Downsizing and technological advances put demands on us to learn more and learn it faster. As support staff and auxiliary positions disappear, job functions are consolidated, teamwork becomes
norm, and computer and other technologies keep proliferating, we are faced with a stressful amount of new things to learn in a diminishing amount of time. Yet faster you can learn new things, more valuable you will be to your employer, and more likely you’ll be to advance in your career. It isn’t an option these days.
WHAT LEARNING CURVES HAVE IN COMMON
What can you do to accelerate your learning curve and increase your value to your employer? The interesting thing is that there are things all learning curves have in common, whether you’re learning how to facilitate team work, learning a new software program, learning a new language, or learning how to negotiate. The better you understand mechanics of THE learning curve, better you’ll be able to deal with individual ones that come along, and this is part of Emotional Intelligence.
GETTING RID OF THE FEAR
If you think back on things you’ve learned in past, you’ll probably realize that one of things that slowed you down was fear. I can certainly think of examples in my own case.
An example of how fear can slow you down is evident if you’ve watched a young child learn how to ski. A child doesn’t fear failure nor success, nor do they fear falling down. New things are an every day occurrence for a child, and this is just next one. In learning to ski, they fall repeatedly and bounce back like a rubber ball. They consider it all fun. Thus there is nothing slowing down learning except their ability to master motor skills. What a relief!
Many of Emotional Intelligence competencies facilitate learning. One of them is flexibility. The skiing example shows a sort of physical flexibility, but this is applicable to mental tasks as well. We don’t all learn best same way. You may be sent to a seminar or training that doesn’t fit your learning style. If you’re flexible, and have learned how to learn (the learning curve), you’ll be able to shape things to your own benefit.
Take learning a new software program, for instance, something many of us are faced with almost monthly. One person may learn better by reading manual, while another may do better by being shown. Yet another may be used to “throw them to wolves method,” or by hearing a tape or looking at an interactive video on computer screen.
This has to do with your innate learning style which can be discovered through an assessment such as StrengthsFinder® profile, by working with a coach, or by analyzing your own history. Generally when left to your own devices, you’ll do what comes naturally to you, which will always be quickest and easiest way for you to learn.
LEARNING HISTORIES
A client I’ll call Alicia learned how to type when she was 6 years old. Her mother let her ‘play’ on family typewriter. By time she got to high school and took a typing class which attempted to teach her “touch typing,” it was too late to unlearn old ways, yet she keyboards at over 100. Would anyone complain about method?
