# HBR's 10 Must Reads on Lifelong Learning  ## Metadata - Author: [[Harvard Business Review, Carol Dweck, Marcus Buckingham, Francesca Gino, and John H. Zenger]] - Full Title: HBR's 10 Must Reads on Lifelong Learning - Category: #books ## Highlights - people who succeed at this kind of learning. We’ve identified four attributes they have in spades: aspiration, self-awareness, curiosity, and vulnerability. ([Location 152](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08CGFT467&location=152)) - The ever-increasing pace of change in today’s organizations requires that executives understand and then quickly respond to constant shifts in how their businesses operate and how work must get done. That means you must resist your innate biases against doing new things in new ways, scan the horizon for growth opportunities, and push yourself to acquire drastically different capabilities—while still doing your existing job. To succeed, you must be willing to experiment and become a novice over and over again, which for most of us is an extremely discomforting proposition. Over decades of work with managers, the author has found that people who do succeed at this kind of learning have four well-developed attributes: aspiration, self-awareness, curiosity, and vulnerability. They have a deep desire to understand and master new skills; they see themselves very clearly; they’re constantly thinking of and asking good questions; and they tolerate their own mistakes as they move up the curve. Andersen has identified some fairly simple mental strategies that anyone can use to boost these attributes. ([Location 178](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08CGFT467&location=178)) - Curiosity is what makes us try something until we can do it, or think about something until we understand it. Great learners retain this childhood drive, or regain it through another application of self-talk. ([Location 217](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08CGFT467&location=217)) - By constantly turning the focus away from their own behavior to that of others, the professionals bring learning to a grinding halt. The manager understands the trap but does not know how to get out of it. To learn how to do that requires going deeper into the dynamics of defensive reasoning—and into the special causes that make professionals so prone to it. ([Location 840](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08CGFT467&location=840)) - There seems to be a universal human tendency to design one’s actions consistently according to four basic values: To remain in unilateral control; To maximize “winning” and minimize “losing”; To suppress negative feelings; and To be as “rational” as possible—by which people mean defining clear objectives and evaluating their behavior in terms of whether or not they have achieved them. ([Location 858](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08CGFT467&location=858)) - As a result, many professionals have extremely “brittle” personalities. When suddenly faced with a situation they cannot immediately handle, they tend to fall apart. ([Location 894](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08CGFT467&location=894)) - Instead of responding with data of their own, the professionals simply repeated their accusations but in ways that consistently contradicted their claims. They said that a genuinely fair evaluation process would contain clear and documentable data about performance—but they were unable to provide firsthand examples of the unfairness that they implied colored the evaluation of the six dismissed employees. They argued that people shouldn’t be judged by inferences unconnected to their actual performance—but they judged management in precisely this way. They insisted that management define clear, objective, and unambiguous performance standards—but they argued that any humane system would take into account that the performance of a professional cannot be precisely measured. Finally, they presented themselves as champions of learning—but they never proposed any criteria for assessing whether an individual might be unable to learn. ([Location 935](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08CGFT467&location=935)) - Tags: [[pink]] - We humans do not do well when someone whose intentions are unclear tells us where we stand, how good we “really” are, and what we must do to fix ourselves. We excel only when people who know us and care about us tell us what they experience and what they feel, and in particular when they see something within us that really works. ([Location 1317](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08CGFT467&location=1317)) - Increasingly, coaching is becoming integral to the fabric of a learning culture—a skill that good managers at all levels need to develop and deploy. ([Location 1336](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08CGFT467&location=1336)) - manager, where you have a quota, a territory, customers, partners, and goals to achieve. You’re actually someone whose mission it is to pick, grow, and motivate the best capabilities to build customer success.” Remove the barriers As in many organizations, managerial life at Microsoft had a rhythm dictated by quarterly business reviews. One of those, an annual gathering known as the January midyear review, was one of the most visible manifestations of the command-and-control culture. Over time, the midyear review had developed into a kind of corporate theater in which the C-suite team, adopting an interrogatory stance, would grill senior managers from around the world on their progress and plans. This format of “precision questioning” ended up having “a fear impact on people,” said one executive, “because they felt like they were going into that meeting to be judged personally. So they felt they had to paint the best picture they could without showing any mistakes or failures.” Stories abounded of senior managers anxiously beginning their preparation well before the December holiday period. In other words, to make a good impression, a raft of the company’s most valuable people were diverting more than a month of their time to preparing for an internal review. As part of the shift to a learning culture, Courtois had already encouraged his team to abandon precision questioning in favor of a more coaching-oriented approach that involved asking questions such as “What are you trying to do?” “What’s working?” “What’s not working?” and “How can we help?” But old habits die hard. Only after Courtois eliminated the midyear review—thereby removing a significant ([Location 1544](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08CGFT467&location=1544)) - Tags: [[blue]] - Organizational research over the past two decades has revealed three broad factors that are essential for organizational learning and adaptability: a supportive learning environment, concrete learning processes and practices, and leadership behavior that provides reinforcement. ([Location 2160](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08CGFT467&location=2160)) - Biases cause people to focus too much on success, take action too quickly, try too hard to fit in, and depend too much on experts. ([Location 2403](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08CGFT467&location=2403)) - This is a time of tremendous change, where, like it or not, you’re going to have periods of confusion. Like it or not, you’re going to turn into a novice over and over again. And we need to be comfortable with struggle—not just effort, but struggle—and confusion. ([Location 2973](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08CGFT467&location=2973))