Everybody could be my teacher. If you are an observer you will learn something every day.
—Alfonso Bucero
I believe learning is a need. One of the best ways to leverage your free time in the upcoming year is to learn a new skill. Just think about the most successful project professionals in the world. Those who consistently succeed are those who are best at learning new skills.
I believe that successful people make the commitment to dedicate their free time in the pursuit of learning. And they stick to their promise of learning. With that in mind, there are countless things you can learn in your free time. Prepare a list of valuable things to learn that will improve your life—both personally and professionally. With this list it will not be difficult to find those new skills to learn, but it will be difficult narrowing down your list of what you want to learn. Learning is the process of acquiring new skills. Please do not wait. Start today!
Today, the worlds of learning and personal or professional development are literally at your fingertips. The open learning movement has made the opportunity to get smarter in your spare time completely accessible to anyone with an Internet connection, and it has exploded in recent years. Challenge yourself to learn something new every day. It can benefit your career, your personal life, and your mental well-being, making you a happier and more productive person overall. There are so many people you can learn from as a project professional.
Of course, you may learn from different sources, as I will share with you along this chapter.
I learned three lessons from my worst boss (Figure 5.1).
First, career leadership opportunities spark a special excitement. After several years of contemplating how you would do things differently and better, you finally have that chance to demonstrate your ability to make a difference.
There is danger in those thoughts, however. Too frequently, the emphasis shifts from a focus on the organization to a focus on your own vision of yourself as a leader. As the mirror turns inward, however, it fails to reflect everything else you need to see and understand in order to be the type of leader you once dreamed of becoming.
Despite the thousands of books and hundreds of thousands of articles written on the topic, I believe there are no secrets to being a successful leader. Every day, we witness the strengths and weaknesses of leaders in our workplaces, government, and communities. Their failures are generally obvious, yet their mistakes are repeated with remarkable consistency.
My advice to a first-time leader, therefore, is to be counterintuitive. Before reading all the books advising you on how to be a great leader, start by paying attention to the many bad leaders you have read about or observed. Understanding their failures will prove to be instructive. For starters, here are three key deficiencies you should avoid emulating.
Figure 5.1 Learn from your executives
1. Speaking before thinking. New leaders may want to quickly assert their authority and show their ability to act decisively. Avoid that impulse. You may have gotten this job, but the job is not about you. Some decisions may require speed and decisiveness but most benefit from collaboration and input.
2. Avoiding negative feedback. Most workplace managers dislike having to critique other people’s performance. The default is to ignore the behavior and develop a workaround, rather than engage in an awkward conversation. Some even handle negative experiences by creating new rules that adversely affect everyone else in the workplace, hoping to change the offending employee through policy rather than direct discussion. This approach only succeeds in annoying good employees while leaving the source of the problem still clueless. Feedback is a skill that can be learned and used to the advantage of everyone in the workplace.
3. Ignoring the benefits of diversity. It is hard to believe that we have been having the same tired conversations about diversity for decades, while ignoring rapidly changing global demographics that will negatively impact those who do not change. The lack of progress in diversifying senior levels of leadership is the result of leaders who lack vision, commitment, and a willingness to implement some of the difficult and sophisticated steps needed to make a difference. It is no longer about the pipeline, nor is it about “fixing” the individuals who fall into the diverse categories. It is about putting in place the training and systems needed to understand and avoid the impacts of unconscious biases that negatively impact careers at every stage of employment. It is also about ensuring that the creation of an inclusive environment is a vital component of your organization’s business strategy.
Then, as you assume that leadership mantle for the first time, pay attention to those bad leaders you have been watching for years. And then do the opposite. I also would like to share with you some lessons learned from my best manager (Figure 5.2).
My favorite manager in my professional career was a man named La Fuente, who managed the project presales at Digital Equipment Corporation many years ago. Manager Mr. La Fuente was an employee favorite because he actually spent time on the project sales floor, helping all his employees rather than in his office analyzing stuff like unit per transaction figures. He was my favorite manager not only because we got along greatly, but because he actually seemed to value what I spoke. He always asked for my opinion on project sales solutions, which was something I quite enjoyed at the time.
Figure 5.2 I love my boss
Every week he spent 10 to 15 minutes with me to give feedback. He also asked me questions like, “What would you do different next time?” which always made me think about it a little harder. A lot of times my ideas were actually put into action, and every time that happened I would be filled with a sense of pride.
