Here's An Idea: The More You Listen, The More You Learn

When you pay attention and learn from others, you will always be one step behind the very best and one step ahead of the rest of the people.

"If you never copy best practices, you’ll have to repeat all the mistakes yourself. If you only copy best practices, you’ll always be one step behind the leaders." James Clear

Enoch Nkwe on the Idea-Sharing Project

PODCAST: Enoch Nkwe - The more you listen, the more you learn

Learning from England’s long game

Welcome to Here’s An Idea, a newsletter from Chadwick Drive. The purpose of the newsletter is to share ideas that you might find useful, something worth taking a moment to pause and think about. Though they are just ideas, I am dedicated to sharing meaningful insights. No noise. No fluff.

Here’s An Idea:

In an interview with Evan Nesterak, from behavioralscientist.org, Adam Grant shares a  story of his encounter with Daniel Kahneman. According to Adam, he had just finished giving a talk on some of my research on givers and takers when he noticed that Kahneman was in the audience.

"I’m doing this double-take as I’m walking offstage, and Danny is there. He stops me, and he says, 'That was wonderful. I was wrong.' His eyes twinkled as he said it, and he lit up," he narrates.

"I ended up sitting down with him and asking him to explain this reaction. I said, 'I’ve seen this a couple of times — I’ve seen you make predictions, people end up running the experiment and you see something that’s not what you expected, and you seem to really take joy in being wrong.' In response, Daniel Kahneman said, 'No one enjoys being wrong, but I do enjoy having been wrong because it means I am now less wrong than I was before.'"

Daniel Kahneman's mindset is that of an individual with a desire to learn, and not to win arguments or prove his dedication to a point of view or perspective. “My attachment to ideas is provisional. There is no unconditional love for them,” Kahneman explained his mindset.

He does not tie his identity to his ideas, but to learning. He has a growth mindset, less intent on demonstration what he knows, and set on improvement.

But, it is not just the desire to learn that matters, it is that desire coupled with intellectual humility. In her studies, Elizabeth J. Krumrei-Mancuso found that intellectual humility is a necessity if one is to learn more and expand one’s sphere of knowledge and understanding.

Humility, in general, is often thought of as a virtue relevant to gaining new knowledge, as most definitions of humility involve an acknowledgement of one’s limitations.

Therefore, people who possess intellectual humility are less likely to claim knowledge one doesn’t have. More often than not, they manage to more accurately assess their knowledge. Intellectual humility is also associated with a variety of characteristics associated with knowledge acquisition, including reflective thinking, need for cognition, intellectual engagement, curiosity, intellectual openness, and open-minded thinking. Needless to mention, Intellectual humility is associated with an intrinsic motivation to learn.

Simply put, learning requires the humility to realize one has something to learn. And the moment one embraces it one gives themselves the best chance when it comes to gaining new and more accurate knowledge.

This is the same mindset I encountered in Enoch Nkwe.

Be willing to rethink your perspectives. The purpose of interactions is to facilitate learning, and the point of learning isn’t to affirm our beliefs; it’s to evolve our beliefs.

This Week’s Articles:

He listens because he loves learning new things, understanding different perspectives and taking in different ideas. That is just the way he is. And it is that nature that he possesses that is the reason why he has achieved so much as a coach, even though he is relatively young in age. - Enoch Nkwe on the Idea-Sharing Project

On leadership: “True leadership is not about authority, it’s about developing people and helping them reach their full potential.”

On the dressing-room environment: “My duty as a coach is to create an environment where my team members have the courage to be themselves.” - PODCAST: The more you listen, the more you learn

The long game isn’t particularly notable. It doesn’t draw a lot of attention because it doesn’t offer any spectacular results immediately. In fact, you might even call it boring. It is no different from pounding a rock, most times you don’t notice tiny advantages until you see the big gaps in the outcome. - Learning from England’s long game

Article from the archives:

Visualization has been linked to better motivation, self-efficacy, self-confidence and as a tool to manage stress and anxiety. A number of athletes have reported that they felt more in control and prepared for unexpected events should they occur. - The Science Behind the Art of Visualization in Sport

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