Learning More About Learning Agility

Parsimonious Haiku

Agile minds grow, learn,

Patterns in life's tough lessons,

Essence of success.

?Abstract: Learning Agility is a researched and demonstrated characteristic of part of being a High Potential.? Having it is a gift, but it can be enhanced and improved by anyone. ?And it’s not the same as IQ, and there is a dark side.

Learning More about Learning Agility

Mike Lombardo and I coined the term Learning Agility to explain why some executives learn, grow, and develop from tough and challenging experiences while others, with similar backgrounds and identical experiences, don’t or learn random or the wrong lessons. From a matched sample, some go on to be materially successful, and others derail.?

The second finding was that the eventually successful learned the same lessons of life and work from the same experiences, while those less successful either learned little or learned lessons but not the right ones.

We thought it had to do with differences in mindset, motivation, and learning style. I say coined because there really isn’t anything new, just repackaged. We repackaged all the previous research and most recent studies and suggested it might be useful in leadership development and succession planning.

?We defined Learning Agility as the willingness and capacity to learn from exposures and experiences.

?There is the motivational component of putting a value on learning the new and correcting and unlearning past errors of things that are not true.? Being learning agile requires aspiration to be or accomplish something greater going forward.? Goal-directed or life-long learning.

?There is also the humility of knowing and admitting there are lessons of life and work not yet mastered.? That leads to openness and coachability.

?There is the ability and interest to find essences and patterns.?

?That’s the learning style component. ?It makes learning more efficient since the underlying causes are similar as well as patterns. ??It leads to the “that’s like ….” start to learn something new.?

Finding the underlying cause of things involves sifting through the outer layers of the onion to get to the essence of what’s driving the experience.

?Going forward, a learning agile person, with stored lessons, essences and patterns, will be able to learn new things faster.? Solve problems faster.? Be more creative and innovative.? Able to apply past learnings to the present. ?They can assemble seemingly unconnected to most pieces and parts from the past to form a hypothesis about what’s happening now.?

?We thought, in the beginning, that learning agility would relate to taking physical risks to experience new and adventuresome activities.? That turned out to not be true.? The risks they take are more cognitive and emotional, less physical.? Travel may be the exception.? It’s curiosity and looking under rocks and seeing around corners.

?We are sorry about this.? It's not related to general intelligence (g) or IQ.? IQ does relate to the complexity of the capacity of the domain and content to learn.? So, being learning agile in the field of quantum mechanics takes a good deal more of intellectual horsepower compared to understanding agricultural fertilizers.? IQ sets limits on content and domain but doesn’t relate to learning agility.? This has been controversial.? Academics especially believe since the word learning is in the concept title, there has to be a correlation to IQ.? THERE ISN’T.? Up and down the IQ scale, people can be learning agile at their limit for content complexity and difficulty.? There are as many very learning agile blue-collar workers as there are non-learning agile PhD physicists.

?Of special note is the openness to learn and coachability.? Starts with humility.? Admitting they don’t know.? The brain has a filter for incoming information.? To be efficient, the filter program does real-time judging and projective judging to cut down on the amount of input.? Some of the parameters the filtering or narrowing program uses are:

·????? I already know this

·????? I don’t like the source of the information

·????? This is not true; I don’t agree with this

·????? This does not align with my beliefs and values

·????? This isn’t worth my time and effort to learn

·????? I will never need this

·????? This isn’t important to me today

Therefore, I’m not going to listen or take the time to observe.? I will save time and effort and personal resources right now.? No thought as to how this may apply in the future.? If you finish other people’s sentences, you aren’t learning agile.? If you ask the presenter to skip some slides and get to the conclusions, you aren’t learning agile.

?Another key to being learning agile and coachable is what’s called Beginners Brain, moving judgment from the beginning to the end.

?In Zen Buddhism it’s called uncanny perspicacity, being fully in the present, taking in all that is available without bias or judgement.? Total openness.? Decide later.

?Beginners Brain refers to adopting a mindset that I have never heard this before or seen this before and that maximum learning is to first take it all in without pre-judging or interrupting.? Followed by appreciative inquiry.? Clarifying questions.? To be an active listener and keen observer.? After the fact, apply judgment about what’s rememberable and useful.?

Learning Agility can be enhanced, improved, and learned.? If you think more than 50% of what you think and opine on is accurate and true, you are a candidate for improvement.? As you know, there are people with the delusion that everything they think and say is true.? Very low probability.? Know it all’s have no space for new learnings.? Deep experts, many times, lack open space for new learnings.

?Since we created the repackaging, there have been hundreds of studies published around the world and across domains.? Learning Agility is related to success in life and work across many domains.? Every day, my research application finds recent studies on every continent and in many domains.? Many studies add facets to the concept and tighten the definition.? Many have created tools to measure learning agility.? And there are occasional papers saying that it isn’t real and it's just IQ.

FAQs??

Where does Learning Agility come from?? 50% nature in terms of brain structure and wiring and chemistry and 50% Nurture in terms of an enriched environment growing up.? There are late bloomers with a bland upbringing who awake later in life.

?Isn’t it just another version of IQ? NO. IQ determines to what domains learning agility can be applied.

?Can it be enhanced and developed? Absolutely YES. How many do it? FEW.

?Isn’t Learning Agility the same as being a High Potential.? NO, it’s an important facet of being a High Potential but there is a lot more that contributes.? Like EQ.

?Undeveloped Learning Agility remains undeveloped.? You cannot learn from exposures and experiences you do not have.? You need a lifelong 70/20/10/25*.? Experience (tough, challenging assignments) is the best teacher.? Learning Agiles seek out those experiences and volunteer for tough assignments.

?Is there a dark side?? YES.? Learning Agiles is impatient.? They are harder to manage.? Harder to retain.? Especially sensitive to the character and competence of top management.? They ask why.? They are early adopters of the new and improved.? They are faster in solving problems.? They detect patterns and essences sooner than others.? They might be lightning rods for the less gifted.

?But Learning Agility is a thing. ?A good thing.? A rare thing.? Not too many to go around.? Easy to observe, assess, and find, but harder to hire and keep.

?They are especially good in first-time situations.? And when no one knows what to do.

?So, it’s (LA plus EQ) X 70/20/10/25 = a developing High Potential.

?* See LinkedIn blog on 70/20/10/25 One Last Time

?Check out my other blogs at: https://www.talenttelligent.com/talent-insights-blog/