Leaders Are Learners

You're listening to Leadership Blueprints, the podcast where we explore the art and science of leading yourself, inspiring and empowering your team, and project leadership in the architectural, engineering, construction, and development industries, and beyond. I'm your host, Vijay Kramer, president and CEO of MCFA. I hope you enjoy today's show. Welcome back to Leadership Blueprints, everybody. We are continuing our summer solo series that we're calling Pages to Projects.

Last week, we talked about leaders are readers. This week, we're gonna talk about leaders are learners. The truth is that reading alone is not enough to learn. Reading can turn into entertainment. I don't know how many times I've been listening to an Audible book or reading a book, and I am plowing through the material, and I can't really remember any key takeaways.

I was just kind of enjoying the macro concept of the book, and I think titles alone on books can give us those macro concepts. So I refer to some of the Dan Sullivan and Ben Hardy books, who not how, and 10 x is easier than two x, and these concepts, and then the books go into these concepts. But how do I actually take the concepts that I'm reading and turn them into action? And I think that's that's the key to learning. So today, we're gonna talk about Leaders Are Learners.

Ten years ago, I was not under this business coach's tutelage, but I saw a business coach, his name is Garrett J. White. And one of the key things he gave me was, in addition to reading every day for twenty minutes, he said, as soon as you get a nugget from what you just read, and it could be at the two minute mark, it could be at the ten minute mark, or it could be at the twenty minute mark, as soon as you get the nugget, because we're reading, we're not reading to consume, we're reading to learn. As soon as you learn something, highlight it, write it down, and then next to what you learned, write down how you would apply it into your life, into your work, into your routine. Because if we don't make the bridge between what we just read and how we can apply it, we're actually not taking the action to learn or to improve ourselves.

And then he said to take it a step further and find somebody in the next week that you can teach it to. Maybe it's just a coworker that you're gonna... Every time I learn something, I'm gonna teach it to you. But find a way to take these things that you are reading, this information you're consuming, grab the nuggets, reflect on it, synthesize it, apply it, or figure out how you can apply it, and then go teach somebody. And this changed how I consume books.

I probably spent ten years just consuming, and I think that consumption, there's there's a bunch of information archived in my brain somewhere that I can I can reference, but I probably was not iterating and improving my day to day activities as much as I could be? I was getting a bunch of knowledge, but I was not... I wasn't applying or or really learning all of it. That's how we're gonna start. That's the tip.

It reminds me a lot of the West Point model. I've probably talked about it before, but West Point... The leadership development model at West Point is part classroom training, which we'll call education, part field training, which we'll call application, and part reflection. There's a lot of structure in the West Point curriculum that forces you to analyze yourself, to grade yourself, to reflect on what you're learning, to journal, and to take some some level of tests that slowly increase your self awareness. Without those three things combined, if you are just getting educated, let's call that the consumption of the books.

If you're just reading, but you're not applying or reflecting, you're you're not going to improve, and you're not gonna really learn. Some of the ways that learning is about absorbing, so you could be absorbing information from books, podcasts, mentors, coaches, applying it. Hey, you can apply these things to a macro situation. Like, hey, this next project I take on, I'm gonna I'm gonna try to be more structured, more organized based on this thing I read. Or this next meeting I have, I am going to try to start it off a little differently because I read about starting meetings with some kind of positivity.

So you have to absorb, then you have to apply. And whether that's applying into the project, into your team, into little micro experiments in your life. Tim Ferriss talks a lot about just experimenting in your day to day. The next person that you you go order a meal from or a coffee from, he would always talk about smiling and seeing if they smile back, and how does smiling change how you engage with them. Reflecting, and reflecting is journaling and conversations and teaching other people.

And then the last is reinforcing. And reinforcing in my life now is about creating the systems around me and around our team that encourages accountability, that encourages commitment and follow through. Because if I'm trying to be the only one doing these things and trying to be self disciplined all of the time and trying to change all of these behaviors, it it will never happen. But when I focus it down, and I take something I've read, I turn it into something I understand and I can apply, and maybe I can apply it in our business, then I teach it to the business, or I teach it in an MCFA university, or I teach it. That alone is not enough.

