Now that the video is available on YouTube, I thought I would share it with all of you.

The post TEDx Talk: Imagining a Better World appeared first on Great North Dynamics.

On Thursday, April 6, 2017, I will be releasing You Can’t Reach What You Can’t See: Developing a Personal Vision for Your Life.

This workbook combines goal-setting with developing an overarching vision for your life. Whatever your goal in life may be, this workbook can help you reach it by guiding you through the critical steps of identifying your passions, setting goals, and putting in place realistic action steps to achieve your goals.

Make sure you sign up for email updates so you can be the first to get the workbook!

The post Goal-Setting Workbook: Two Days to the Release! appeared first on Great North Dynamics.

In leadership, the value of inspiring vision cannot be overstated. Time and time again I will mention the importance of inspiring vision because it is crucial that leaders, teams, and organizations be purposeful in maintaining a solid vision. However, it is common that a team can lose or outgrow its vision. Sometimes a vision needs to be re-envisioned, re-purposed, or reinvented.

The process of re-imagining your vision is so important that I have dedicated this post to three steps on how to inspire your vision back into your team (or inspiring your vision for the first time).

1. Stop everything

It is vitally important that you fix this, and that might mean stopping everything. In his book Creativity, Inc., Edwin Catmull describes a vitally important measure that Pixar had to take: they closed their campus for an entire day and paid their staff to attend a workshop that would design their corporate vision for the future. In order to get Pixar’s staff on the same vision, they stopped everything and made that vision their number one priority.

Starbucks did something similar in 2008. Business Insider has a great article about how Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz turned the company around. One of the ways he did that was by closing every Starbucks store in order to retrain their staff. The purpose was to rediscover Starbucks’ vision for perfection. According to this article, this cost Starbucks over $6 million, but it was worth it to perfect the vision that would make Starbucks excellent. This is a good example of how vision and excellence go hand-in-hand.

If your team has lost its vision, it is imperative that you, as a leader, make regaining that vision a number one priority. Stop everything and make vision your focus.

2. Dare to dream

If you were a Canadian hockey fan in the late 1990s and early 2000s, you probably remember the Kokanee beer commercials featuring the Sasquatch (if you haven’t seen these, I highly recommend them). One such commercial is firmly imprinted in my memory. For those who don’t know, these commercials feature a forest ranger and his assistant, Arnold, who protect the Kokanee Glacier from the Sasquatch. In this commercial, the ranger hires three beautiful women to help protect the glacier from the Sasquatch. Arnold turns to the ranger and says, “But I thought the Sasquatch wasn’t real.” The ranger’s classic response was simple: “Dare to dream, Arnold. Dare to dream.”

When it comes to your vision, you have to dare to dream. The grander the vision, the greater the accomplishment. There are a few ways to produce such a vision.

1. Corporate vision. The case of Edwin Catmull and the Pixar vision seminar is a classic example of this tactic. The Pixar organization engaged their entire staff, from their accountants to their executive, to produce a corporate vision that included participation from their entire staff.
2. Team vision. I worked with an organization that saw a marked decrease in enthusiasm and ownership in their team (I’ve written a separate article on ownership). It was decided that the problem was in the communication of the vision to the team; they forgot why they did what they did. This particular organization decided to create a team vision that would reinvigorate the team. To do so they took a select number of trusted team members — in their case six — and together we created a vision for the rest of the team to follow.
3. Personal vision. If you are an entrepreneur, chances are that you have a vision that you want to realize. This is not a vision that you have created with others; it is yours. It is perfectly acceptable to use your personal vision as the head of a team.

Regardless of whether your vision is the result of corporate consultations, a small team brainstorm, or your own brain child, the creation of your vision is only the first step (steps on creating this vision will be discussed in a later post). Now you have to communicate that vision.

3. Insane communication

A vision is only a picture in your head if nobody else can see it.

That means that once you have your vision established, you have to sell it, and not to your customers. Before anything else, you have to sell your vision to your team.

If you are an executive, that would mean selling it to your executive team. At you’re at a lower level of leadership, that could mean selling it to your own team, or even to your peers. If you want someone else to carry that vision, they need to  be sold on it. I have a couple tips for the initial sale of your vision.

