Meaningful Ways For My Colleagues & Confidants To Support/Challenge My Learning

Being a professional in the field of learning and a self-professed life-long learner, it is no coincidence that learning plays a critical role in my day-to-day life. Whether it is improving a skill or acquiring a new good habit or just gaining new insights, I am always up for learning. I distinguish meaningful learning from mere acquisition of information/knowledge in the sense that learning results in change. This could be change in behavior, perspective, intention or action.

No matter how self-directed we are, there is only so much we can learn on our own. Our context, whether it is the workplace, family or society, contribute immensely to our learning because learning cannot take place in a vacuum. And I believe that the context provided by people around us contributes the most to what we learn. As captured in the infographic below, the top three ways that my colleagues and confidants can support and challenge my learning in meaningful ways are Feedback, Dialogue and Compassion. 

Feedback: And I am refering to constructive feedback here. My most important "aha" moments have been a result of the constructive feedback provided by colleagues and confidants who cared enough to observe something (behavior, action, words) and had valuable inputs to provide on how that something was either great and useful or could  be improved upon. Not only was this constructive feedback informative, but it was also though-provoking and many times has led me to challenge my assumptions and even bring about a transformation in me.

Dialogue: Another powerful way that some deep insights and learning has come my way is through engaging in dialog. This is a wonderful way of sharing perspectives, especially contrarian perspectives, and to really understand what the other point of view is and where it is coming from. Dialogue is the foundation of critical thinking because it brings to attention those perspectives that I may never have been able to get a peek into, had I not talked about it with that colleague or confidant. It literally provides "food for thought". Many times it has also been a way of affirming that I am not completely crazy and that my thoughts are coherent enough to make sense to someone other than me!

Compassion: This one may seem a little out of place; what's compassion got to do with learning in meaningful ways, right? For people who place a high value on success and cringe at failure, it is not easy to learn when we fail. We are already quite critical of ourselves for failing, so when the trusted colleague or confidant is also critical about something we failed to do or learn, it very becomes difficult to look at learning and/or failure positively. Here compassion is extremely critical to help people like me believe that it is okay to fail and that one can learn from failure. Compassion provides the encouragement we need to keep learning in spite of failure instead of giving up. It is also possible at times that for whatever reason, I may not be able to immediately grasp what my colleague or confidant is trying to communicate or "teach" and in times such as these, a little compassion will go a long way so that they don't give up on me, but more importantly, it will also ensure that I don't give up on myself!

Note: Images have been sourced from Google Images and have been used for educational purposes only.