SuperLearning Wrap-Up
In This Episode
How can one make SuperLearning a way of life as an individual, team, or organization? In this special episode of The LeaderLab, we invite our previous guests to not only wrap up the conversation on SuperLearning but take us further into this topic than we've gone before.
Transcript
Vanessa Tanicien: Hello, and welcome to the LeaderLab, the podcast powered by LifeLabs Learning. I'm your host and LifeLabs leadership trainer, Vanessa Tanicien.
Vanessa Tanicien: In each episode, my Labmates and I distill our findings into powerful tipping-point skills – the smallest changes that tip over to make the biggest impact in the shortest time.
Vanessa Tanicien: Welcome back to the LeaderLab for this special edition of the show. For 2021, we wanted to debut something special, something that would help culminate your learning and we came up with the wrap-up. The wrap-up is going to be a long form conversation where we get to deep dive into this theme we just talked about to really land what's so important about that particular topic.
Vanessa Tanicien: For our listeners out there, get ready for this conversation on SuperLearning. To join me in this conversation around SuperLearning at the wrap-up table, we have Dr. McKendee Hickory, Massella Dukuly, and Robleh Kirce . All right. Welcome back to the lab, y'all
Dr. McKendree Hickory: Hey Vanessa.
Massella Dukuly: Thanks for having us.
Vanessa Tanicien: Oh my gosh. I can already feel the enthusiasm emanating from my screen, so, so glad to have you all back on the show.
Vanessa Tanicien: My first question to honestly, just kick it off, what's so super about SuperLearning? I know that we've been talking about it this entire time, but I don't know if we've been incredibly definitive around what makes this different than traditional learning. Whoever wants to take the baton here, please, usher us into this wrap-up conversation.
Robleh Kirce: Well, I'm off mute, so I'll go ahead and take a shot at this. For me, the great part about SuperLearning is it takes an everyday activity, it makes it faster and it makes it more valuable, that's really the goal. It's something that we're often looking for with our time, efficiency and quality, we're often making trade-offs. But with SuperLearning, we've got such a marvelous mess of in between our ears. You can actually get both if we take just a few steps.
Massella Dukuly: Plus one to what Robley is saying, but I also think that what's really super about super learning is the fact that we build in some efficiency here. We haven't really been taught how to learn, we're taught to learn and very early on. What this does is makes you a master of your own learning and hopefully saves you a lot of time and effort along the way.
Dr. McKendree Hickory: I mean, the reason we're all at LifeLabs is it's also super nerdy, so I think it's just worth naming that, SuperLearning, super nerdy. But I guess the thing that makes a difference, we're learning all the time. I'm really mindful of this. I'm training a puppy right now and he's learning all these little things day in and day out. There's a distinct difference when before I feed him, we do 10 minutes of literally skill drills on how to sit, how to stay. That's the difference for me is that you are specifically getting into that opportunity to really amplify the learning that's already taking place.
Vanessa Tanicien: In thinking about SuperLearning, this idea of thinking about thinking, drawing some awareness around the way that a person learns, we talked about deliberate practice, we talked about powerful questions and we talked about extraction skills. These are all the components, these key essential behavioral units that allow somebody to be a super learner, why is super learning important in today's working world? I would love to pass this on over to Massella, our new head of L&D at LifeLabs.
Massella Dukuly: I think when you think about today's workplace, which is primarily remote, maybe some people are exploring hybrid and I'm sure that will be the future of things. It's really important to make sure that people have the resources and the skills, the capabilities that they need to be able to be productive and do the work that they need. With all of that being said, I think when we think about L&D in particular, it's important that people have a foundation to learn from, time to learn, ability to learn, and know how to learn in a way that's effective rather than passive.
Vanessa Tanicien: Gotcha. This idea of making it active. Dr. Hickory.
Dr. McKendree Hickory: I think two thoughts come to mind for me, the first is just if this last year has shown us anything, it's that things are constantly changing. People's ability to be able to adapt and acquire the skillset that's going to make them successful in whatever the new context, circumstance, challenge is, and it requires our ability to learn rapidly, but to really know specifically how to learn, right? How to be in that moment of stuckness or change and figure out how can I learn through this?
Dr. McKendree Hickory: And then the other component for me that stands out particularly building on the remote workspace is that ability to self-manage, right? When our managers can't see us, when we're not with people, we got to be able to essentially learn on our own in many ways. Folks' ability to be working from home and figure out how to learn and adapt, it's going to make them more successful to also our teams and organizations.
Vanessa Tanicien: Let's invite Robleh. Why don't you wrap us up on this question? What are your thoughts on why SuperLearning is so important today?