1. Keep it simple. If you over-complicate your vision, you will kill it before it has a chance to take root. There will be plenty of time to go over the intricacies and the individual steps to success later. But to inspire vision, keep it simple.
2. Focus on the why, not the how. Another way to put it is focus on the result, not the process. Again, you will have many opportunities to lay out your fifty-step plan to achieving your vision, but people don’t buy into a vision because they love the idea of the process; they own a vision because they desire the end result.
3. Make it personal. People are, deep down, selfish creatures, and the question burning in the back of our minds is, “What’s in it for me?” We will all deny that, of course, and sometimes we aren’t even aware that we’re thinking it, but there is a selfish lens that we all use. So make it personal. Tell your team exactly what the realization of your vision will produce for them, personally. Will stakeholders get a financial return? Will staff be able to be a part of a revolutionary industry that changes the way the world works? Can the volunteers at your non-profit be able to change lives? The more people you are selling your vision to the harder it is to make it personal, but at the end of the day, you want your team to have a personal stake in the realization of your vision.
4. Be realistic. Don’t try to sell anyone a unicorn. Your vision is going to take a lot of hard work to realize. It will probably call for a lot of sacrifice, both in time and money. Be realistic with your team. Let them know that it will be tough. Give them a taste of what is to come. If you sow your vision in reality, your team won’t be surprised when things get tough a month down the road. There won’t be a mob at your door complaining that it’s too hard. They need to know exactly what they’re getting themselves into. And they need to know that it is all going to be worth it.

Speaking of realistic, it is not an easy thing to sell your vision. But it is necessary, and it will be worth it when your team buys into it.

Communication does not end when the vision is sold. You will need to be in constant communication with your team to ensure that your vision does not die. Remind your team regularly about why you’re doing what you’re doing. That vision will empower everyone.

Dynamic lessons

Are you, your team, or your organization struggling with maintaining or developing a vision? The good news is that you’re not alone; thousands, if not millions, of individuals and organizations are going through the same thing. The better news is that there is a solution.

I gave you three simple steps to reinspiring vision in your team and organization:

1. Stop everything. Vision is vital to your organization’s survival and success. Take the time to get it right.
2. Dare to dream. This is the time for big dreams and aggressive goals. If you want the comfortable route, get out of leadership.
3. Insane communication. Once you’ve developed your vision, you have to communicate it. It’s not easy, but it’s necessary.

If you want more help in developing vision for you or your team, there are resources available for that. I have published a workbook dedicated to helping you develop a personal vision for yourself. To inspire vision in others, first you must inspire vision in yourself.

Have you ever struggled with developing or maintaining a vision? How did you make it work? I’d love to hear from you! Leave a comment below.

Creating Your Personal Vision

Check out You Can’t Reach What You Can’t See: Developing a Personal Vision for Your Life. This workbook will help you create a vision that will guide your career planning.

Books that influenced this article:

Creativity, Inc. by Ed Catmull and Amy Wallace

Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson

The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership: Follow Them and People Will Follow You by John C. Maxwell

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Regardless of where you are in your career, or even in life, you still want to stand out as an everyday leader. There are many ways that you can stand out from the crowd, but I wanted to give you five ways that you can change your habits (or reinforce existing habits) in order to stand out from the rest of the crowd as a leader.

1. Take responsibility

If you are a human being, at some point you are going to do something wrong. Chances are that you’re going to make a major mistake within the first month of starting a new job. If you’re anything like me, you’ll make a major mistake before you even start your new job.

I was starting a new job as a political assistant when I was invited to attend a meeting of the Board of Directors of the organization. Since I was going to be working closely with the Board, President of the Board wanted to introduce me to the rest of the directors and executive before I even began working there.

So, one Tuesday night I was spending time with my family when I got a phone call from the President of the Board asking me where I was. It took me a moment to realize that I had missed the meeting.

My first instinct was to think up an excuse so they wouldn’t think I forgot. I could tell them that something came up or that I thought it was a different day or even that I was feeling sick and had tried calling but couldn’t get through. But then common-sense kicked in and I told her the truth. I forgot.

