What's going on everyone and welcome to the darn good leadership podcast. This is a show all about being a strong and effective leader. One that can make positive impacts on your teams and communities. And the next 20 minutes, you're going to get ideas, inspiration, and practical advice. You can take action on today to be a darn good leader. I'm your host, Emily Holting. And in this show, we're talking about how the best leaders are life long learners. Lifelong learners understand the necessity, the value and the absolute delight that comes from personal development. These individuals are curious creatures that proactively. And happily seek out opportunities to improve. This creates something that's almost palpable to the people around them. And as a result, It helps create a culture of learning. Learning is usually a core value of any business. But leaders will have a really difficult time with this. If they aren't modeling, learning themselves. And this episode, I'm going to talk about five common habits of lifelong learners. So you two can curate a lifestyle of learning and become an even better leader. But first a story I recently attended a retirement party for someone who is one of the brightest, most interesting and incredibly gifted humans. I have ever had the pleasure of working with. To give you a quick overview. He has three PhDs speak. Several languages has held multiple prestigious positions and is listened on over 53 patents. When I first met him, I was intimidated to say the least my role was to coach agile, to a research team. He was leading and because of his extensive education and experience, I was worried. Either, I wouldn't be able to follow the conversation. Or he would just be agitated that I didn't have the technical chops to add any real value to his group. But that's not what happened at all. He greeted me with a smile. He was genuinely excited to learn more about what I did. And welcomed any processes or ideas I had to help improve the group. He could take. The most complex scientific concept. And make it simple enough for anyone to consume. This was so helpful because instead of being frustrated or embarrassed, I didn't understand something or confused. He made me curious. He radiated a wealth of knowledge, wisdom experience. But still remained so incredibly humble. Open-minded. And willing to experiment. During his retirement party, I asked. What are your plans for retirement? Wondering if he was finally going to relax, travel, sit by the beach and drink. Margarita's. His answer. He really wanted to improve his chest game. He was excited to further practice his plumbing and electrical skills. He was interested in learning more about microbiology. And finally he thought it would be fun to level up his ping-pong skills. No beach, no brakes. I just laughed because of course, this is what he would do. He is the epitome of a lifelong learner and that hunger to learn and improve. Doesn't just stop because of job. Does. And as he talked about his plans, I looked around all the people who had attended his party. And I could just see how much of a positive impact he had made on this community. His passion for constant growth and love of learning. Was absolutely contagious. And it's actually what inspired me to cover this topic today. The term lifelong learning was created by Leslie walk-ins. And it refers to someone who makes a longterm voluntary commitment to learning new skills or acquiring new knowledge. A lifelong learner embeds learning into their way of life it becomes a lifestyle for them And to be a great leader, making learning a lifestyle choice is necessary because the world never stops changing. And the way we work is constantly evolving. In order to lead your teams and communities effectively you got to carve out that time into your daily schedule for both your professional and your personal development you may be asking. Hm. To why have what it takes to be a lifelong learner. But the reality is anyone can be a lifelong learner. There is no prerequisites or IQ test or school you have to get into it's a mindset. So are you willing to commit to the disciplines and habits of being a lifelong learner? If you are let's do this. So here are five common habits of lifelong learners. Habit one lifelong learners lead with curiosity Curiosity, encourages engagement and trust and seeking out new learning opportunities. If you're looking for an advantage over those individuals who think they always know it all well, being curious is definitely going to give you that edge. It is the antithesis of leading by being the loudest voice in the room. Or the hippo in the room, the highest paid person's opinion. You will be so much more effective as a leader with curiosity, because instead of quickly agreeing with someone that aligns with your own thoughts and ideas, or shutting down someone because their thoughts and views don't fit your own. Curious leaders stop. It doesn't matter what they're thinking in their head. They lead with questions. And those questions tend to lead to more questions. And those questions lead to better understanding. And butter understanding helps you make better decisions and your teams make better decisions. Curiosity also helps improve psychological safety. And I've often found many times that if I feel confused, offended, or defensive, I quickly try to move myself into a place of curiosity. And that helps me lead and navigate conversations more effectively. As an example of this, I can not tell you how many times. I have. Recently joined a meeting and it's like 10 minutes into the meeting and no one else has arrived. And in my head, I'm like, where is everyone? But instead of blasting off emails, asking why everyone is late. I get curious. Huh? Why is no one else here? Let me take a look at my calendar. And sure enough, I've realized I've got the time wrong. I'm here either an hour early or 30 minutes early. Maybe it's just because I haven't had enough coffee yet for the day. But leading with curiosity has been very effective for me there. Another example of this is I was leading a retrospective with a team