Learn Your Way to Success: How to Customize Your Professional Learning Plan to Accelerate Your Career

Without regular updating, a lot of our skills, and our knowledge, may eventually be out of date. If you want to do well in your career and acquire the skills you need to grow professionally, then you need to take responsibility for your learning. If you rely solely on your organization to do this for you, you're probably going to be waiting a while.

Now, this may sound all too familiar to some people, who've heard this message many times over the past few years. But turning the idea into reality is a different matter. We need to know how to spot valuable learning opportunities, and how to use this new information so we retain it. And that's what "Learn Your Way to Success" is all about.

The book teaches us how to plan a learning agenda, so we make learning a conscious part of our routine, just like other tasks. It teaches us how to recognize opportunities to learn, how to get comfortable with new ideas and question assumptions about how we currently do things, and how to use the Internet and other resources to grow our skills. The book also covers company-sponsored learning opportunities, like classes and trade shows, and how we can best take advantage of these opportunities.

"Learn Your Way to Success" is valuable for anyone. No matter who we are or what we do, we all need to devote time to learning on a regular basis. This book shows us how to do this consciously and constructively, so we maximize our time and learn in the most effective way possible.

Daniel Tobin has more than 30 years' experience in the leadership development field. He's an author, consultant and executive coach, and has founded two corporate universities. He's also worked as vice president of program design and development at the American Management Association.

So, keep listening to find out why your boss might be your best resource to help you learn new skills, how to work smarter by asking your colleagues about their work methods, and how LinkedIn can grow your industry knowledge.

"Learn Your Way to Success" is divided into ten chapters, and comes in at just under a hundred seventy pages. So, it's a pretty quick read. Each chapter has a fairly tight focus, which is helpful if you need to skip around.

Chapter one covers how to set your personal learning agenda and this provides a foundation for the rest of the book.

The author starts out with a good wake-up call. For years, companies could promise their employees stable employment, and a predictable career path. But these days, most organizations just can't make that promise. And to be honest, many of us wouldn't want them to.

We all need to be flexible and open to change to succeed these days. And, we need to know how to learn new information at a moment's notice so we can make a positive difference to our team.

But, we have to take the initiative here. We have to start by figuring out what we need, and want, to learn. And then we need to create an agenda to spend time learning this information on a regular basis.

The author says your boss may be the best person to help you figure out what you need to learn. She may also be able to help you find resources to fill those needs.

For instance, a boss can help you identify what you need to learn to improve your job performance. They can act as a teacher or mentor in your learning. They can help you use what you've learned in your current role, even giving you assignments or projects to test and grow your new skills. And, they can help you prepare to move up in the organization.

There are a number of useful worksheets to help identify the knowledge and skills you need to learn to be more effective. Some of these you fill out, and some are for your manager. Once you and your manager have filled out these worksheets, you can then prioritize your learning needs based on a useful scoring system the author came up with.

In this first chapter, you'll identify what you know, what you don't know, what you know you don't know, and what you don't know you don't know. These last two sound a bit confusing, we know. But here it is another way.

There are some skills you don't have, but you know you need to have them. And, there are some skills you don't have, and you don't know yet that you need them. In this chapter, you and your manager get the tools you need to identify both.

The author keeps this first chapter very practical and hands-on. You'll likely find it as useful as we did in identifying the gaps in your own knowledge and skills, and prioritizing what you need to focus on first.

Another chapter we thought valuable was chapter four. It covers critical and creative thinking, and why both are so important to learning. It's here that the author encourages us to stop thinking that the way we do things now is the best way.

For instance, we all develop our own ways of getting our work done. When we find a way that works, we adopt it and we usually don't try to find alternatives. After all, it's working so why look for another way, right?

The problem is that when we do things the same way, all the time, we can miss out on opportunities to do things better. What's more, we can miss out on learning new skills or having new experiences that would help us grow.

There's a great quote in this chapter that sums up this point perfectly. The quote, from Shoji Shiba, is, "When you consider something "ideal," you lose the opportunity to improve it."

The author gives us plenty of ideas to help us open up to new ideas and information.