True, I didn’t say it quite like that. I believe my words were more like, “I am so sorry, I completely forgot about that. This is my fault and I take complete responsibility. It will not happen again.” My soon-to-be boss was surprisingly forgiving and went back to the Board and actually stood up for me, telling them that I had taken responsibility and she thought I was worth taking a shot with. I ended up keeping my job and made a lasting connection with some very influential people on that Board.

Excuses are common. If you want to stand out as an entry-level employee, or any level of employee for that matter, stop making excuses. Excuses are for the weak. It takes a leader to take responsibility, and at the end of the day that’s really what your employer is looking for in their staff: leaders willing to take responsibility for their actions.

2. Work harder, not smarter

You’ve probably heard the phrase “work smarter, not harder.” It even makes sense sometimes. After all, if you come up with an innovative way to save time, money, and effort, people will take notice. But at the end of the day, your work ethic will set you apart from the rest.

When you enter the job market, you have to remember that you are not the smartest person in your labour pool. There are people you are working with, or competing with for a job, who have read more books than you, gotten a better education than you, and have more life experience than you. You will not outsmart these people, but you can outwork them.

Let me make one thing very clear: you need to think smart. I am not advocating that you check your brain at the door. You have life experience, education, and general knowledge that are unique to you; this knowledge is part of the reason why your boss hired you. Use that to your advantage. You should be bringing innovative ideas to the table and suggesting creative solutions to complex problems, but don’t count on your intelligence winning you that promotion.

Hard work is not just something that looks good to an employer, it’s also an important part of being successful. Nobody ever became successful by waiting on their butt (unless your parents are rich enough to buy you success). If you want to be successful in life or in your job, you have to work harder than everyone else.

When I was in high school, I played on our school’s basketball team. During the preseason, my coach would schedule two practices a day: one in the morning, before school, and one in the afternoon/evening, plus weekends. We were a small school and we played in a single A league in Canada, so the competition was nothing close to bigger schools in bigger districts. As far as our league went, we were the only team to be practicing this much. We worked out butts off.

Every once in a while, my coach would huddle up our team and explain why we had this ridiculous practice schedule when our opponents were practicing maybe half as hard. He explained it this way:

When you’re sleeping in, catching up on your beauty sleep, there’s someone out there who isn’t sleeping. He’s out there working hard so that when the time comes, he can beat you.

If you aren’t working hard, someone else is, and that person is getting an edge on you. Winners work hard. That’s the bottom line. So if you want to win, whether in life or your job, you have to work.

3. Tough is not Enough

This is another maxim from my high school basketball days. My basketball coach had warm-up t-shirts made up for the team with “tough is not enough” written across the chest. At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter how hard you work, how much you keep getting back up, or how much blood, sweat, and tears you shed; if you are not effective, you are not going to win.

You need to have skill. If you’re an accountant, you need to be good with numbers; a writer, good at writing; a salesman, good at sales; a marketer, good at marketing; a basketball player, good at basketball. It does not matter if you work harder than anyone else if you have no skill to put with it.

I have two older brothers, both of whom played basketball at the same high school that I did (they graduated before I started the program). They were both better at basketball than I was. I worked hard; I wanted to be good. But at the end of the day, I was never the star of the team like my brothers had been, because I was not as skilled as they were.

To be fair, both of my brothers are also naturally athletic and they have a talent for basketball. But they also put in their time. They practiced their shots, their dribbling, and their passing for hours every day. I worked just as hard as they did — sometimes I even worked harder — but I never reached the level of skill and talent that they had.

Now, we need to make a quick distinction between skill and talent. I think that Will Smith said it best when he said the following: “Talent you have naturally. Skill is only developed by hours and hours and hours of beating on your craft.” Lebron James is a talented athlete. You only have to watch him play basketball to know that he could probably beat you at any sport you tried. But he is also a skilled basketball player. He has put hours upon hours into the game, building his skill, so that the combination of his skill and talent make him one of the best basketball players in the world today.

You may have natural talent, but you will only get so far on talent alone. You need to work at your skill, as well. I also had a teammate who was naturally talented at basketball, but he didn’t like to work at it. So even though he was a naturally gifted basketball player, he ended up on the bench a lot because other players, who may have been less talented, worked harder, and that work turned into skill.