in Spain and as we started the exercise and I told everyone what I needed them to do, I set the timer and I said, go. And everyone just sat there doing nothing and looking at me wide-eyed instead of getting agitated or assuming people were just refusing to participate. I got curious. And then I asked a question. Do you guys understand the instructions? Did I say something that didn't make sense? And that was exactly what was going on. I realized the phrases I was using did not translate very well in Spanish. Now that I've been working with global teams for many years, I'm much more mindful of the terminology, the language, the acronyms I use with any groups. So if you're a leader who works with teams and communities that are different backgrounds, cultures, well, curiosity is really important there because it helps you assume. Good intent. It is so easy for us to. You know, misinterpret things and then to get lost in translation. So modeling curiosity builds better work environments. Additionally being curious about new social trends and industry trends, technology, and ways of working is essential for expanding your own skill sets and keeping up with any big. Emerging developments over your lifetime. There's so many tools I've had to learn over the course of my career. But I always do my best to become really curious about them. Try to become an early adopter and figure out ways to leverage every functionality that could potentially benefit myself by team or my workplace mirror on slack or some of the most recent tools I've been using. And my goal is to be a power user and continue to know as much and. I see all the cool stuff and features are coming out with, and that curiosity has helped reaped multiple benefits because of the now virtual way teams are working And finally curiosity helps all leaders keep an open rather than a closed mindset. It's not useful for any of us to get stuck in our ways. So curiosity allows you to better evaluate new ideas, learn what else is out there? What are people doing? It helps us survive because it's keeping us dedicated. And observant to gaining knowledge about our constantly changing environment. Okay. Habit to lifelong learners, voraciously read. CEO's on average read between four to five books a month. And even if you can't commit to that level of reading studies have shown that individuals who read even 15 minutes a day can support brain health for a lifetime. Along with brain health, reading increases empathy. It exposes you to new ideas and cultures. It builds out your own vocabulary. It expands your knowledge on various topics and historical events. It also gives you easy access to some of the brightest minds out there. So quick story. A couple of years back, I did the 75 hard challenge. And if you haven't heard of this before, it's a mental toughness challenge that has five critical tasks you must do for 75 days straight. One of those critical tasks is reading 10 pages a day. After I completed my MBA, textbooks were haunting my nightmares. And this task of reading 10 pages a day. I was a little bit nervous about it, but I can tell you it's one of the most rewarding things I've ever done for myself. I was suddenly excited to walk into a Barnes and noble and pick out a new book every week. And even after 75 hard, I've kept this practice. On the weekdays. I read at least 10 pages before bed. Sometimes it ends up being more than that,. And on the weekends, I read 10 pages. First thing in the morning. I've also expanded this habit of reading to my team. And we have a book club where we get a certain book that we've read altogether at the same time. Some of these books have included competing with unicorns, extreme ownership, and currently we're all reading how the future works. All three of these books are outstanding and highly recommends. As we complete each chapter we capture questions, ideas. Uh, suggestions, we're looking at our own work and then we decide, what do we want to take action on in our own work environment with our own teams? This leads very nicely into our next habit. Habit three lifelong learners. Take action. My professor and grad school used to repeatedly say learning equates to concepts in action. And that really stuck with me because at some point you have to take all of this reading thinking, analyzing, brainstorming. And you have to actually do something with it to truly learn a skill. So imagine you have to have heart surgery. Would you rather have someone like Doogie Howser? Who's only been a doctor for two years, but has done multiple heart surgeries. Be your surgeon. Or would you rather have someone who's never done surgery, but read extensively about it, be your surgeon. I don't know about you, but I will take Dougie. And if you don't know who Doogie Howser is, this is a character in a nineties TV show, starring Neil Patrick Harris as a 16 year old genius doctor. But the concept still remains. Would you rather have surgery from someone who's actually practiced and hone that skill or from someone who's willing to read about it? Of course, you're going to take Doogie Howser right now. Let's bring this back to being a lifelong learner. You got to take action. You can read and go to conferences and listen to podcasts and Ted talks and attend seminars. But if you never take action around any of those things, how are you going to progress your skills? You're not. This is really similar to James Clear's concept of motion versus action. So, if you haven't heard of this. Motion is when you're busy doing something, but that task will never really produce an outcome by itself. Whereas the action is the behavior that will get you a result. I'll use myself as an example here. So when I had this idea about starting this podcast, I obviously had to spend some time researching how to get started, figuring out the name of my podcast. And if anyone already had that name, what equipment I might need to buy. I had to draft concepts for topics. And I talked to friends for advice, but at the end of the day, All of that. There is motion. It was important for sure. I needed to do some motion. But I didn't