One way is to talk to your colleagues who do similar work to you. Ask them how they do their own jobs, and then explain how you do yours. There's a chance that one of them is doing the same work, and getting better results with a different technique or approach. So, experiment with their methods.

After these tips we learn how to identify assumptions and constraints we might have. Getting rid of our assumptions is important because they often hold us back in our creative thinking, which is the focus of the next section. Here, we get insight into how we stifle our own creativity, and what we can do to start thinking more creatively every day.

One tip we particularly liked was to utilize the knowledge of new graduates in your organization. This sounds like a surprising tip, but think about it. You might have decades more experience than a new grad, but they may be more current on trends and technology in your industry because they just left school. Both of you can learn something new by talking and exchanging ideas.

Watching and listening is another way to think and act more creatively. And there's another constructive quote here, this time from American president Lyndon B. Johnson, who said, "You are not learning anything when you're talking."

Ask yourself, all the time, if you're truly listening, or just waiting for your chance to talk.

Chapter six covers the art of asking questions. And, the author makes a great point right up front when he says there's no such thing as a dumb question. Many of us are reluctant to ask questions because we don't want to be seen as ignorant. We don't want to give the impression we don't know something we were hired to know. But not asking just means we're going to stay ignorant, and we're not going to learn something we really might need to know.

There's a particularly insightful section here that will resonate with everyone in a leadership role.

Imagine someone on your team has come to you with a question. Here are five different ways you can respond.

The first is, "Don't bother me. Figure it out yourself."

The next is, "Just leave it with me, and I'll take care of it."

These first two responses don't allow your team member to learn anything new, unless they use follow-up questions to learn more.

The third response is, "Here's what you need to do." This third response gets the problem solved, but your team member doesn't gain any new understanding because they don't know why your solution is the best one.

The fourth response is, "Let me show you how to do that." This is a better response because it allows for some learning.

The last response is, "What do you think you ought to do?" This last response is the best one because it's an empowering question that not only conveys respect, but also opens up an opportunity for your team member to learn something.

This chapter is full of some really useful insights into the power of questions, and the power of response, when it comes to learning. It's definitely not one to miss.

Chapter eight is another favorite of ours. Here, the author talks about all the opportunities that are available to us on the Internet to develop our skills. Sites like Mind Tools are particularly valuable for helping you learn and grow, especially from the comfort of your home or office. In this chapter the author spells out some of the advantages of learning online.

For instance, discussion groups and forums that allow you to post questions, or follow discussions between other members, can be an invaluable resource.

These groups are often full of experienced professionals who are more than willing to share their knowledge with you, even though they don't know you. The online professional network LinkedIn is a great place to start looking for groups in your industry.

The author stresses that if you find value in a group, you should take the time to give back as well, and share your own expertise with others.

Another type of resource on the web is called Communities of Practice, or COPs. COPs are groups of people who share a passion for what they do or for a particular industry. They regularly get together online to exchange information, answer questions, or learn how to do something better. You can find COPs for your industry online or on the LinkedIn website.

These groups are useful because they can help you with everything from problem solving to finding a specific supplier for a hard-to-find part. The author says these groups sometimes even arrange visits between their organizations to learn how to do a particular process more effectively.

Other chapters in the book cover how to make the most out of the formal and professional learning opportunities that come your way, and how humility plays a part in effective learning.

So, what's our last word on "Learn Your Way to Success"?

We really liked this book because it's relevant for everyone, and the tips and strategies are practical and easy to apply. There are useful tips and strategies in every chapter. Many of these you can start using immediately.

What we liked most about the book was that it's a wake-up call. It's so easy to slip into a routine, and rely on the skills you're using daily to get your work done. And, it's even easier to believe that the way you're currently doing things is the best way. The author does a great job convincing us that this is a dangerous way to think.

In fact, there was nothing we didn't like about this book. The information is good and highly useful, the author sticks to the point, and we think it will make a positive difference to anyone who reads it.

"Learn Your Way to Success," by Daniel Tobin, is published by McGraw Hill.

That's the end of this episode of Book Insights. Thanks for listening.