Mr. La Fuente really made me feel valued. I had a sense that he was honestly invested in me, and those feelings have stuck with me to this day, more than 30 years later. Some years later when I was working as a senior project manager, I found myself thinking what made Mr. La Fuente such a great manager.
What did I learn from him that I could now apply to my role as a project manager?
1. Be available—Managers need always to be available and not constantly locked away in an office or tied down by meetings. Most, if not all, of us have had a manager in the past who was not a part of the team and hid away behind closed doors. Being an unavailable manager leads to poor morale and a lack of trust in the workplace. You do not want that. My next manager created a versus-him mentality. I did not trust my manager and I felt it was an unbalanced and unfair work environment. Manager La Fuente believed in his people. Whenever we were faced with a daunting task, he would roll up his sleeves, join us, and get to work. “It is the work environment and the feeling of being treated unfairly by the management that has the greatest effect on an employee’s mood.” Employees left with the burden of a huge workload without support will feel as if they’re being treated unfairly by managers. Your team’s morale is too valuable to not make time for them. Join the brainstorm session. Be part of the hack day. Just being available is a huge boost. A manager does not have to be clocked in 24/7, but having an open-door policy and being involved in the process should be expected. Making time for your team needs to be a top priority for any manager. Company culture, employee morale, and mood are all directly related to accessibility and availability of management.
2. Listening—The second thing I took away from Manager La Fuente was to listen. La Fuente had this way of making me feel like I was important, as if my thoughts and ideas were actually valuable to the entire company. Every time we spoke, I felt my ideas, feedback, or concerns were met with understanding and often followed by action. Listening is the first step in creating progress and overcoming obstacles. A good manager understands the roadblocks faced by his or her team and then works to overcome them.
Manager Mr. La Fuente had great listening skills. For some people it comes naturally; for others it takes some effort. A simple and actionable method for building those skills and the relationship with a team is to share what everyone is working on that day. Many managers already do this, but unknowingly fall short because they fail to share what they are working on with the rest of their team. This creates an uneven work environment and a sense of the employees not knowing what managers actually do. Every manager should be a great listener; it opens up channels of communication and can prevent an unhappy work environment.
3. Understand your team’s strengths—The last lesson I took away from Mr. La Fuente is to understand your team’s strengths and use those strengths to drive productivity. I believe each person has his or her unique set of skills and strengths. Manager La Fuente had the insight to see that I was actually interested in project management and he used that as a motivator. His insight not only increased my productivity, but also made me feel more valued at work.
A perfect example of this in action was that he offered me an opportunity to move to the project delivery department six months later, and I accepted and moved forward counting on his support. This insight can only be brought to light by a management team that is available to his or her employees and actively listens to not only what roadblocks are ahead, but also sees the strengths in each person.
Looking back, Manager La Fuente certainly left a big impression on me, and looking down the road, I want to be the type of manager who inspires people like he inspired me. Now it is your time to reflect upon. What manager left an impression on you? Share your stories of someone that left his or her mark on your career.
Leadership Lessons You Can Learn from Your Boss’ Behavior
The working world’s best and worst bosses have certain traits that define their leadership. From micromanaging compulsively to communicating poorly, a bad boss can drive you nuts and make you hate your job. On the other hand, a boss who knows how to properly motivate his/her staff leads a productive and satisfied team. The lessons you learn from these and other behaviors will eventually help you make the transition to project manager yourself.
Here are some good and bad behaviors to look out for in your boss. As you look for them, keep in mind what they could mean for your professional future as you look to grow into a leader.
Good: Sticks around at crunch time
When a deadline is looming, the best bosses recognize that their team will need to go fully heads down, take shorter lunch breaks, and work hard to get to the finish line. And when this happens, they do not go into hiding or work at their normal pace. They stay along for the ride to help, provide guidance, and ultimately keep an eye on their employees’ health and well-being. They even force them to go home and rest rather than burn themselves out. They work as hard as anyone else, but when it comes time to rest, they’re the first to tell everyone to go home and refresh.
If your boss sticks around, works hard, and provides moral support during a deadline, you end up learning two important things for your career. First, you learn that the manager’s responsibility to their team is to set a smart and healthy example so that everyone’s at their best. And second, you learn that a healthy and stress-free team performs better. This understanding will help you become a great people manager yourself when you make that career leap. In the short run, it will also discourage you from harming yourself by constantly burning the midnight oil.
