BECOMING A MORE LEARNING-AGILE LEADER

In times of change, leaders need to be more agile than ever in dealing with new business strategies, working across cultures, temporary virtual teams, and taking on new assignments.  Learning-agile individuals practice disciplined personal development in five ways:

1. Innovating: not afraid to challenge the status quo
2. Performing: remain calm in the face of difficulty
3. Reflecting: take time to reflect on their experiences
4. Risking: purposefully put themselves in challenging situations
5. Defending: open to learning and resist the temptation to become defensive in the face of adversity

Learning-agile individuals tend to be more social, creative, focused and resilient.  They are less interested in accommodating others and are not afraid to challenge norms.  A major difference between successful people and those whose careers falter is their ability to make meaning from their experiences.  Successful leaders are learning agile because of their willingness and ability to learn throughout their careers, if not their entire lives.

Learning agility is a mind-set and corresponding collection of practices that allow leaders to continually develop, grow, and utilize new strategies that will equip them for the increasingly complex problems they face in their organizations.  High Learning-agile individuals are more likely to have the following traits:

Diagram 1: Traits Of High Learning Agile Individuals

High learning-agile individuals are very active organizational members.  They are sociable and active, create new plans and ideas, are methodical perfectionists and are not afraid to challenge others or express opinions.  The learning-agile individuals seem to be more resilient, generally calmer and “at ease”.  They seek out new and challenging situations that may serve as learning experiences, but also manage these challenges effectively, allowing learning to occur.  Putting yourself in a challenging environment is one thing, but being able to cope with the stress of that challenge is another.

Table 1

Tips In Becoming A More Learning-Agile Leader

DO I
INNOVATE	Challenge the status quo in an attempt to make improvements?	OR	Try to achieve the best with what I have at my disposal?
	Experiment with new ideas and endeavor to find the best solution to each individual problem?		Choose the most readily available solution and move on to the next challenge?
PERFORM	Pick up on subtle cues to build a better understanding of the problem?	OR	Trust my intuition to guide me to a solution?
	Stay calm when faced with a challenge or stressful situation?		Use stress as energy to get things done more quickly?
REFLECT	Make time to critically reflect on my experiences?	OR	Move quickly from one task to another in order to accomplish more?
	Examine past failures for lessons?		Put failure quickly behind me in order to focus on the next challenge?
TAKE RISK	Volunteer for roles that are ambiguous, new or otherwise challenging?	OR	Take on challenges where I know I can be successful?
	Take enjoyment from struggling with a challenging problem?		Take enjoyment from managing a well-oiled machine?
DEFEND	Consider my personal role in both successes and failures?	OR	Take credit for success and quickly make excuses for failure?
	Seek feedback because I need it?		Listen to feedback because others want to give it?

Notes: If you identify with the statements on the left, you may already embody many of the components of learning agility. If you fall on the right, there may be room for improvement where learning is concerned.

Table 2

Improve Your Own Personal Learning Agility

PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT	DEVELOPMENT ACTIVITIES AND PERSONAL CHALLENGES	WHY THIS IS IMPORTANT?
Innovating	For each problem faced, challenge yourself to come up with new solutions, even if seemingly tried and trusted ones exist. □ Make brainstorming new ideas a habit – the less traditional, the better. □ When faced with a challenge, ask two questions: 1. What is holding me back from trying something new and different? 2. If these constraints were not in place, how would I approach this situation differently?	We often choose the first solution to come to mind rather than taking time to consider whether it is truly the optimal course over the long term.  This is especially true in high-stress environments.  By trying out new approaches, we can uncover ways of doing things that could save time and energy over time and surface new learning that may otherwise have not been considered
Performing	When faced with something new, look for similarities between the situation and things you have done in the past.  Draw on these similarities to frame the new challenge. □ Ask questions to understand, not to be understood.  Really listen to what others are saying and trust that you will have a response when they have finished talking. □ When you find yourself feeling stressed, pause.  Don’t just say or do the first thing that comes to your head – take a moment to consider what is really required.	When under pressure, we feel the urge to get things done quickly.  Ironically, consciously searching our mind for ideas and solutions closes us off to both the wisdom of others and our own experience. Inspiration often comes from the unconscious; being open to this can spark new ideas that we may have otherwise never had.
Reflecting	Find someone who you trust to give you open and honest feedback and challenge them to do so.  Show that you are open to the process by only asking clarifying questions.  Resist the temptation to explain your actions or make excuses. □ Conduct After Action Reviews where you, and relevant others, reflect on recent projects by asking three questions: 1. What happened? 2. Why did it happen that way? 3. What should we stop/start/ continue doing in order to ensure success in the future?	In our busy work lives where there is always something to do next, it can be difficult to find the time to stop and look back.  Learning occurs when we take the time to shift our thinking beyond merely what happened to ask ourselves why things happened the way they did.  Finding ways to accomplish this, both alone and with others, is essential to learn from experience.
Risking	Take on a new challenge that scares you; find something that is meaningful but not so important that failure will have serious personal consequences.  Most importantly, tell others what you are doing — ask for their help and support.	Performance matters.  But too often we focus on short-term performance at the expense of personal development.  Even our greatest strengths can become problematic when over-used.  Taking on new challenges allows us to stretch beyond our comfort zone and develop new skills and perspectives that may become an important part of our repertoire in the future.
Defending	View feedback as a gift that someone is giving you.  You may not like it, and it may be uncomfortable but there is value in it nonetheless.  Regardless of the other party’s motivations for giving you feedback, there is always the opportunity to learn something about yourself that you previously did not know. □ Resist the temptation to respond to feedback, especially at first.  Try not to explain your actions to the other person or generate excuses in your own head. Always try to thank the other person.	Receiving feedback can often feel threatening, like an attack on who we are.  When this is the case, our instinct is to deflect the comments, perhaps by making a joke or by attacking the person in return. However, when we enter a mode of self-preservation and try to defend what is, we close ourselves off to what could be.  It is only in the latter, not the former, that we are able to learn and grow

The willingness and ability to learn from experience not only influences the extent to which we grow as individuals but also how we are perceived by others.  Ultimately, our ability to continuously learn and adapt will determine the extent to which we thrive in today’s turbulent times.  We need to try to resist the temptation to become defensive in the face of criticism or other challenges.

REFERENCES:

http://www.ccl.org/leadership/pdf/research/LearningAgility.pdf; Learning About Learning Agility (2012), By Adam Mitchinson and Robert Morris, Ph.D. Contributors: W. Warner Burke, Ph.D. & Doctoral Research Group, Phillip Braddy, Ph.D., Michael Campbell, William Pasmore, Ph.D.