Robleh Kirce: Well, I mean, there's not really much left given what everyone else has already added here, but I am reminded of something that LeeAnn, our founder at LifeLabs, used to talk about quite a bit, is this idea of out learning the competition. You want to bring in the best people you can into an organization, but from there, once you've got those folks on the bus, so to speak, the real differentiator is often in a turbulent environment, how quickly can you learn and can you learn faster than the other folks that you're competing against? I think that's one big reason.
Robleh Kirce: The other big value add from my perspective is it's really a point of mutual interest for organizations and for individual employees alike to be great in this area. It's something that helps advance the organization when teams are learning more, but it also advances individual's careers. It's what helps them move to the places they want to be in life and in the workplace.
Vanessa Tanicien: Oh man, I feel like that is a reality show tagline: outlearn, outpace, outlast, in today's day and age. Thinking about the fact that in order to be successful in today's economy, in today's world, super learning is really going to set people apart. I'm curious, where have we seen super learning work well or what types of environments really support SuperLearning in happening? Anybody can take this one.
Robleh Kirce: Well, McKendree’s smiling, it looks like she wants to go.
Dr. McKendree Hickory: I go first. Then I can say all the golden nuggets and leave scraps for the rest of y'all. I mean, I think a really specific example comes from engineering teams for me, or particularly even design product teams that are working in a two-week sprint methodology, built into that method is at the end to do a retrospective and talk about what went well over the last two weeks? What can we learn? How can we apply that to the upcoming sprint? That's a really specific tactical example that always comes to mind of where I see this work well.
Vanessa Tanicien: This idea of taking the time to hit the pause button and really figure out what can we be doing better next time? And I do see this a lot in the world of development and engineering. And I'm curious, Massella or Robleh, have you seen this style of pausing, doing a postmortem happen on any other teams that we've worked with over the past few years?
Massella Dukuly: What makes engineering teams, product teams, design teams so unique is that they're already really comfortable with feedback because it's very much the nature of what they do. I imagine that there are other teams out there that might have this culture, but I think it's one of the major blockers that can make learning of this style effective or puts it in the position of being ineffective when teams first and foremost are not comfortable with making mistakes. I think foundationally, it's important to really think about what the feedback culture at your organization or just within your team in general actually looks like. I think the more normal it is, the natural it is, the more capable people are of knowing how to give feedback the more it effective it will be and create more opportunity for SuperLearning to actually really happen.
Vanessa Tanicien: Gotcha. Super learning and feedback skills go hand in hand. Robleh, what do you think about that?
Robleh Kirce: Plus one to what Massella and McKendree both mentioned already. If I was to give a third example here, I'd include just seeing it in leadership.
Robleh Kirce: This reminds me of Patrick, a CEO at one of our partner organizations, he's great at this. One of the things that I noticed was his really quick picking up of what we talked about in our sessions together and then immediate application going forward in his teams, but also just more broadly in his life.
Robleh Kirce: I came back and worked with him maybe two weeks after we had just talked about meetings. I shared with him this way of setting up meetings and giving some introductions. And literally, the next time I saw him, two weeks later, he was giving me a hard time about not having used that introduction that I had just taught him two weeks ago. He called me out in the middle of the workshop. Was there a better time for feedback? Maybe. But definitely really appreciated how quickly he was picking it up and putting it into practice. It really models it for everyone else across the company.
Vanessa Tanicien: I'm already hearing two key gems here, feedback skills and then also, as a leader, role modeling, this behavior will really allow super learning to take hold in your organization. I want to know what other barriers might be coming up as far as super learning is considered? We have leadership on board, feedback skills, anything else that folks need to take into consideration when trying to make SuperLearning a way of life? McKendree?
Dr. McKendree Hickory: I think the first thing that comes to mind is the barrier we all face in the workplace is just the stress of things. Think about the time that you've learned a really great lesson, chances are it wasn't when you were trying to get a really high stakes project done in an hour. There's not a lot of extra brain space, if you will, to really focus on our learning. We see really great SuperLearners do is really taking that moment to pause and reflect.
Dr. McKendree Hickory: In times where people are feeling a lot of pressure when expectations haven't been made clear, when there's competing priorities and folks are just constantly trying to keep their head above water, it's going to be really hard to build in those small moments of reflection. Getting really clear on how do we give people that space to recharge or even building it into these other moments we have with people like one-on-ones or team check-ins, is a way that we can build in that moment to reflect amidst what is always feels like a really chaotic or stressful day.
