Your 15% Learning Edge
As you grow in your career and mature more generally, you’ll identify places where you’d like to respond differently to situations. Growing a larger repertoire of responses is part of expanding your leadership. You’re a multi-faceted woman, and bringing more of your complexity forward is a strength. Great leadership includes more of you, not less.
Learning is a process that takes time. You don’t try something one time and then have unlimited access to those new behaviors. Yet there is one truth to hold to when you determine what and how to experiment with different behaviors. Holding this truth in mind will ensure the behaviors you’re experimenting with remain options you can choose rather than something you shelve prematurely.
The 15% learning zone
In trying on new approaches to situations, find experiments that offer a balance of support and challenge. A good rule of thumb is something that is 15% outside of your comfort zone. When you try something well beyond that 15%, you’re likely to tip over into anxiety and protection. The stretch beyond 15% is a threat to your internal operating system. You’ll unconsciously divert attention away from learning and toward protecting yourself from challenges that are too large.
Experimenting within a 15% zone of learning allows you to stay connected to what’s familiar while pushing on its boundaries enough to make room for new behaviors.
The key to staying in your learning zone
One of the biggest ways to honor your personal 15% learning zone is to carefully select with whom and within what contexts you want to experiment with new behaviors. In choosing where to experiment, choose a relationship that has established trust. Even better is someone with whom you can be honest about what you’re experimenting with and who can give you honest feedback about how well-matched your intentions are to the outcome created with your new behavior. It’s best to select a context or scenario that feels lower stakes, where the outcome of your experiment isn’t likely to carry huge, irreversible consequences.
An example of experimenting in the learning zone
A big place I encourage women I work with to stretch into their 15% learning zone is when they know they’re going to leave a job. I encourage the period between knowing you’re going to quit and actually quitting to be a ripe learning ground to experiment in ways that potentially felt too risky when you wanted to stay in your role. If you’ve had whispers in your mind or heart about wanting to try doing something different, that time is a great period to turn up the volume on those whispers and play with new actions.
Everyone’s learning zone is different
It’s worth stating that every woman’s 15% learning zone is different. The edge of comfort that supports learning and keeps protective reactions at bay is personal. For some women, simply showing up in spaces with low representation of their identity is boundary-pushing enough. This tends to be more the case the more intersectional and under-represented a person’s identity is.
It’s really important to keep the focus on defining your edge within yourself. Yes, you can be inspired by others, but the exploration and extension of your edges are wholly personal. It might look different than those around you. And that’s OK.
Call for reflection:
What edge are you wanting to explore? What experiment can you run within your 15% learning zone?
Shine On,
Alicia
(Image by Jon Tyson via Unsplash)