What this all means is that no matter how hard you work, if you aren’t building your skill, you’re not going to get anywhere. It’s easy to work hard just for the sake of working hard. But if you can work hard and get better at your craft, you’re going to set yourself apart.

Building skill requires hard work, but hard work does not require skill.

4. Come with solutions, not problems

Leadership can sometimes feel like all we do is put out fires. Everyone brings problems to leaders and expect solutions. If you want to stand out, don’t bring problems, bring solutions.

I used to oversee a young staffer, let’s call her Ellen (not her real name), who worked under me. She was an intelligent girl but lacked confidence and initiative when it came to making judgement calls. She spent more time asking me for help and getting my advice than actually doing work. Not only did it mean that neither of us got much work done, but it also meant that I was essentially doing her job for her. That is not the impression you want to leave on your supervisor.

This doesn’t mean you can’t ask someone for help. By all means, if you’re stuck, ask for help. But gain a reputation as a problem solver. When you come across a problem, come up with a solution. That way when you bring the problem to your supervisor, you can also bring a solution. Your solution may not always be the right one, but it is better to have a suggestion than nothing.

5. Act like you’re in control, even when you’re not

Your reputation is based on people’s perception of you.

If you act frantic and unorganized, people will assume that you are frantic and unorganized. If you act like you are in total control, people will assume that you are in total control, even if you are actually about to fall to pieces from the stress.

Work is stressful. School is stressful. Relationships are stressful. Even your leisure time can be stressful if you enjoy doing things that involve risk. The point is that people all around you are stressed. The way to stand out in a sea of stressed-out people is to seem completely at ease.

On a more work-related note, things will go wrong in your workplace. Maybe you will get an assignment that you don’t think you can complete, or you are overloaded on projects, or someone has said or done something to stretch you to your breaking point. Whatever it is, do your very best to hold everything together.

You never know who is watching your reaction to something, so act like you are in control, no matter what.

Your boss is always looking for leadership qualities in her staff (or at least she should be). There is nothing that screams leadership like someone who is constantly in control, or at least appears to be.

Dynamic lessons

The five tips I gave for millennials to stand out in the workplace are as follows:

1. Own up to your actions and take responsibility for when things go wrong. Or when they go right!
2. There is no substitute for hard word. The harder you work, the more you will stand out.
3. Building your skill is vitally important. You can’t just show up; you have to work at getting better and becoming excellent in what you do.
4. Everyone has problems. Leaders don’t bring problems to the table; they bring solutions.
5. Your reputation is based off of people’s perception of you, so act like you are in total control of the situation, even if you might be freaking out on the inside.

If you are a millennial or anyone else working their way up, building their leadership skills, what do you think of this list? Did any of them work for you? What other tips do you have? I want to hear from you, and so does everyone else, so leave a comment!

The post 5 Ways Millennials (and anyone else) Can Stand Out as Everyday Leaders appeared first on Great North Dynamics.

Peyton Manning is regarded as one of the best quarterbacks of his generation, possibly even in history, and for good reason. By the time that he retired, he held the following records:

1. Total career passing yards (71,940)
2. Total single season passing yards (5,477)
3. Seasons with 4,000+ yards (14)
4. Games with 400+ yards (14)
5. Total career touchdown passes (539)
6. Total touchdown passes in a single season (55)
7. Number of seasons with 25+ touchdowns (16)
8. Number of games with at least 4 touchdowns (35)
9. Number of four-touchdown games in one season (9)
10. Number of total wins (200)

These are just the records that Manning holds on his own (not to mention the more obscure records that he holds, such as the oldest quarterback to win a Superbowl (39) or the most playoff appearances by a quarterback (15), to name a few). In addition, Manning is tied for the top spot for these records:

1. Average yards per game over a career (342.3)
2. Number of 400+ yard games in a single season (4)
3. Number of touchdowns thrown in one game (7)

In case you aren’t a football fan, let me shed some light on these statistics: Peyton Manning is an impressive individual. Some of the records he holds are quite close to the competition, but many of them have a huge gap between him and second place. In other words, Manning is an elite among elite players, and a very successful man.

When Manning and the Denver Broncos took the field on February 7, 2016, this was their second Superbowl appearance in two years. On February 2, 2014, Manning led the Broncos onto the field at Metlife Stadium in East Rutherford, NJ, to do battle with Russell Wilson and the Seattle Seahawks in Superbowl 48. In 2014, however, the end result was very different from 2016.