I now need a reinforcing structure to hold me and others accountable to some new standards, some new some new topic that we've taught. And I am going to be completely honest that I have done a lot of consumption. I've done a lot of reflection. I've done a lot of teaching. Accountability is the place where even though I'm a systems engineer, even though I know that all of our results are about systems, I have not always converted all of the knowledge, all of the teaching, all of the learning into a systematic approach inside of our business.

And I think that is a key missing ingredient in a lot of a lot of our lives. So whether you are macro counting, or ptosis or carnivore diet, there's all of these health and fitness gurus out there, whether you're getting it on YouTube or Instagram or the Peter Attia or Andrew Huberman podcast, they tell us all this information. And they've already done a lot of the synthesis of the information, and they try and just break it down to a habit. So the key takeaway of all of their podcasts are usually, hey, here are some habits you could apply to your day to day life. We know that these things are good to do.

We know that they've backed it up with science. We know that we'll be better off if we do them. But then if we don't figure out how we apply that into our day to day lives systematically into a routine daily, we're not gonna change. One of the ways I work through a lot of information is is using the podcast. I use MCFA University.

I use my Leadership Team. I have used in the past business coaches to help me synthesize and learn and then apply. I think journaling and our weekly email is another place that I I work through these, and I process a lot of the information. So my challenge to you this week is, last week I said pick up the habit of reading. This week I'm saying pick up the habit of learning, so converting your reading to how you can apply, use the methodology of twenty minutes of reading, stop as soon as you get a nugget.

And I am telling you that the next time you pick up a book, you... When you think about this, you are going to realize, holy cow, I I do come up with nuggets. I I see what he's talking about. Grab the nugget, write it down, write down how you could apply it, And again, the examples of how you can apply it are all over the place. I've I've applied a concept in a in a proposal, a concept I've read in in a proposal.

I'm working on a proposal. I'm reading this idea. These two things come together. Oh, that's... That that should be added to our technical approach on this project or in our demonstrating to our client that we understand their problem.

So you'll be surprised at how much application you do when you're not reading just for let me get to twenty minutes, but you're reading over twenty minutes, what can I learn? I would encourage you from a operational standpoint. Maybe you have a meeting once a week. Maybe you start out that meeting like we do with good news. Michael Furman has started out meetings.

What did you learn this week? So if your team is reading a book or if you're reading a book and you wanna share something with your team, ask other people. What did you learn this week? I think that that creates a bit of a learning culture. And then I'm reading this Ben Hardy book on the science of scaling, and we've talked about quarterly growth, but he's talking about monthly.

Building a monthly habit of reflection. What's working, what's not, and why. And I think when you distill out what's working, what's not working, and why, as you are continuing to try to improve who you are as a human, who you are as a parent, who you are as a as a spouse, who you are as a professional, as a business person, as a technician, the more you distill out that, it reminds you to look at the world through the lens of who you are trying to become. And when you're looking at the world through the lens of who you're trying to become, and you're looking at all of the books that you're reading from that lens, the nuggets will start coming to you about, oh, I can change this. I can get better here.

Oh, I should not do this. I should do that. I think those are three ways. Tactical is is what are the insights you're getting from your reading. Operational is implementing that with your team by talking about what did you learn this week.

And then strategic is building a monthly routine around reflecting on what's working, what's not, and why. And I think that over time will force you to not just be a leader that's a reader, but a leader that's a learner. So that's it for this week. Quick and fast, but leaders are learners. Next week, we will talk about Leaders Are Doers.

Until next time, have a great week and a great weekend. Hey, everybody. Thanks so much for tuning into Leadership Blueprints. I hope today's episode gave you some valuable insights, a chance to reflect, and some practical tools you can start using right away. If you enjoy the show, I'd love it if you took a moment to leave us a review.

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