The Recipe for Exceptional Learning
ONE SKILL TO RULE THEM ALL.
At the beginning of every new consulting project, McKinsey teams gel through an activity known as Team Learning. Among other things, each individual is asked to share their strengths, something they are really good at that they would bring to the table. And, I never had any idea what to say.
I’d never felt that I had any real talents. As a child, I’d see classmates who danced, sang, played sports as if they were born to do those things. It seemed to me they’d emerged from the womb with all the raw talent, passion and attitude required to excel. I had no such talent. I was pretty good at a lot of things, but not the best at any of them. Over time, I learned to parlay combinations of them into some pretty significant successes: leads in the high school musical (singing, dancing and acting), entry into a prestigious college (academics and extracurriculars), a job at McKinsey (problem solving, ambition, influence and leadership).
Eventually, I realized the common thread. The thing that does come naturally to me - so naturally that I often don’t realize I’m doing it and so easily I didn’t understand that other people found it effortful - is learning. Learning is my only real talent and I have used it to build an array of capabilities that others mistake as talents (and I’m happy to let them do so!). Given the flexibility and applicability of learning, I’d say it’s the best talent of all.
Growth Mindset: Necessary, but Insufficient
Perhaps no bit of psychology research has infiltrated common culture so successfully as the concept of growth mindset. Introduced by Carol Dweck, a Stanford professor and leading thinker in the field of motivation, in her book, Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, the concept steers us to a belief system that supports lifelong learning. According to Carol:
When you enter a mindset, you enter a new world. In one world - the world of fixed traits - success is about proving you’re smart or talented. Validating yourself. In the other - the world of changing qualities - it’s about stretching yourself to learn something new. Developing yourself.
Indeed, multiple studies have proven out the positive effects of a growth mindset on student motivation and performance and even tied it to outcomes and behaviors. So, a growth mindset is necessary for effective learning - without it, one lacks the fundamental belief that change is possible, closing oneself off to opportunities to grow. In other words, a fixed mindset turns off learning.
But the presence of a growth mindset doesn’t guarantee excellence in learning. It should be self-evident that the mere belief in one’s ability to learn will not automatically result in learning. You can’t meditate about quantum physics on your couch and expect to pull the knowledge out of the air. To learn, you must do something, not just believe in your ability to do it. Not surprisingly, the studies mentioned above predominantly take place in institutions of learning, from primary school through university. The practical tools, resources and experiences for learning are already in place; they are just as critical as a growth mindset. This alone ought to convince you that a growth mindset, while necessary, is insufficient for learning.
Furthermore, the fixed vs. growth paradigm doesn’t tell us how to excel at learning, only how to turn it on and off. It is a binary framework and, therefore, inadequate to explain why some people learn faster and better than others who have also achieved a growth mindset.
If you haven’t figured out how to adopt a growth mindset, stop reading here and go get yourself one. What follows will be useless to you without it. But, if you believe you have a growth mindset and would like to understand how to build off that mindset to learn farther and faster, read on.
The Ingredients of Learning Excellence
As I reflect on my 40+ year history of learning and layer in observations about peers, colleagues and students, I believe there are a handful of additional ingredients - layers on top of a growth mindset - that enable learning at an unusually aggressive pace, with great versatility and exceptional retention.
Humility: Acknowledging What You Don’t Yet Know
A great learner is willing to recognize their gaps; they are humble enough to acknowledge their own imperfections. After all, you can’t fix or build what you can’t see. Not so long ago, a local politician (who happened to attend my high school a couple years behind me) was accused on the campaign trail of racist and bullying behavior dating back to his secondary school years. Although the sentiment was validated by high school acquaintances who were in his class, that wasn’t what turned me off to his candidacy. All of us can identify regrettable behavior from our childhood and adolescence. Instead, I was repulsed by his aggressively vehement (Kavanaugh-esque) denials. It was clear that he was unable to face his behavior and, without having faced it, he was almost certainly still engaging in it. In my experience, the more adamantly one denies a fault, the more likely they are to have it!
Forgiveness: Letting Yourself Be Imperfect
Upon identifying a gap in their knowledge, a great learner moves quickly beyond beating themselves up (or skips it entirely!) and gets straight to work; they forgive themselves the shortcoming. Fortunately, this is a quality that can be learned. I had oodles of self-consciousness as an adolescent; some mistakes I made 30 years ago still make my skin crawl whenever they pop into my head (like the time I responded to a classmate’s request to hang out with me on a field trip by telling her that my other friends “just weren’t that fond of you” - eek!). Helpfully, forgiveness is virtuous. It gets easier the more accomplished you become because you’ve established a track record of successfully tackling each challenge.
Shamelessness: Revealing Your Deficiencies To Others
It’s one thing to look at your own gaps and quite another to share them with the world. But great learners do just that. In return, they get help, allowing them to go faster than those who insist on the DIY route. Taken to the extreme, such shamelessness turns into a full-fledged embrace of failure. I often tell the story of my professional life punctuated by the ways I’ve failed (a framing my mother can NOT tolerate - “You haven’t failed!”); these are pivotal moments, when I’ve learned the most about who I am and who I want to be. I am grateful for these failures; I couldn’t be where I am without them. It took me decades to embrace failure, but I am trying to accelerate the process for my children: each night over dinner, we share the best mistake we made that day. Mistakes are not shameful, as long as we learn from them; great learners live that mantra.
Emotional Maturity: Coping With the Pain
Let’s be honest: learning can hurt. A lot. Great learners aren’t fearless; they don’t have impenetrable skin. They do have sophisticated coping mechanisms for working through the pain that sometimes accompanies our most important lessons. They have the maturity to face strong emotions without needing to run from them. Methods are individualized; I tend to rely on self-care and pampering (pedicures, sleep!), good friends and, when things get real bad, sequestering myself in a closet, eyes closed, chanting “this is what learning feels like” until I’m ready to believe it. (See: sophisticated.)
Dissatisfaction: Needing Change
There comes a time for many people when they’ve learned enough. They have a nice life, a good job, stability, security; they’re content. Great learners don’t reach such a point. Standing still - even in a nice spot - will never be sufficient for such a person. The satisfaction is in the act of learning itself, in expanding, feeling the stretch, in the movement from who you are today to who you can become next. A great learner will never “arrive,” but forever pursue the next adventure, the next bit of new to fuel their soul.
Persistence: Tenacious, Patient Pursuit
Some lessons come to us quickly, some take a lifetime to unfold. A great learner can tap into all of them. My very first piece of feedback at McKinsey was to “be bold.” I was uncomfortable taking a stand, strongly asserting my opinions. This is feedback I would continue to get, in various flavors, for nearly a decade. Until the day my phone rang a few minutes after signing off on a client teleconference. It was the partner telling me that he thought I’d been too direct with the client and should’ve taken a more moderate position in expressing my perspective. I couldn’t help but laugh. It took me 10 years of building my assertiveness to find the line, but I finally did! His feedback felt like a victory, one that, once I explained my laughter, he was pleased to share with me.
I encourage you to experiment with this recipe to find the right balance of ingredients for yourself; perhaps you will not need a full pound of persistence like I did! Invest in building your capacity to learn and you will expand your capabilities everywhere. As we each look out into our futures, in a world that seems to be growing ever more tumultuous and uncertain, there is no better talent to claim than the ability to learn. I know I can meet whatever challenge comes my way. And you can, too.
Have we missed any ingredients? What is your personal recipe for learning? Share your thoughts in the comments and don’t forget to subscribe to the blog!
