eBusiness Weekly
Arthur Marara
Strategy Four
Prioritise continuous learning and skill development for yourself and your team.
Equip employees with the necessary knowledge and tools to navigate disruptive environments effectively. This includes staying updated on industry trends, acquiring new competencies, and fostering a growth mindset throughout the organisation.
Investing in learning and development is crucial for individuals and organisations to thrive in today’s fast-paced and disruptive environments. Prioritising continuous learning and skill development benefits both employees and the overall success of the company. Here are some key points to expand on this topic:
Continuous learning
Encouraging a culture of continuous learning within an organisation enables employees to adapt to changing circumstances and acquire new knowledge and skills. This can be done through various methods like workshops, seminars, online courses, conferences, or even mentorship programmes. By providing opportunities for ongoing learning, employees stay relevant and equipped to tackle challenges effectively.
Skill development
In a constantly evolving business landscape, it’s important to identify the skills needed to excel in specific roles and industries. Investing in skill development ensures that employees have the necessary competencies to perform their jobs effectively. This may involve offering training programs tailored to individual needs, fostering cross-functional collaboration, or partnering with external experts to deliver specialised training sessions.
Staying updated on industry trends
Industries are subject to rapid changes due to technological advancements, market trends, and other external factors. It’s crucial for individuals and organisations to stay updated on these industry trends to remain competitive. This can be achieved by encouraging employees to participate in industry events, subscribing to relevant publications, following thought leaders in the field, or joining professional networks where insights and knowledge are shared.
Acquiring new competencies
In addition to staying abreast of industry trends, it’s essential to actively seek out and acquire new competencies. This could involve expanding one’s skill set in areas such as digital literacy, data analysis, project management, or communication skills. By investing in acquiring new competencies, employees improve their performance, contribute to innovation, and open up new career opportunities.
Fostering a growth mindset
A growth mindset is the belief that abilities and intelligence can be cultivated through effort, perseverance, and continuous learning. Fostering a growth mindset throughout the organisation encourages employees to embrace challenges, learn from failures, and seek opportunities for growth. Leaders can promote a growth mindset by recognising and rewarding efforts, providing feedback and coaching, and creating an environment that values learning and personal development.
By now, you are well aware of the advantages of developing a growth mindset. My assumption is premised on the belief that you read the previous article that I did on the growth mindset. If you missed you can catch up by visiting this paper’s website or grab a hard copy. The question that I want to deal with this week is how do you actually develop a growth mindset. Most articles ignore this fundamental bit, the “how”.
#1. Where are you now?
You need to develop yourself from where you are. This calls on you to have an introspection of the mindset that you have. Do you have a fixed mindset or do you have a growth mindset? You know yourself better. It is good to be honest with yourself.
#2. Change your approach and perspective on failure
There is more in trying and failing than in not trying at all. We need to nurture a culture of embracing failure as part of the journey. Failure is not a sign of inability, it is a sign that you are putting in effort and most importantly it is a sign of your commitment to learning.
We grew up being told that “failure is not an option”. In school, teachers are reminding students that failure is not an option.
During our days if you failed an assignment you would receiving physical punishment. From school, you are consistently taught not to fail, how will you learn new things if you do not fail. How will you know what doesn’t work, if you do not fail?
Many still repeat this statement to the teams. Truth be told, when you want to make progress in your business, you need to make failure an option. Business is constantly under pressure to innovate and develop new products.
In the process of trying to develop these, they experience failures. That is life. It is not every time that you are going to experience success. You are going to make mistakes, you are going to be disappointed.
Failure has to be an option.
A growth result requires you to change your approach and attitude to failure. Failure is part of the journey and not the end of the journey.
#3. Pay attention to how you speak and act
How do you talk about talent and skill. Are there any instances that you find yourself saying things like,
“I’m no good at this” or “She’s just naturally talented”? You need to change your language, and integrate phrases like “I’m not great at this yet.” and “She’s clearly put in a lot of effort to become so talented.”
Create room for more learning rather than to close yourself out.
What you speak becomes your reality. Be careful what you speak, and what you do, this inevitably defines you. Learn as well from the people around especially if their words and actions speak of a growth mindset. Make friends with such people, this will facilitate your growth as well.
#4. Reflect each day
Make this a habit, reflect on what you have succeeded and failed every day. Most importantly focus on the lessons in each of these stages. You spend by now some time at the end of the day reflecting on your successes. You also need to go a step further to deliberately reflect on the failure, what didn’t work, and most importantly why it did not work.
This is important in your growth as you need to constantly look for opportunities for learning and growth. What are your learning from your failures. The focus is not to dwell on failures, but to dwell on the lessons from those experiences.
#5. Stop seeking approval from others
Do not live to impress people, you will spend your life depressed. Equally do not live your life seeking approval from other people. If you seek approval from people you will be their slave. Be clear on the goals that you want to achieve, and stick to it.
The difficulty with seeking the approval of others is that you take on the wrong objective. Do not make being right as your goal, rather than learning and growing. Take time to recognise when you are pursuing approval rather than growth. If you are on this course, learn to remind yourself to stop seeking approval from others. Be comfortable with the daily failures that come from you stretching yourself out of your comfort zone.
#6. Celebrate the success of others
Do not be intimidated by the success of others. When other people around you succeed, celebrate them!
You do not lose anything by celebrating the people who are doing well. Be curious about what made them successful, and learn from them. Success leaves trails. If you want to be successful, learn from successful and do what they did and you will be successful.
You can even take time to ask them what makes them successful. This will cultivate a growth mindset in you. Connect with other successful people, and understand what decisions, and actions they took and how they approached the challenges they encountered on their way to success.
What are you going to do to grow and develop a growth mindset.
By investing in learning and development, organisations create a competitive advantage by fostering a skilled and adaptable workforce.
Employees who are equipped with the necessary knowledge and tools to navigate disruptive environments become more engaged, productive, and capable of driving innovation. Ultimately, prioritising continuous learning and skill development leads to improved organisational performance and long-term success in the face of rapid change.
To be continued . . .
Arthur Marara
Arthur Marara is a corporate law attorney, keynote speaker, corporate and personal branding speaker commanding the stage with his delightful humour, raw energy, and wealth of life experiences. He is a financial wellness expert and is passionate about addressing the issues of wellness, strategy and personal and professional development. Arthur is the author of “Toys for Adults” a thought provoking book on entrepreneurship, and “No one is Coming” a book that seeks to equip leaders to take charge. Send your feedback to [email protected] or Visit his website www.arthurmarara.com or contact him on WhatsApp: +263780055152 or call +263772467255.