Vanessa Tanicien: I totally hear that. Siemens just published something on HRD Connect, which was talking about how their US HR strategy was focused on initiatives that would help build the workforce, empower managers, and then lead a leadership culture and it really encapsulates a lot of what the three of you are saying, where we have to be really intentional around being SuperLearning. Otherwise, it's just not going to be happening and we want to be able to align this desire to be super learning folks with the goals and visions that we have as a company.
Vanessa Tanicien: I guess my other question, now that we're talking about this in an organizational capacity, I'm going to just keep belaboring this point here. What might an organization do to embed some super learning practices?
Massella Dukuly: I think it's helpful to tie in the super learning practices into rituals that people already do. For example, maybe it's saying, "Hey, we'll use five minutes in every one-to-one that we have to talk about what you've learned this week." Or maybe it's even as a company, when you're doing an all-hands taking time out on a quarterly basis or a monthly basis to talk about, "Hey, here's what we've extracted. What could have been better? What went very well?" I think just societally, we really struggle with this process of pausing to reflect similarly to what McKendree just mentioned. It's not so much that people don't recognize the importance of the pause to reflect and readjust, it's just that I don't think we often equate that process to work learnings or work habits, work skills. Namely, we talk about this a lot in our intensive workshops at LifeLabs.
Massella Dukuly: Manager intensive, the goal here is to really think about what it takes to become a master at something. It means that we have to really pause, look at one specific component, readjust, get feedback, so on and so forth. People do this really well constantly in our workshop, we're asking people, "What's a skill that you've acquired?" People tell me, "Mountain biking and skateboarding and playing the guitar and cooking" and they'll tell me all the things that you should do, but don't really think to equate it again to maybe being a great public speaker or running a meeting well, to Robleh's point.
Vanessa Tanicien: What I'm hearing you say is we need systems in place to support the behaviors.
Massella Dukuly: Yeah.
Vanessa Tanicien: Otherwise, it just is not going to happen. We're talking about feedback skills, but do we have a performance review system that is going to support that? Those two things need to happen in tandem and we really want to see some real movement and progress occur as far as learning anything within an organization. Are your systems aligned within the traits that you're asking for within your organization?
Massella Dukuly: Yes, and even beyond that, having a value that you care about feedback and having a performance review system that only happens once or twice a year is not enough. Really if you want an emphasis on a behavior, you have to make sure that repetition is happening on a regular cadence.
Vanessa Tanicien: Copy that. I'm curious, as an individual, and we've talked about this in previous episodes with some BUs, those skillsets that we teach on this show, what have we not talked about in the SuperLearning series that individuals can begin to think about on their SuperLearning journey?
Dr. McKendree Hickory: I think something I can add to this of things that individuals can be really mindful of is really taking ownership of your own learning. Maybe this is a question you actually drop into your one-on-one template with your manager to say, "Hey, on a weekly basis, I'd love for you to ask me, what did I learn this week? What am I going to apply it to?" Other tactical ways I don't know if we've necessarily touched on, is just making it a habit.
Dr. McKendree Hickory: Things that I know we do at LifeLabs I absolutely love is all of our project planning builds in learning goals. Not only am I talking about the milestones, the timelines, who the interdependencies are, I'm also outlining what's something I want to learn and extract from this. I think on the individual level, looking for the opportunities to actually build this into your processes so it's consistent and not just this thing that's done randomly when you're sitting on the couch and you're like, "Oh yeah, I should reflect today." Which I know for me, doesn't happen often when I'm competing with Netflix.
Vanessa Tanicien: I feel that you possibly put a camera behind me afterwards and be like, "Huh, I should really do some reflection today." I want to dive into this idea of owning your own growth on your SuperLearning journey, I think that's really powerful, but when people hear that, they're like, "So, what am I supposed to do?" McKendry, you highlighted two really cool things. I'm curious, aside from putting it into a one-on-one with your manager and thinking about reflection in time, what else as an individual will allow me to make SuperLearning a habit? And this can be up for anyone.
Robleh Kirce: One thing that stands out to me as basically the enemy of SuperLearning is ego. Humility is really underneath learning and until we recognize that we have room to grow, we recognize our imperfections, it's really difficult to intentionally take steps to get better, creating processes or having it happen by circumstance.
Robleh Kirce: For me, it's first taking a look at whatever I'm doing. Where do I already have a bit of ego and start to maybe let a little bit of that go just so that I can take a look more clearly and say, "What room is there really to improve in this area?" The trick here is that we often want to get better at areas that are really important to us and that's when the ego starts to pop in and it can happen in our personal relationships just as quickly as it can happen in the workplace. Anything that I think I'm good at, it's important for me to be good at when I would take a really close look and see where is the ego preventing me from seeing where there's room to grow?
