Why Everyone in The Electrical Industry Must Continue to Learn
Learning should be lifelong and every day.
I really believe that learning doesn’t stop after you get your electrical contracting license or get an education, but it is a commitment forever. It is something you have got to do every day, for as long as you live, and for as long as you have that hunger to grow, to be better, to improve! If you want to avoid being stuck in a position, such that you aren’t happy, you have got to learn. It is the only course that has an upwards trajectory.
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The key thing is to learn from everyone on the team. You have to encourage people so that they want to learn actively. Understand people's perspectives because everyone has a different point of view, so you should always be open to new learning.
When someone is teaching you something new, and you quickly say, "I know," it is quite often the end. Using this phrase regularly can be the end of your learning journey. And if you are the manager, you have got to remember that you should never, NEVER ever, tell your subordinates, "You should know this.” It will discourage them from asking questions in future and will also de-motivate them.
Once I and Brett Matthews were talking about “mistakes, pride, and continuous learning.” He said that when you spend more time working with good people and great businesses, then going out on your own becomes your second nature.
When I asked him what he would like to change in retrospect, he said maybe he won't change a lot of things because he won't be where he is today without going through all of that.
Matthews says, “Don't let pride get in the way.” Even when he had high expectations from everyone, he understood that not everyone is like him. You have to have a certain way to understand that some people's 100% is just a small percentage of yours. So you should not be afraid to get other people's assistance. Understand the business aspects and make sure that you improve productivity by learning every day and working at it.
Eduardo Briceño shares in the TED talk How to get better at the things you care about, how there are two zones in life - the learning zone and the performance zone. You have to constantly be in both zones, turn by turn, so you can succeed and improve at whatever you want. It is no use solving electrical faults if you don’t step back once in a while and master the VRI fault finding principle which will help you to locate faults fast. Likewise, it is no use just reading books on how to swim. To learn swimming, you have got to take the dive.
In a Forbes article titled, “Lifelong learning is the fundamental key to successful entrepreneurship,” the author writes:
“For entrepreneurs, lifelong learning is fundamental to long-term success. If you work at a big company, you collide with new experiences, ideas and skills. The company introduces a new technology, and you’re forced to use it. If you’re running your own business, you’re the owner, IT, marketing, HR and finance departments. Frequently, business owners will find themselves in business without the foundational skills – such as accounting, finance and marketing – and they’ll usually try to deal with it.”
Now that you know why learning matters, let’s address how to ensure that what you learn sticks!
According to a research, after learning something new, a thing remains in our active brain memory for one-hour at max and we will forget 40% of the information in just 24 hours. You can avoid this by maintaining a Learning Journal, which is a notepad where you write notes. When you write it down, you are employing kinesthetic learning -- it has been heard and interpreted, and the physical movement of writing things down helps you to remember things. Thus you should really consider maintaining a learning journal.
In the Inc.com article called, “5 tips to learn on the job,” it is suggested that you do these things at work:
Shadow those who know to learn from them.
Ask questions to know more.
Talk things out to understand better.
Tinker to gain practical knowledge, to innovate and find new, better ways to do the job.
Trial by fire -- learn and do a thing till you get it right!
I hope you will continue your efforts to learn something new every day. The fact that you are on this platform and have read till the end of the article proves that you are committed to a lifelong journey of success. And I congratulate you and invite you to be a member of our high-performance Electricians Success Academy -- because you deserve the best resources.
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