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When I was a young manager a senior manager who had befriended me gave me a piece of advice. He said, “become a life-long learner. It will keep you up with the game. It will stimulate your thinking. It will open your mind to new possibilities. It will give you a lot of fun.”
My experience is that it has been a lot of fun and very stimulating. Personally I look upon everything I do as a learning opportunity. Even when I am watching TV I take note of the way characters behave to see if there is anything in what they do that is worth modelling for the benefit of my clients.
When I am working with my clients I find that I am learning all the time. Yes, I do know that I am supposed to be the coach, but that does not mean that I cannot learn at the same time. Sometimes I find better ways to communicate. Other times my clients say things that I see instantly are new truisms for me to learn.
Being a lifetime learner has keept me interested and stimulated and it has opened a whole host of new doors for me.
For me it is particularly important that I use all of the learning processes recommended in the visual beside this article. I definitely do need to read-it, talk-it, write-it and do-it in order to be quite sure that I have really understood the lesson well enough to be able to benefit from it.
I also make sure that the people I coach have fun when I am imparting information in my coaching or on my Effective Manager course.