Robleh Kirce: The other big one that whenever I talk about building habits, once we've taken a look at that ego, putting in place those implementation intentions for those, if then goals, that we've talked about before. And for me, when it comes to SuperLearning, if I'm looking at a macro-level skill, something like running meetings, for example, one of the best meta-level questions that I can build as an if-then, if I'm starting a meeting, then I'm going to ask myself, what am I trying to get better at on purpose? And just that one question asked enough times is going to allow me enough intentional practice to improve in those areas.
Vanessa Tanicien: What I think is super important that you illuminated Robleh is this idea of a learning orientation, right? That our ego can get in the way of us actually moving forward. It reminds me of Carol Dweck's work, which we've referenced before, but this idea of this growth mindset versus that fixed mindset and ego is deeply rooted, I think in fixed mindset saying, "This is who I am", and it gets in the way. Really appreciate you surfacing that. And Massella, I know that you have something on the tip of your tongue. What's on your mind?
Massella Dukuly: Something that I often share in our career growth workshop and something I've been doing for years is just making sure I'm actually tracking what I have been doing, what I'm learning. So I have a doc that I've had probably for like six years now, and it's called, what I'm doing right now. I imagine you can name it something way more sophisticated, but literally everything it's like, "I just had a really rough conversation with a colleague. What did I learn? What was the challenge going into it?" Or maybe it's like, "I'm going into this project. Here's what I have in my mind about how it's going to be. Here's what it ended up being."
Massella Dukuly: The real goal here is essentially, I started using it as a resume bank, so to speak, you go into interviews and they ask you, "Can you tell me about a time..." Whatever. And you're sitting there wondering, or twiddling your thumbs, and if I don't jot these things down, it's really... Especially in a year like this or a past year like this, that's filled with tons of monotony, to say, "I'm not learning anything", which is just completely untrue. You're learning something every day for the most part. And it's just about being able to highlight it and extract what's most important from it.
Vanessa Tanicien: Being super explicit about it. The other thing that I want to mention is I also have a variation of that called, nice emails about me. That allows me to actually categorize the things that I've gotten positive feedback from, from other folks so that way I can use that as part of my learning process, as well. Well, so it's a nice, also rainy day moment if I'm having a bad day to look back on some of the things I've done well.
Vanessa Tanicien: Robleh, looks like something is on your mind.
Robleh Kirce: I was talking about some of these challenges and I think ego certainly is one of them. Honestly, another big one is this lack of confidence that we have in ourselves sometimes. I might want to get better at something, I might want to improve in an area, but sometimes we say to ourselves, "I can't do that." Or, "I have no evidence to suggest that I can do that." For me, what that creates is just this lack of freedom and how we live our lives and what we do decide to learn and ultimately do with the lives that we have.
Robleh Kirce: For me, I try to encourage folks to consider this faith. Now I'm going to use the word faith, and that can bring up a lot of different connotations for people. But what I mean by faith in this context is in contrast to confidence, right? Confidence, "Hey, I've got some evidence that shows that I am good at this. I will be able to do it again in the future." Faith is the absence of that evidence. It doesn't mean you can't do it, just means you don't have evidence that you will be successful at it, and yet you do it anyway.
Robleh Kirce: When you look at SuperLearners, they do have this faith in themselves, they recognize, "Hey, I don't have any indication that I'll be able to learn a new language." Or switch careers and pick up something at mid-career and yet they go about it and they do it anyway. And it takes an element of faith in ourselves to intentionally make that shift. If you notice, if anyone's listening, you notice that hesitation or lack of confidence. Sure, acknowledge it, lack of evidence, but maybe have some faith in yourself and take that first step and see how it goes.
Vanessa Tanicien: Totally. It reminds me of one of our LifeLabs values, Courage Over Comfort. And sometimes I think courage and confidence can live in the same room. I might not be confident, but the courage will allow me to... I don't know why I made that sound effect, but you get what I'm saying. Make that happen. But Dr. Hickory, curious what's on your mind here?
Dr. McKendree Hickory: Well, I mean, it wouldn't be a podcast, Robleh, without something mentioned on ego. I'm glad we can check the box on that one.
Dr. McKendree Hickory: I think the other thing, I'm glad you brought up the values, Vanessa, because something that's also standing out to me is, although we're talking about super learning as an individual, I think it's really important to consider the environment that you're surrounded by. We often talk at LifeLabs in our strategic thinking session, this three lenses model and the ability to think about things from multiple angles and systems and levels. I was working with the team not too long ago and I was teaching them about doing basically reflection, doing these premortems, these postmortems. And they're like, "Yeah, yeah. The tool's good. We have a culture of perfectionism, so this is never going to work for us." And it was such a great example to me. There's a lot we can do on our own, but we also need to be really mindful of the environment that surrounds us and so that we can start to really dissect, where is this fear? As Robleh was speaking to that confidence piece, where might that fear be coming from? And it might actually be a product of the environment.