Bad: Does not take the heat from higher-ups
Ever go to a meeting with your boss and your boss’s boss having to explain why a project fell apart? In these cases, it is often one individual who gets singled out and is given grief. This type of situation can seed resentment and stress, especially when the problem is a result of systemic failure across an entire team rather than the mistake of a single person.
The best bosses understand that part of their job is to take the heat when things go wrong. They act as a shield around their staff, assigning punishment and giving hard talks themselves. Meanwhile, they show explicitly to the people they report to that the buck stops with them. If your boss is more than happy to expose you and your colleagues to anger from higher management, they are showing that they’d rather save their own skin than lead and teach by example. In the end, this results in frustration and anger at work, which can lead to high turnover and a lack of job satisfaction.
Good: Lets others lead
Does your boss always open and lead every meeting or do they pick someone else to run it in their stead? Do they insist on closing every sale or being in on every conversation or do they give you and your colleagues autonomy? If your answer to either of these is the latter, you have a good boss who understands that they cannot simply take point on everything. They instead help their employees to develop into confident workers and leaders by providing leadership opportunities.
A boss who gives you and your team leadership opportunities regularly recognizes that they are in part responsible for your career progression. They have learned from their mentors and bosses in the past about how to let others take charge. Now they are passing that knowledge down to you. As a result, you are gaining crucial leadership experience that will enable you become a manager yourself. You’re also learning how to build and manage a team of employees that consider you a mentor.
Bad: Promotes divisive competition
Some of the worst bosses in the world lead by dividing rather than enabling collaboration. Whether by driving cutthroat competition between colleagues or by pitting an entire team against one individual, the end result is a lack of trust and severe inefficiency.
Find yourself constantly angry at another teammate? Struggling to compete and cut corners rather than get things done the right way? This kind of behavior can get really frustrating really quickly and, is likely enforced from the top down. Your boss is creating a culture that values a divided team over a solid unit.
For your own development as a leader, understand that healthy competition should be fun and collaborative. You do not need to ignore competition altogether, but it should be done as a way to lift the output of the team as a whole rather than reward one or two top performers. A good way to do this is to have top performers help and train those who are lagging behind. That way, everyone learns and no one is left behind.
Good: Keeps everyone in the loop
A great boss understands that their team can only work as efficiently as possible if they understand the implications, potential outcomes, and motivations behind a project. They know that sharing the strategy and logic behind the work they assign results in better output and fewer mistakes. They also understand that a project cannot fully succeed if competing ideas are not brought to light. That’s why they ask for opinions and implement ideas from their staff.
This is a great behavior to model your own future leadership skills after. It focuses on the idea that a team is full of equals who don’t just deserve to know the intricacies of their work. They also work better when they have a good idea of what everyone else around them is doing. Less miscommunication occurs and less time is wasted fixing directionless work. As a result, the team succeeds with collaborative effort rather than failing with misfitting individual contributions.
Bad: Delegates inefficiently
Some bosses fail to delegate whatsoever and end up either piling a ton of work on one person or just trying to do everything themselves. Others, more dangerously, delegate inefficiently by failing to recognize the strengths and weaknesses of their team. Does your boss often give tasks that sound perfect for your skillset to a colleague who needs to be trained to do them? Do you regularly get tasks that sound way outside the reasonable bounds of your job description?
If you are doing tasks that are not fit for your skillset, you understand how frustrating and demotivating work can get. What you can learn from this type of boss is that how closely you evaluate the talent around you dictates how well they’ll do the tasks you give them. If you take care to understand how and why your teammates’ talents are misused by your current boss, it will help you delegate in a way that will keep your future employees happy and productive.
Your best example for how to lead (and how not to lead) is the person who manages you today. Look at what they do and how they behave. Understand how those attitudes affect their employees. Use the lessons you learn from this evaluation to become a great leader yourself.
Learn from Your Peers and Colleagues
Ever since I joined the world of project management, I have had the good fortune of learning from more experienced team members and project managers. Their mentorship has given me the opportunity to learn and grow as a project manager over the years. I am grateful for the help and support from those colleagues and managers. Documenting all of the takeaways from the mentors I have had would be impossible, but these are a few of the most significant ones.
