I lead a monthly lunch & learn series at work for past graduates of our in-house leadership development program. It’s a discussion based program where I curate content – often a First Round article or Ted Talk – and we eat sandwiches and share our thoughts. It’s relatively well attended, though I couldn’t get any interest in the month I chose the theme diversity (the general squeamishness of the team indicative of a bigger problem).
This week we discussed the Ted Talk “How to Get Better at the Things You Care About” from Eduardo Briceño.
The short of it: there is a performance zone and a learning zone. We need both, but if we spend all our time in the performance zone we never get better. We need deliberate practice. We need spaces where failure is permissible and encouraged. We need to curate a growth mindset.
This was an interesting discussion in the context of work where the default is performance: what is the balance between room for mistakes and having quality service for our clients? How do we carve out time for education and training without sacrificing the work that needs to get done?
I also think about it in terms of my writing. In school, we did deliberate writing exercises and broke down elements of the craft. Is what I do now deliberate practice? The advice I’ve heard for writing is that you get better only through writing. And through reading. The result is projects like this blog and my in-progress novel. To me this is practice. Low-stakes. Room for mistakes. Showing up every day and trying.
If I press on the ideas from the talk, I do think I could be more precise about my learning. Focused exercises. Reading with a writer’s lens. Sharing pieces of my work for feedback.
In my work life too, I can do better. I’m gone through periods of intense learning mode in human resources, most notably when I studied for my professional certification a couple years ago. Lately, though I’ve been less intentional about new HR learnings. My job often feels like a constant education, but I can’t let myself get too out of touch with the industry outside of my office.
I’ll end by quoting the conclusion of the talk:
Real confidence is about modeling ongoing learning. What if, instead of spending our lives doing, doing, doing, performing, performing, performing, we spent more time exploring, asking, listening, experimenting, reflecting, striving and becoming? What if we each always had something we were working to improve? What if we created more low-stakes islands and waters? And what if we got clear, within ourselves and with our teammates, about when we seek to learn and when we seek to perform, so that our efforts can become more consequential, our improvement never-ending and our best even better?
With Love,
Natalie