Work as a prime source of learning and growth

Our work can be a prime source of learning and growth. We can learn from everything we do in our work. Learning from our work has several benefits:

• Building a strong learning culture
• Creating and sustaining growth mindsets
• Making resilience more possible
• Cultivating engagement and connection  
• Balancing responsive and proactive
• Limiting classroom time away from work
• Feeling a sense of personal responsibility for our learning
• Optimizing resident expertise and experience
• Growing leaders as learning facilitators
• Gaining performance improvements and innovations on all levels

Here are 5 ways to make work a prime source of personal and team learning and growth: curiosity, experimenting, reflection, pairing and habits. 

Curiosity

Curiosity: working from questions representing a sense of wonder, adventure, discovery and awe

Learning questions: questions about what we want to get better at
Expectation questions: questions about what would be helpful to others
Status questions: questions about progress and achievements of others
Planning questions: questions about what we need to research, decide and clarify 

Experimenting

Experimenting: trying new things in our work, things we can try for a few minutes or several weeks.

Communication experiments: trying new ways of sharing status, questions, asks, answers, feedback
Workflow experiments: trying new ways of getting things organized, timed, shared, done
Customer/client experience experiments: trying new ways of anticipating, knowing and fulfilling expectations
Task & question experiments: trying new ways of inquiry and getting things done

Reflecting

Reflecting: extracting lessons learned from experience, focusing on what went well and why and what other options we could consider in the future based on our experience.

Reflecting on successes: small wins, achievements, gains
Reflecting on failures: disappointments, setbacks, losses
Reflecting on patterns: repeated patterns of successes and failures
Reflecting on missed opportunities: being mindless, unaware, unlucky

Pairing

Pairing: working alongside someone with abilities we want to explore and develop 

Task pairing: pairing on everyday todo's, situational responses
Decision pairing: pairing on solo and shared, routine and rare decisions
Project pairing: pairing on planning, plan adjusting, coordination, throughput
Experiment pairing: pairing on the design and engagement experiments  

Habits

Habits: learning about what matters to us through the automatic, routine reactions we have in specific situations

Belief habits: habit patterns of expectations
Behavior habits: habit patterns of actions
Emotion habits: habit patterns of feelings and attitudes
Growth habits: habit patterns of expanding our abilities