Focus on Lifelong Learning Through Established Relationships

Throughout my career, I have been diligent about growing my knowledge across a range of different areas and I have learned to be cognizant to that fact that in most areas I am not what I would consider an expert.  I am more of a generalist and I think for my particular line of work this helps me to successfully navigate driving key conversations across multiple domains.  To continue my personal growth down this path I have tried to position my self as best as I can for lifelong learning.

What does it really mean to position yourself for lifelong learning?   As individuals, we have the ability to learn through a lot of different channels that range from active channels that we manage directly to inactive channels that evolve as a result of the environment around us or how we are positioned in that environment. I will continue to talk about this topic and will share tips that have helped me position myself in a way that enables me to continuously learn and increase the depth and range of areas that I have some level of conceptual or technical knowledge as we dive deeper into My Journey.

One active channel that anyone can start to evolve that I wanted to establish now is learning through a mentor-mentee relationship.   There are learnings to be had on both sides of this equation. The mentor will generally have a wide breadth of knowledge in the domain that the mentee is looking to grow and will share this knowledge to help the mentee.  In turn in this relationship, the mentee brings to the mentor real-life problems that they are facing within a particular domain and seeks advice from the mentor.   This provides the mentor with an expanded view of uses cases for the particular problem and challenges them to leverage their knowledge and experience of the domain to construct a conceptual solution or a pathway that the mentee can explore that will increase their chance of success to navigate through the particular problem they are facing.  As the conversations evolve of time the mentor is going to be able to see what result the feedback that they provide led to or what additional problems the mentee faced after they proceed forward taking action based on the knowledge and direction their mentor gave them.

Mentor-mentee relationships are just a great all-around source of knowledge for those involved and from the mentor side, they come with an extra sense of ownership.  In my career, I have been lucky to be on both sides of this equation and am currently still working with individuals that I see as mentors for me as I continue to grow in my professional career. This is something I imagine I will strive to keep evolving throughout my career and I think this is often an active learning channel that is missed by professionals that are already established in their career.  So I would challenge you regardless of your career experience level to think through new knowledge domains you could leverage and establish a beneficial mentor-mentee relationship with someone that has a depth of knowledge within the new domain.  Leverage their experience to accelerate your learning!