One of the things that helps people make progress is to consciously think about what they know now that they didn’t know last week (month, year, etc.). Incremental knowledge – no matter how small or big it may be – accumulates and adds to your professional development.
Why not ask this question at your weekly team meetings? If you take time to have a quick round robin, you may be pleasantly surprised with what you hear.
You and your staff will benefit in several ways by doing this. First, it helps create a culture of continuous learning. By being encouraged to share what they learned in the past week, they may add more value to their work.
Second, it encourages knowledge sharing with their coworkers. One person may say something that triggers an idea in someone else, and this has obvious benefits for expanding their perspectives.
Third, as people share “what they know now”, it creates an opportunity to consciously focus on becoming more of a high-performing team and organization.
This starts with the leader, of course. You need to set the tone by participating fully and by encouraging even the smallest contribution. All incremental knowledge helps move the team; don’t be judgmental about the “quality” of the learning.
If doing this creates a 1% improvement in your staff each week, you can do the math and see the possibility of what happens over a year.
“Learning never exhausts the mind.”
—Leonardo da Vinci
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