have a podcast nor could I possibly start progressing my skills as a podcaster until I actually launched the darn thing. By launching that is the action. It's the same for any skills or trying to hone as a lifelong learner. You must take action to progress and develop. As a leader, you build your confidence with other people through your results. And results can only happen if you are brave enough to take action. And this leads very nicely into habit four. Have a four. Lifelong learners are comfortable with being uncomfortable the most dangerous status for any person or team is status quo Many times when we take action, it's uncomfortable. Getting out of our comfort zone and our safe spaces can be really hard. So, whether this is developing a new skill learning, a new activity or new technology. Most people avoid and hate change. And yet. It is inevitable. I've done my best with embracing change. And I'll give you a quick example of that. Over COVID when everything shut down I did the one thing I could have never imagined I would have done. I took up golf. I've been an active person my entire life, but I've never played a sport that requires you to interact with equipment like a baller golf club. My first lesson I signed up for was supposed to be a group lesson. And when I arrived, I was the only person there. There's literally supposed to be 10 people and it was just me. So I went from being uncomfortable to now coming out of my skin. Everything in my body wanted me to just run back to the car and quit. But instead I move through the uncomfortableness and push forward. It's been over two years since I've been golfing and, um, I'm still not that great, but I'm proud to say that I am comfortable with being uncomfortable and that I'm progressing and having fun. It can be just as uncomfortable to unlearn things. On learning is really important for things that no longer serve us. So this can be on learning a bad habit or perceptions of something that is false. But it is a critical part of being a lifelong learner. There's a famous quote, often attributed to the late Alvin Tofor. That goes the illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn unlearn and relearn. One of the best things I've done professionally is to unlearn saying, sorry for things. Blame it on my Midwestern roots, but in my twenties, I had a horrible habit of apologizing for things that were just unnecessary. So of course there's always a time and place where you need to give sincere, heartfelt apologies, but this is not what I'm talking about. I would have a question. I'd be like, I'm sorry, I have a question or it sneeze and be like, sorry about that. Just very unnecessary and studies have actually shown that over apologizing for things, sends the message that you lack confidence and it can weaken the sentiment when you're actually giving one of those heartfelt apologies. And I had a woman leader comes to me very early in my career and say, you got to stop that you got to break that habit. And if you're out there listening, Carol. Thank you sincerely for helping me unlearn that bad habit Habit five lifelong learners. Embrace failing. One of the biggest hurdles to a culture of learning is when people are afraid to try anything because they are scared of making mistakes or being blamed. This is when they believe that leaders are going to come swoop out of the sky. I call the swooping and pooping. If you haven't heard this, but leaders come swoop out of the sky. And they're going to point fingers and blame and say, what are you guys doing down here when you're making mistakes? But this can be avoided when leaders reframe failure as part of the process. A brilliant example of this is something etsy does called the three armed sweater award The story goes, something like this. There was an engineer who on their first week at Etsy, caused a production outage and instead of swiping and pooping and pointing fingers of blame, the leadership at Etsy sent an email out, thanking this individual for identifying a flaw in their system. Over the years, they've evolved this practice to awarding a three armed sweater award. To any employee who's made the most surprising air. This isn't the worst air, but the most surprising air. And what this is doing is it's allowing leadership to demonstrate that making mistakes and failing is a part of the process. And it's not something to be ashamed of or mad about. It's a source of data giving us an opportunity to learn And in a recent interview with Etsy, they discussed how employees are now encouraged to document their mistakes through public emails. They call them PSA's. And they email out and they say, here's my mistake. Here's what I believe happened. And here's how I think you can prevent it. Now if that is not a culture of learning i don't know what is two other big opportunities to foster embracing culture at your company is to implement retrospectives and hackathons. Any company I've ever worked at has done some version of those things. there is no world that exists where I won't fail as a leader. And I do my best to share those failures with my team and acknowledge it as part of learning process. So when I start with a plan, a it's typical that I'm going to fail or parts of it will fail. We learn from it. And then we implement a plan B and sometimes that turns into plan C D E F. Could go on. As long as we are learning from each attempt and progressing, that's what matters. Let's recap. The five common habits of lifelong learners are one. They leave with curiosity to they've oration only read three. They take action. For, they are comfortable with being uncomfortable and five, they embrace failing as part of the process. Lifelong learning is a key factor in being a successful leader, building successful teams and growing successful communities. Thank you guys so much for your time today. I hope this content helps you on wherever you are in your leadership journey. And that inspires you to instill habits around lifelong learning. Stay tuned as new episodes will be released each Tuesday. Be bold, be bright. Be a darn good leader. See you next time