1. Fight for your project:
Many projects do not go smoothly. Change is hard, and countless factors can get in the way. Do not let them stop you. As the project manager, it is your role to fight for the viability of your project. Your project goals, timelines, and teams must be carefully monitored and defended. Although you likely will not get your way all the time, you will win the trust of clients and project teams by not passively accepting threats to your project.
2. Communication is key:
Do not assume nothing. They are essential (after all, you need to start somewhere), but it is also essential that you discuss, document, and keep your assumptions in check. Communication uncovers assumptions that you and your project team may not know you had. Lack of communication can leave them buried and can lead to nasty surprises down the road.
3. Stay ahead of the curve:
It is easy to get wrapped up in a project’s day-to-day aspects. There are so many timelines, resources, people, and expectations flying around that they can become all-consuming. Do not let them be. Always keep the objectives and end-goal of your project in mind. Keep an eye out for the lessons learned that will strengthen your next project.
4. Know what you don’t know:
The best project managers I know are continuous learners. They have taught me to develop enough expertise to be effective and conversational in a variety of related fields. But they also emphasized that each of us needs to know our limits and recognize when you need to involve a subject matter expert.
5. Change is the only constant:
As project managers, we plan and then work with stakeholders to implement our plan. But we must always stay mindful of enterprise environmental factors. The world around us is changing at a dizzying pace. New technologies roll out that may make your projects more or less challenging. New methods of communication may impact how your project team works together (hopefully for the better). If you are not changing with the world around you, your skills and your project may quickly become obsolete.
6. Get to know your team:
Project management can certainly be stressful. But it is fun! You have the unique opportunity to interact with people and groups inside and outside your department and organizations. Take the time to get to know them and what makes them tick! Beyond what you learn from them, good relationships can help you through challenging times. What have you learned from your mentors along the way? And in turn, what lessons would you most like to pass along to your current or future mentees?
Learn from Your Wife or Partner
I had not had serious relationships before meeting my girlfriend, now my wife. I thought I was an adult; I thought I knew how to be a great boyfriend. Meeting someone I had a serious connection with taught me that nothing I had experienced before was real. True love feels different than casual relationships, even if those relationships lasted for years. When you are in a good relationship, you learn things. You act differently; you think as part of a team, not as an individual making your way through the world. You will be more understanding and accepting of your partner, instead of just getting frustrated with them like you may have with past relationships.
1. Misunderstandings are inevitable:
Misunderstandings are going to happen. If you take your partner’s words one way, then learn they meant something totally different, don’t punish them (Bucero 2015). Let it go. Bringing it up all the time is only going to bruise the relationship and cause communication problems later. Sometimes what you say or do will be taken the wrong way, and you’ll get frustrated that your partner doesn’t understand. Take a step back and realize it’s not a big deal. Misunderstandings are made to be swept under the rug because they’re so minor. They only become problems if you let them grow bigger and mean more in the scope of your relationship. Be laid back and forgive misunderstandings.
2. Learn to trust them:
You have to trust your partner. Why would you share your life with someone when you think they’re doing something wrong every time you turn your back? If you don’t trust your partner to be faithful, honest, caring, or anything else, then you’re not in a good relationship. The best relationships begin with a deep trust, and even if problems come up (and they will!), the trust is strong enough to keep you together.
3. Let yourselves miss each other:
You’re in love, so you want to be together all the time! It’s so fun to cuddle all night and be together all day, but when will you have time to experience different things? When you go to separate workplaces or schools, you experience things that will give you something to talk about later. When you go out with your friends and your partner spends time with theirs, you have time and space to yourself and come back to each other refreshed. You have a chance to miss each other, and it helps you really understand the value of your relationship. Missing someone is great because getting to see them after that period will make you so happy and so sure of your relationship.
4. Encourage growth and change:
In a good relationship, both partners are encouraged to grow and change. You have one life to live—you need to explore it to the fullest! If you want to quit your job and go back to school, your partner should support you. If you want to try something new or go back to something old, you should find support in your relationship. And you should give this support in return. Encourage your partner to explore hobbies and interests and meet new people. If you want your partner to stay the same, you are going to have a very boring life together.
5. Compromising does not mean you are weak:
Compromising does not mean “giving in.” It does not mean that you have lost the fight. In fact, it is the opposite. Do you know how hard it is to compromise sometimes? You want your way because it sounds right and makes sense to you. Your partner is way off base with their suggestions. Take a step back and look at the argument diplomatically. What’s the logical conclusion? If your partner is right, don’t be afraid to say so. Accept their way or modify both of your solutions to be half and half. The important thing is not getting your way, it is staying in your relationship and helping it grow. Compromising will definitely help your relationship grow.
