recent book, Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things, Adam Grant illustrates how our individual progress depends on how well we learn, and not on how hard we work. Grant, an organizational psychologist at The Wharton School, is a favorite of mine as he uses fact based research to develop insights that are easily digestible through relatable stories and understandable illustrations.??

My top takeaways from Hidden Potential are:?

1. Success is driven by character more than cognitive skills. The smartest people are not always the most successful people.?
2. Embrace discomfort and start engaging before you feel ready so you reduce being self-limiting.?
3. We are often the worst judges of our own potential and unaware of our strengths. If multiple people believe in you, you should start believing them.?
4. Your potential is not just the peaks you reach but also the valleys you cross. You can’t judge your future possibility by where you are today.??
5. Pay attention to the obstacles you’ve overcome and take that as a signal that there is an upward slope in your future.??

Several messages that Grant delivers remind me of my father. My dad was a college professor and lifelong learner, at least until dementia quieted his brain and his words. While growing up, dad extended his professorial approach to his children. We were required to study every weeknight and when we struggled with content dad would invariably say “It hurts to think, doesn’t it?”?

For me, subjects like Calculus did hurt, where dad excelled at them. Even though learning sometimes “hurt”, it forced me to critically think and understand any discipline where I wanted to increase my knowledge. Ultimately, this approach of becoming an agile learner provided a solid foundation during my 35-year career in financial services. Not only did I appreciate the value of learning, but it also enabled me to have confidence to accept roles in multiple disciplines where I had no direct experience but knew I could learn what I needed to succeed.???

Being agile learners in today’s AI transforming world is more important than ever to successfully adapt. This is not a new concept. The futurist Alvin Toffler, in his book Future Shock (1970), said “The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn and relearn.” We have to be agile, acquiring skills or knowledge that enable us to learn something new in one place and then apply what we learned elsewhere, in a different situation.?

Becoming an agile learner requires work and intentionality by taking risk and challenging the status quo. It’s ok to sometimes fail or go against the grain of your comfort zone. Be soulfully curious…question, observe, experiment, read. Finally, improve thinking skills by synthesizing inputs and transferrable thinking. As a result, agile learners are magnets for more opportunities and possibilities.?

Agile learners are not the only ones who benefit personally and professionally. Companies with the greatest rates of highly learning agile executives produced 25%?higher profit margins compared with peer companies (Korn Ferry Institute study, 2014).? As a response, organizations are evolving their employee development experiences to encourage and develop agile learning. Those firms who don’t evolve risk a chasm in employee engagement and talent from those who do.?

Each one of us has greater potential given opportunities we either create or are offered. It is up to us to recognize and embrace them. At Global Leader Group, our purpose is to inspire individuals and organizations to LIVE and LEAD deliberately to change the world for good. My experience in a global financial services company honed my approach to being an agile learner. Now as a partner in Global Leader Group, I feed my soulful curiosity through continued learning to help individuals and organizations, just like my dad did throughout his productive life.??

About LuAnne Kingston:?

LuAnne has a unique ability to take complex problems and make sense out of them to deliver solutions aligned with client objectives.?She has over 35 years of executive leadership experience in financial services, including front line strategy and teams in all retail bank channels, back-office operations, human resources, learning, wealth and retail products.?She was an executive leader for one of the largest financial services companies in the world accountable for driving the transformation of staff engagement for 65,000 employees and client experiences across multiple countries in Europe, Americas, Middle East and Asia by optimizing technology needs and delivering internal and vendor solutions.??

LuAnne has a passion for employees and customers, delivering programs to improve satisfaction and business results, including:??

• Retail channel strategy development and optimization??
• Staff and client experience in retail branch, contact center and digital channels?
• Business process optimization and infrastructure design?
• Organization and culture design and effectiveness?
• Leadership development and executive coaching?

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