How The Best Managers Master Self-Learning At Work
Developing a learning mindset and mastering self-learning at work are critical to developing a management career. Want to become a doctor, lawyer or accountant and you have to go through formal training. Want to become a manager – you are left to figure it out largely by yourself. Few managers get any formal training in what is necessary to lead teams successfully. This is why the best managers develop a growth mindset and master self-learning at work. To become good at managing others, you have to be good at self-learning. It is that simple.
How The Best Managers Master Self-Learning At Work
- What Is A Growth Mindset Or A Learning Mindset
- Why Developing A Learning Mindset So Critically Important To Progress Your Management Career
- 5 Tips To Help You Build A Learning Mindset And Habit
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First what is a growth mindset or a learning mindset
A growth mindset is a way of thinking, a mental discipline, a habit and reflex to recognize and find opportunities for learning from every situation, from success and from failure. People with a learning mindset believe – at the core of their being – that when they work to learn and improve, they will keep getting better.
People with a growth mindset don’t see obstacles, they see challenges. They don’t see failure, they see a chance to get closer to success. People with a growth mindset don’t feel stuck where they are, they believe they can progress. They just haven’t achieved their goal yet.
Individuals with a learning mindset believe their talents can be developed through hard work, good approaches and input from others. Growing and learning takes effort, sometimes a lot of effort. When you start off learning something new, you won’t be very good at it. To get better you have to get through the disappointments, the falling short of expectations, and the mistakes and pick yourself up and try again. Keep working at this new area, you will get better. Work long enough and hard enough and you know you will get very good at this new area.
Developing a growth mindset or learning mindset is possible for anyone.
why developing a learning mindset so critically important to progress your management career
Very few managers get any formal training on how to manage teams. There is an unsaid assumption that you will learn from your boss and those managers around you.
Without pushing at developing a learning mindset and getting good at self-learning at work, the journey to get good as a manager is too hard for many. There are lots of opportunities to stop putting the effort in to learn and accept where you are.
In a manager’s role, you will have to get comfortable with disappointment, with making mistakes, with people disagreeing with you and a whole host of other challenges. Without a growth mindset, these knocks are hard for any ego to take.
A learning mindset helps you build many key attributes and skills that will make you a much better manager.
5 important ones a learning mindset helps you develop:
- Facilitates self-learning at work – you are constantly trying to learn from everything you can
- Fosters resilience. You will make mistakes, be out of your comfort zone, receive tough feedback etc. You will get through each of these and know you will do so the next time it happens. Keep repeating this cycle and you become more and more resilient.
- You look forward to stepping outside your comfort zone because doing so gives you opportunities to learn and improve.
- You increase your adaptability and flexibility because you learn lots of different ways and routes to achieving your goals
- Fosters commitment. You need to be committed to the process of learning and improving otherwise you would give up part the way through.
Each of these attributes and skills helps you drive your own improvement and success at managing others. With a growth mindset, you will keep pushing yourself to get better, where others with less of a learning mindset give up or slow down.
To become a good manager or better, work at developing a learning mindset.
Create the habit and make the time to learn from every work situation you can
Developing a mindset for successful learning starts with your attitude. How can you cultivate your motivation to increase the pace of – and opportunities for – your learning? You need to be motivated and committed. Without either, you will simply not put in the effort that is needed to learn, improve and get good. It is not an easy journey in my view which is why so many drop out part the way towards their dreams.
Here are 5 tips to help you build a learning mindset and habit.
1 – Set Yourself Goals
Set yourself goals and work towards reaching them. Keep focusing on the progress you are making. Progress and achievements are great fuel to keep yourself motivated and looking to learn. Focus on how far you have come rather than how far you still have to go. Keep thinking about the next step and how you are going to achieve that.
2 – Learn to Accept Failure
To build a learning mindset, learn to accept failure. See failure as another opportunity to learn and take another step closer to your goals. I doubt you can find any successful person that has not had a lot of failures on the road to becoming successful. They become successful because they don’t let failure and disappointment stop them trying, working and learning. Failures are a brilliant source of learning and vital steps to success.
3 – Cultivate Persistence and Determination
For a growth mindset, cultivate persistence and determination. You will experience set-backs, hard to hear feedback, failures and disappointments. If you don’t, you are not out of your comfort zone and probably not really learning. When you experience set-backs, don’t dwell on what you did wrong. Focus on what you are going to do differently the next time. Make the next time happen quickly. Keep changing what you do until you achieve success. Going through this cycle, builds your persistence, determination and resilience. Keep at it!
4 – Get to Know Yourself
Make the time to get to know yourself. What are your ambitions, your fears, your insecurities, your strengths, your values, your hot buttons etc. The better you know yourself and value yourself, the easier you will find it to pick yourself up and try again. Get to know yourself and how you react in different situations.
5 – Seek Specific Feedback
Fifth to get better at developing a learning mindset, seek good quality specific feedback from every source you can. Ask colleagues. Ask your boss. Find out what your team members think. Keep asking for feedback and ask that the person giving you feedback to make it as specific and therefore as useful as possible. With feedback you can learn quicker and will find it a lot easier to get to success.
Build a stronger learning mindset and you will be happier and more successful, regardless of what you want out of life or work. To be a successful manager or leader, developing a learning mindset is a vital part of the job description.
in summary
Becoming a good manager or leader is a tough journey. To improve, most of us have to learn the hard way – by self-learning through our mistakes and the mistakes of the managers and leaders around us. When you are lucky enough to find a manager who makes the time to teach you how to manage well, grab that opportunity with both hands and learn as much as you can. Learning best practice management skills makes a huge difference to the speed at which you learn. You start by using and practicing what you know works well rather than having to go through a ton of mistakes before finding what works.
Above all, work on keeping yourself open to learning, cultivating a growth mindset and keep yourself progressing towards being a brilliant manager and leader.
If you have any questions on How The Best Managers Master Self-Learning At Work, email me at support@enhance.training and I will get back to you.