On the very first offensive drive of Superbowl 48, Peyton Manning, one of the greatest quarterbacks of all time, fumbled a snap that Seattle returned for a touchdown. Seattle never looked back, and for the rest of the game, the Broncos were steamrolled. The final score: Seattle: 43, Denver: 8.

This was a huge surprise to the football world. It’s not that the Seahawks were the underdogs — the Seahawks had the highest-rated defence in the league — but nobody expected such a blow-out. The Broncos had the best offence in the league by far. Peyton Manning had just had one of the best seasons of his storied career. The question on everyone’s lips was: “Can the Seahawks keep up with Peyton?” Nobody thought to ask if Peyton could keep up with the Seahawks.

The defeat was humiliating and the wounds were fresh. Peyton Manning had just played a record-setting season (he had set three single-season records for that season: most season passing yards, most touchdown passes in a season, and most four-touchdown games in one season) and had capped it off by losing the most important game of the season. How do you come back from that?

The answer, according to Peyton Manning himself, was self-evaluation. The first day back at the the Broncos training facility in Denver, Manning and the rest of his team watched the entire Superbowl game on tape. Multiple times. No, they weren’t reliving the defeat, they were watching themselves. Manning watched every single snap, every pivot, every throw, every play that he did. And he learned.

That’s not all that Manning reviewed. Over the course of the 2013-2014 season, Manning threw 787 passes (regular season and playoffs combined). He rewatched every single pass. He wasn’t just looking at his throwing technique either; he was watching to see where his receivers lined up, where their defenders matched them, the routes his receivers ran, where his eyes went, which receiver he threw the ball at, and how the defence responded. After each throw he would ask himself if he threw to the right receiver or if there was a better option. What did he do right? What did he do wrong?

Manning was so dedicated to watching game film that he went high-tech, even mobile. He had a top-of-the-line home theatre installed in his home for the sole purpose of watching game film at home. If that wasn’t enough, he also had a tablet that he carried everywhere with him, so that he could watch game film whenever he had a spare moment. For Peyton Manning, the time he spent actually playing the game paled in comparison with the amount of time he spent evaluating his own performance.

In the 2013-2014 season, Manning threw 55 touchdown passes (the most ever thrown in a single season). Was he happy with that? No. There were missed opportunities that he identified on film where he could have made more touchdown passes. More game film to study, to learn from.

So what is the point of all this work? Two years later returning to the Superbowl and winning that all-important final game was the point. Armed with the knowledge, Manning was prepared for the work it would take to get back to the top. Now, he did not do it alone. If there is one sport that epitomizes the concept of team, it is football. There are eleven players on the field, and each one is vital to the success of the team. As a leader, Manning had to first evaluate himself and improve himself before he could ask his team to do the same.

Demaryius Thomas is a wide receiver and was one of Manning’s teammates in both the 2014 and 2016 Superbowls. He was once interviewed by ESPN about Manning’s film review habits and he said, “[Peyton] will always say if he thought he could have done something differently. He’s not afraid to just say it. … When guys see somebody like Peyton so accountable, you have to be accountable. You can’t help it. He’s Peyton doing that — how are you going to just duck your head and not admit what you did?”

As team captain and a leader, Manning focused on improving himself before improving his team. The rest of his team saw their leader, the 2013 Most Valuable Player and arguably the best regular-season quarterback of all-time, evaluating every single second of his own performance in order to improve. Such action inspired them to evaluate their own performance, to get better, to match their leader. And they did. And two years later they won the Superbowl and became the best football team in the world.

Dynamic Lessons

Leadership is not just about inspiring others; it is equally about inspiring yourself.

