This article really had me thinking. While I am not necessarily in a leadership position, I am required to provide guidance to staff regarding policy. I love the reminder about asking the 5 whys. It really does help to get a better understanding and framework so you can be more effective, whether you are leading a team for providing guidance. It always comes down to listening with intent to learn, not judge. This reminded me of a video I watched that describes how we often think we know the problem, but it may not be what the person thinks the problem is. Its titled, "Its not about the nail." This woman is sitting with her partner feeling very frustrated and complaining. She has a nail sticking out of her forehead and he keeps saying if you just remove the nail, and she says its not about the nail, its something else....Very funny video that gets at the heart of what you said so eloquently. Here is the link for the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4EDhdAHrOg
This post really got me thinking, especially after your quick chat earlier today. When it comes to learning content and design, we’re often limited by the auditing tools available. But taking time to clarify the workflow can have such a meaningful impact on productivity. Although this example was not the main message of your article, it resonated.
I appreciate your reminder that self-awareness is foundational to leadership. It also reminded me of my doctoral work in Educational Leadership. So much of what we studied came down to understanding context. Leadership styles and workflows often sound clear in theory, but in practice, they are rarely one-size-fits-all.
I found that especially true in my role as a school principal. What seemed straightforward in coursework was much harder to apply in the day-to-day complexity of leading a school.
You make such a great point that things seem so different when we encounter them in different contexts.
In your example it's day-to-day coursework vs. leading an entire school. In my example above, it might be taking project manager thinking and applying it to people leadership situations
I forget where I heard this recently, but someone I was listening to talked about how truly mastering a skill means being able to apply it in unfamiliar contexts. It's taking a bit of what we know we know, sprinkling in some of what we don't know, and figuring out how to fill in the gaps. If we can't do that, we're really just completing routines with higher levels of efficiency.
It's where we get to those higher orders in Bloom's Taxonomy. Where we create new ways of applying skills, and possibly combining skills in different ways than we had previously imagined.
To get to that level, we have to be at least curious enough to wonder how we can apply what we know outside of the context in which we learned it. That probably sounds kind of basic on the surface, but it seems to me like the entry level of self-awareness.
This article really had me thinking. While I am not necessarily in a leadership position, I am required to provide guidance to staff regarding policy. I love the reminder about asking the 5 whys. It really does help to get a better understanding and framework so you can be more effective, whether you are leading a team for providing guidance. It always comes down to listening with intent to learn, not judge. This reminded me of a video I watched that describes how we often think we know the problem, but it may not be what the person thinks the problem is. Its titled, "Its not about the nail." This woman is sitting with her partner feeling very frustrated and complaining. She has a nail sticking out of her forehead and he keeps saying if you just remove the nail, and she says its not about the nail, its something else....Very funny video that gets at the heart of what you said so eloquently. Here is the link for the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4EDhdAHrOg
Once again, I love your post!
This post really got me thinking, especially after your quick chat earlier today. When it comes to learning content and design, we’re often limited by the auditing tools available. But taking time to clarify the workflow can have such a meaningful impact on productivity. Although this example was not the main message of your article, it resonated.
I appreciate your reminder that self-awareness is foundational to leadership. It also reminded me of my doctoral work in Educational Leadership. So much of what we studied came down to understanding context. Leadership styles and workflows often sound clear in theory, but in practice, they are rarely one-size-fits-all.
I found that especially true in my role as a school principal. What seemed straightforward in coursework was much harder to apply in the day-to-day complexity of leading a school.
You make such a great point that things seem so different when we encounter them in different contexts.
In your example it's day-to-day coursework vs. leading an entire school. In my example above, it might be taking project manager thinking and applying it to people leadership situations
I forget where I heard this recently, but someone I was listening to talked about how truly mastering a skill means being able to apply it in unfamiliar contexts. It's taking a bit of what we know we know, sprinkling in some of what we don't know, and figuring out how to fill in the gaps. If we can't do that, we're really just completing routines with higher levels of efficiency.
It's where we get to those higher orders in Bloom's Taxonomy. Where we create new ways of applying skills, and possibly combining skills in different ways than we had previously imagined.
To get to that level, we have to be at least curious enough to wonder how we can apply what we know outside of the context in which we learned it. That probably sounds kind of basic on the surface, but it seems to me like the entry level of self-awareness.