6. Admit your weaknesses:
Your partner does not expect you to be a superhero, and hopefully you do not expect that of them! We are all human; we all have flaws. It is ok to let these show. In fact, to have a stable, serious relationship, you need to let your weaknesses be known. Your partner will be more sensitive to things that bother you and can help build you up in areas where you need some help.
7. Sometimes you can only accept things, not fix them:
People have baggage. You have some. Your partner has some. Can you go back and erase all of this? Nope! You’re stuck with it and have to learn to deal with it. Some things are easier to get over than others, but the reality is that sometimes you can’t fix things. You can’t make problems go away. You have to accept them and get over them and move on, or else your relationship will crumble.
8. Forgive quickly and truly:
Whenever you have a fight, don’t worry about who wins or who loses. Learn from the fight—from what was said as much as from how it was resolved. Once you learn from a fight, you can apply that lesson to your relationship to avoid trouble later. That’s all well and good, but you’re not done! Forgive your partner! Forgive yourself. The fight is over and you’re past it; now let it go. Never hold anything against your partner because the resentment will build until you don’t want to be with them.
9. Never expect anything:
Do not expect your partner to read your mind or to bring you breakfast in bed, or to offer to wash the dishes. It’s not going to happen. You cannot expect anything from anyone—you have to make it known. Communicate. Make sure your partner knows what you expect from the relationship, as well as your opinions on a wide variety of issues. This will help them act considerate toward you, but still do not expect anything!
10. Show your feelings:
The worst thing you can do in a relationship is play games. Do not tease your partner; do not “reward” good deeds with love and affection. You have to make sure your partner always feels loved. You can be happy with them or be mad at them; it does not matter. They just need to feel loved. They need to know your feelings in the moment as well; don’t get me wrong. But make sure you’re showing your feelings in a way that they won’t be misunderstood (back to #1!).
Learn from Your Stakeholders
My attitude is always positive. But somedays my mood is not very good, then I need to do an attitude check. The project management industry has put a lot of focus in recent years on the importance of stakeholder relationships. Project management practitioners and leading thinkers in the field have emphasized that a good project manager isn’t just someone who is good at keeping track of all the tasks that need to be completed. A good project manager is also someone who can balance stakeholder needs and interests and ensure that all parties pull together and support the project in delivering a valuable outcome.
But how does the project manager make this happen?
1. Understand who the stakeholders are.
The first step in building great relationships with project stakeholders is to understand who they are. Many projects get delayed or end up not delivering the value they promised because the project manager failed to identify and engage all of the stakeholders. This means that essential requirements, needs, or insights might have been missed.
To find out who all the stakeholders could be, brainstorm groups and individuals who have an interest in the project or who will be affected by it. Whenever you identify a stakeholder, ask them if there’s anyone else they believe you need to speak to. Keep going until you’re sure you have identified all of them.
2. Pinpoint stakeholders with high levels of power and influence.
If you are leading a large project, you won’t be able to spend an equal amount of time with every stakeholder. Naturally, you will have to engage and learn about every group or person you have identified, but the people you need to concentrate your efforts on those with the most power and influence.
Look at all the stakeholders on your list and assess who the three to five most impactful people are, that is, those who have the power to define your project, who can affect its direction, and who can help move it forward. Always make sure that your relationships with these influential decision makers are the best that they can be.
3. Engage in one-to-one conversation.
Building great relationships isn’t about the amount of time you spend with someone, but about the quality of that time. Consider for instance how many people you interact with in meetings without knowing much about them. Great relationships are built through one-to-one conversations where you can find out more about what makes each person tick. Stakeholders are busy people, so respect their time by keeping your discussions as short as possible. Come prepared and let them know that the purpose of the meeting is to uncover anything that can help the project be successful—including how the two of you will be working together.
4. Seek to understand their world.
At the most fundamental level, project stakeholders will only open up to you and trust you when they feel that you understand them and that you have their best interests at heart. Your most important task is to enquire about their stake in the project, their requirements, and any knowledge or experience they have that can help deliver an outcome that adds more value.
Ask stakeholders what a successful project looks like in their eyes, such as:
• What their hopes and concerns are;
• How they would like you to keep them updated throughout the project;
• If a weekly status report will suffice; or
• They’d prefer a regular phone call.