1. You are first and foremost responsible for yourself. If you want to succeed, you must take ownership of your actions. There are always ways for you to improve. If the MVP of the NFL and the single-season touchdown record holder can find ways to improve his game and spot places that he could have made more touchdowns, then you can find areas of your own performance that you could tweak to become better and more efficient.
2. When a leader voluntarily evaluates his/her own performance, the rest of the team will follow. Oftentimes leading by example is far more important than leading by instruction. You want your team to be able to evaluate themselves, so show them how it’s done.
3. It’s a team game. You might not be a football player, or even a sports fan, but you are probably working in a team. Teamwork means, believe it or not, working together. When you constantly evaluate yourself and improve yourself, you make yourself and your team better.
4. Failure and success are equally instructional. This is perhaps the most important lesson. Manning learned not just from his mistakes, but also from his successes. He had the most successful individual season he ever had in 2013, even though he ended up losing the Superbowl. Both his failures and his successes were instrumental in teaching him and his team the lessons they needed to learn in order to win two years later.

Have you ever taken the time to stop and evaluate yourself and your outcomes? What did you learn about yourself?

The post Case Study: Peyton Manning and the Value of Self-Evaluation as a Leader appeared first on Great North Dynamics.

One spring afternoon I was working alone in our front office and had to help an elderly gentleman who introduced himself as “the smartest person you will ever meet.” This customer told me that whenever he walks into a room, he is always the smartest person in that room. Apparently, all of his friends call him up whenever they have a problem they can’t solve, because he always has the answers.

Here’s a free tip:

The best way to get an arrogant person to like you is to let them brag about themselves.

Deep down, we all have an ego that loves to be stroked, so I let this guy go off about how much of a genius he is for over ten minutes before we finally got down to why he needed my help. It turns out that this self-professed genius had created a rather difficult legal problem for himself because, rather than follow specific instructions on a government form, he had knowingly chosen to put incorrect information on the form.

I explained the simple fix to this gentleman, and I advised him that though it might take a few weeks and a couple pages of paperwork, he would be able to rectify the situation without too much headache. The client’s response was that he was smarter than any bureaucrat, and he wasn’t going to do anything to fix the problem because it wasn’t his fault.

My client experienced a long period of difficulty due to his unwillingness to take advice from someone else; he wanted someone else to fix the problem, because he was positive that he was in the right. His behaviour is symptomatic of a deeper issue that has become prevalent today: an unwillingness to be taught.

People are often ready and willing to learn, but being taught is a different ball game. Learning is an action to be proud of because you are bettering yourself; being taught is a humbling experience because it means that someone else knows something that you don’t.

You must always be ready for someone to teach you something.

The willingness to be taught, or “teachability,” is an important trait for everyone, but it is vital for a leader. A leader should be searching for learning experiences in every situation.

1. You are not the smartest person in the room

No matter how much education you have, how well you scored on your exams, how much random knowledge you have, or how long you have trained in your field, there will be people who are smarter, have more education, more training, and better test scores than you.

It is important to have knowledge; after all, knowledge is power. It is equally important to not equate knowledge with prestige.

Just because you know something does not mean that you know everything.

Whether you are a high school drop out or a PhD, you have some knowledge that you can share with other people, but there is still so much that you can learn from other people.

One of my mentors and good friends, Mike Mannes, once said, “If you find that you’re always the smartest person in the room, you need to find new friends.” This is key.

Surround yourself with people who are smarter than you.

You should be seeking to learn new things, and you can only learn things from people who know things that you don’t. If you want to be a leader, your friends should be able to teach you stuff. Their knowledge might be about different topics than yours (maybe you’re a geologist and your friend is an English major), but they should be in a position that they can teach you.

Learning from friends or the people around you does not — and should not — have to be a formal affair. You can learn so much from people in general conversation, if you are open and willing to be taught. Whether they agree with you or not (more on this in point number three), you can still learn so much from someone just by listening to them speak.

Before you can learn from someone, you have to humble yourself and admit that there is something that they can teach you.

2. You can learn something from anyone

As much as you should be learning from your friends and the people you spend time with, you should also be learning every day from, well, anyone.

If you are willing to admit that you are not the smartest person in the room, the next step is to admit that, just possibly, the person who you consider to be less smart than you might still have something to teach you.

I have met too many people in academia who equate their degree or level of education with a position on the totem pole of intelligence. The higher your degree or level of education, the smarter you are, and if you have a higher degree of education than the next person, that makes you automatically smarter than that person.

The same is true, however, outside of academia. People with less education tend to discriminate against people within academia. They assume that academics are being brainwashed by the education system and that Regular Joe can learn far more by reading stuff on the internet than Doctor Don can learn at school.