Dr. McKendree Hickory: So trying to also diagnose what's going on there, otherwise, you can get in a cycle of just like, "Uh, I suck at learning. I'm not good." And then you're just adding to that sense of failure. It's just an interesting example that recently showed up for me.
Vanessa Tanicien: For sure. The environmental elements really make a difference as far as SuperLearning as an individual. All right.
Vanessa Tanicien: We've uncovered so many interesting ideas, insights around this conversation and SuperLearning. I want to bring us to a wrap here. What are some final thoughts you have for those super learners out there and as a bonus, what are you looking to SuperLearn in the next few months?
Massella Dukuly: As a final tip, I think one thing that's really important to keep in mind is that this SuperLearning journey is not about being a master in a certain amount of days or months or whatever the case. I think we're constantly learning. I know for me, when I think about my journey as a home chef, if you will, I probably wouldn't have felt as confident as I do in my ability to cook with pretty much anything and everything if it weren't for this past year just because of the fact that I've had time to do it. I don't think that's something that necessarily could have been forced either. Obviously people go to cooking school, but I don't think that's where they master their ability.
Massella Dukuly: It's important to give yourself space and time and of course be deliberate along the way, but I don't think it needs to be within these very firm boundaries. Essentially just be gentle with yourself. There's a lot of learning happening all the time. It's just going to be your responsibility to pause and reflect on what has changed as you go along your journey.
Dr. McKendree Hickory: I guess the other thing for me probably connected to that sense of faith and ego and stuff is also finding, why do you actually want to get good at this thing? I know there's so many things that I've been like, "I'm definitely going to pursue that", and a week later, I'm like, "Yeah, I don't care about that." I think it's also finding why does this matter? Thinking of Angela Duckworth's research around grit, right? And that these people have to really enjoy something for a long period of time to deliberately practice and super learn particularly the skills that aren't as fun to learn. I think that's the other one, find a meaning, find motivation, find something you're really actually interested in and can invest in. And then as Massella said, break it up into small steps so you can really track your progress through the journey of learning.
Dr. McKendree Hickory: I can share a brief example. I am working particularly on my own strategic thinking skills. And part of strategic thinking is being able to actually then say what it is you've strategically thought about. I'm working on sharing opinions, everything from what I actually want to dinner versus my insight on a process update that we're considering at the leadership level. For me, just like getting into that BU of sharing an opinion, even in small ways, has been a way that I'm honing in and focusing on that particular skillset of becoming a better strategic thinker.
Vanessa Tanicien: Awesome. I love that. And Robleh, what are your final thoughts?
Robleh Kirce: We're just getting life lessons here from Massella and McKendry, I'm not sure I need to be here, but if I was going to add something in terms of takeaways here, once you figure out what's important and you figured out your why, make sure that you're really clear about what it is you're trying to accomplish. Taking the time to get specific and really tangible about what it is you wish to learn and what you'll be able to do with that knowledge once you've learned it.
Robleh Kirce: Once you spend that time, often the plan for how to accomplish it gets much, much easier. And we also start to see some of the benefit or the impact that we can have from learning these things, as well. Taking that time to get clear I think goes a long way. And with that find somebody that is really excited for you to learn this thing, too.
Robleh Kirce: Create that environment for you, which often comes down to the social environment. Do you have someone that really is excited about the success that you'll have in the future? And if I could give you a pro life lesson, it would be to find someone that you're equally happy to share with them the successes that you have, and you're also happy to bring your failures to them, and you've got that kind of relationship with them. Find someone like that and of a sudden this learning process gets a lot easier.
Vanessa Tanicien: Massella, Robley, McKendry, thank you for joining us on this edition of the wrap-up on SuperLearning. I hope to see you in the lab soon.
Robleh Kirce: Can’t wait.
Massella Dukuly: See ya.
Dr. McKendree Hickory: Bye.
Vanessa Tanicien: That's a wrap of another episode of the LeaderLab. Make sure to subscribe and share this with at least one other person so we can all benefit from being SuperLearners. It's pretty exciting.
Vanessa Tanicien: The LeaderLab is executive produced and hosted by me, Vanessa Tanicien. NeEddra James is our senior producer and Alana Burman is our director and editor. If you'd like to hang out with us on social, go ahead and find us on LinkedIn at LifeLabs Learning and on Twitter at LifeLabs Learn. To bring training to your team, head on over to lifelabslearning.com. See you in the lab soon.
