It takes many things to be successful. Let’s concentrate on just one thing, trainability. The ability to assimilate new information, test it in your world and learn what works and what doesn’t.
Sounds easy enough, right?
Do most people do it? Do most do it well? The answer to all three of those questions is a resounding no.
First, most people don’t really want to change or to have things change around them. Why?
Change is difficult, it’s frightening, change makes us feel uncomfortable and insecure.
However, if we want to grow, we must change and that change will be constant, fast and furious, scary and uncomfortable.
Yep, such is life. If we want to grow we must change, if we’re going to achieve those grand designs we have.
As in life, in business.
We’re all good at criticizing others and not so good at most self criticism. Recently I heard a speaker say, You must challenge bad ideas, of course, but you must challenge good ideas even more. We believe all our ideas, beliefs and habitual thoughts are correct or at least we habitually defend them. We’re awfully good at it. That isn’t going to make us better. Challenging the bad and the good habitually will guarantee you’ll become better at your job, develop stronger relationships and continuously improve the quality of your life.
A great philosopher once said, The unexamined life is not worth living. Examine your beliefs, your ideas and your habits. Challenge them, question yourself instead of merely continuing to defend your often erroneous presumptions and figuring out how everyone else is wrong.
Instead of continuing to avoid the hard conversations you need to have with others, first, learn how to have hard conversations with yourself. You will learn to think more effectively, to question more deeply and to develop your empathy skills by using them on yourself.
You’ll make the change that’s necessary for you and your team to achieve your mission. At work, as in life, be trainable because trainability is vital to success in everything.