In the first part of this article, guest author, Susan McKeone, discussed the first Self-development Step: Know Thyself.
As stated earlier, contemporary research affirms what ancient societies have known all along: those who are the wisest amongst a group are those who have had rich experiences and have learned from them. Consider these aspects of learning from experience.
- Development Occurs Within the Context of Work: During most of the 20th century, companies and their employees tended to think about professional development as something that happened away from the job, in classrooms and workshops and seminars. These development options are useful to build basic skills and provide opportunity for workers to interact within a cohort, but they do not compare with the capacity for development of real skills learned on the job and through the experiences of meaningful work with real implications and results.
- Growth Occurs Through Challenge and Stretch: Once one achieves a level of comfort and ease within their job responsibilities then high performance may continue but growth and development will not. Individuals with the highest potential and talent need to continue to grow until their potential is reached. This means applying a consistent level of tension with respect to challenging the individual’s skills, perceptions, and experiences. The appropriate “stretch” for development is consistently requiring job expectations that are just beyond those skills already mastered.
- Diversity of Experience and Depth Versus Breadth: Know that one’s career goals need to shape career experiences or else career experiences will shape career potential. Understanding how to apply this goes back to the tenet of “Know Thyself.” Know how you will define your career success so you can build the appropriate career path to get there. Are your passions energized through expertise: would you like to know all there is to know about a particular area? If so, you need to build an expert’s career that is deeply steeped within that area of expertise.
Or perhaps your passions are energized by leading broad sets of people and your vision stretches across an organization or industry. In this case you need to build a leader’s career that is broad and encompasses a variety of knowledge and perspective. However, whether you are building depth or breadth, diversity of experience is critical to ongoing development. Always be looking for the next challenge, the newest goal that will mix things up and add another layer to the fabric of your career. - Apply Your Lessons of Experience: So, an important distinction in understanding how to develop through experiences is that the experience itself is only half the task. What is critical is that you learn from the experience and thus apply these lessons to future experiences. Again, this requires reflection and self-awareness and purposeful cognizance relative to learning. “What did I learn from that?” is a common question you should ask yourself following successes and failures. And when you have your answer to that question, be sure it is applied to your next experience.
Want to know more about the third Self-development Step: Learn from People?