The truth is that neither person is correct. Yes, you have to work hard and learn a lot of information to earn a degree in college or university, but that does not necessarily make you more intelligent than if you never went to school; it just gives you a wider breadth of knowledge. It is true that by going to school, academics are learning what other people want them to learn, but that does not mean that their education is any less valuable for it.

No matter how much education or self-led learning you have, you still have so much to learn. You cannot prejudice who you learn from based on your judgement of their intelligence.

Everyone can teach you something, even if it is simply how not to do something.

I was once volunteering with a group that was putting on a weekend leadership conference. A couple of hours before the door opened, the technical crew was doing a final check of the sound, lights, and visual aids. In their check they found a glitch in one of their programs that would not allow them to run one of their video files.

With the clock counting down, the tech team was working frantically to fix the glitch and get the program running. I know next to nothing about these sorts of errors, so I was observing but not getting involved. Standing next to me was a young woman who, like me, knew very little about technical errors, but she had seen this error before and she had an idea on how to fix it.

When this young woman suggested her solution to the tech team, she was told in a polite manner that it wouldn’t work and to leave the fix to the experts. For another twenty minutes these experts continued to work on the bug with no progress. Finally, after trying everything they could possibly think of, the tech team allowed this young woman to attempt her fix. Five minutes later, the program was debugged and the file ran perfectly.

Like I said, I am no technical expert, so I can’t tell you how this young woman fixed the error, but she did. Even though she had no technical training, she had seen the bug before and remembered how to fix it. The problem was that the so-called experts refused to believe that an untrained person could have the knowledge to fix such a problem.

We can all be like this team, blinded by our own knowledge, or at least our perception of our own knowledge.

Never assume that someone cannot teach you something useful.

3. Debate is about learning

With both an academic and a professional background in politics and political science, you can be sure that I have experienced my fair share of debates. I found that debates among university students — especially political science students — could get fierce. It’s easy to dig your heels into the ground and give up no ground when you’re engaged in a passionate argument.

I had a professor in university who loved debate and always prodded it along. If someone was on the fence, he would force that individual to take a side. The same was true of presentations: the professor would ask you to research a topic, present both sides of the debate, take a position in the debate yourself, and then open up the floor to the rest of the class for their ideas. More than once his classroom devolved into a chaotic maelstrom.

My professor’s tactics were not, however, designed to foster disunity; rather, he promoted debate and arguments because this forced the exchange of ideas. He would urge everyone to keep an open mind and actually listen to the opposing arguments. The purpose of his debates was not to convince the opposing side, but rather to learn or consider something they hadn’t before.

I am not entirely certain that my professor’s tactics were the best-guided, but the theory behind them was true:

You can learn far more from someone with whom you disagree than agree.

Imagine two people discussing a controversial topic. Both people have the same opinion on the topic. How much critical thinking do you think will occur? Not very much. Sure, one person might bring up a fact that the other person never knew, but with no one to counter their points, how are they going to learn? If two people discuss opposing views on the same topic, they will be exposed to arguments and facts that they may have never considered before.

I am not suggesting that you should enter a debate with the intention of changing your mind. In fact, I am suggesting that you should enter debates with the willingness to learn something from your opponent. There are very few debates in this world that have one side completely correct and one side completely wrong.

Be willing to learn from your opponent; their knowledge may surprise you.

Dynamic lessons

Teachability is one of the most important attributes of an upcoming leader. There are three things to remember in order to be teachable.

1. Remember that you are not the smartest person in the room. There are always people who are smarter and better trained than you are; be willing to learn from them. You should also surround yourself on purpose with intelligent people so you can continually learn from them.
2. No matter how intelligent you are, you can learn something from anyone, even someone you might consider to be less intelligent than you are. People can surprise you.
3. You might like to argue, but debate is about learning. When you exchange differing ideas with someone, be willing to learn from them, even if you disagree.

Share in the comments section about a time that you learned something valuable from someone unexpected. Or if you disagree with me, tell me why!

Speaking of becoming teachable, if you want to learn more about how to be a strong leader, improve your creativity, succeed in life and business, or just become a better communicator, make sure you check out my page of Leadership Books That You Should Read. I have a lot of good material there that you should read.

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