Be curious and find out as much as you can about each person and their communication preferences.
5. Communicate with clarity and honesty.
To deepen the level of trust between you and each stakeholder, it’s imperative that you communicate with clarity and honesty and that you don’t sweep anything under the rug. Your stakeholders want to know what the true state of the project is, how it affects them, and if there is anything they can do to help.
Send out weekly or bimonthly status reports with an executive summary, an overview of which milestones have been delivered and which ones are still outstanding. Include the project’s top five risks and issues with actions and owners. Similarly, conduct a monthly steering committee presentation where you talk about the real status of the project and what support you need from the committee members, if any, to overcome roadblocks and move the project forward.
6. Continuously demonstrate your competence.
Building good relationships with project stakeholders is not a one-off exercise or something that only happens at the beginning of the project. Continuously walking your talk and delivering on your promises will help you to further develop each relationship.
This can be done by demonstrating that you are a reliable and competent project manager—someone who is skilled at defining the project, locking down scope, creating a realistic plan, capturing requirements, managing risks, tracking the budget, and understanding the context of the business you are operating in. You can also demonstrate your competence by keeping meetings on track, capturing agreements and decisions, and holding people accountable for their actions.
Excellent stakeholder relationships can be built through one-to-one conversations where you take an interest in each person’s world and help them get their needs fulfilled through the project. Be as open and honest as you can in your communication and treat your stakeholders like a valued client who you would like to be of service to.
One of my best practices is looking at my mirror every day and being aware of what you see and feel. What I mean is that we need to start the day with a positive attitude (see Figure 5.3). Nobody is able to see his/her neck. Every day if you are an observer, you will learn something that you can improve from your behavior in front of your peers, colleagues or project stakeholders.
However, some day we are tired or exhausted and our mind creates obstacles to stay as positive as we could. What to do?
My suggestion is to start the day charging your batteries. There are several methods to do it. Mine is as follows:
• I say thank you because a new day has started, I’m alive, my family is fine or any other positive reasons I can find.
• I repeat “Today is a good day.”
• I do some physical exercise.
• I laugh a little bit under the shower.
Figure 5.3 Look into the mirror
My recipe does not need to be yours. You need to create your own recipe to move forward. That way works well for me every day. Even when you believe a particular day was not a good day for you, please look at the full part of the bottle and I am sure you will find something that will help you to move forward with a smile. Every obstacle you find is always a great opportunity to discover the wonderful things that life offers us.
Learning Assessment Tool
Most of us assume it’s up to someone else to measure how much we have learned. But when we do this, we lose something very valuable: our own educational narrative. We may remember which subjects we excelled in and which subjects we failed or recall when and where we learned particular bits of information, but for the most part we cannot make sense of our learning as one long, unfolding event. And cognitive science has confirmed that the whole is, quite crucially, more than the sum of its parts.
Many employers complain that today’s graduates seem to have learned nothing at university. But we know it’s not for lack of trying, because many students have the same complaint. So how can this be? How is it that so many students spend four years “learning,” only to graduate with scattered knowledge about a handful of topics?
One problem is the limited nature of human memory, and the fact that our assessment systems don’t compliment the way the brain works. For example, teachers should be testing students more frequently to support retention, and with different media to help forge more connections. They should be discouraging the use of highlighters and the practice of rereading and encouraging self-quizzing and spaced study sessions.
Another issue seldom visited but equally important is that students aren’t encouraged to assess their own learning. Instead, they’re taught to memorize a unit here and a unit there, each one discrete and self-contained, then wait for a grade from some higher authority. That grade is meant to reflect how much a learner knows about a subject, and as soon as it’s administered, however accurately, it stands as a permanent label of progress, not to mention potential. Shouldn’t each of us, with our unique backgrounds and study habits, have the most authority on our progress? Shouldn’t it be easiest for us, as individual learners, to determine our strengths and weaknesses in order to improve? When we assess our own progress, learning becomes one fluid process, whereby courses connect and build off each other, even years apart.
We can see where we’ve been and where we’re going, and why it may take longer to achieve one goal versus another. It’s not that we should have the only word on our progress—outside feedback is necessary and good—but we do need to be part of the conversation. And when we are, it’s not only our motivation that receives a boost, but also our brain.
Why Self-Assessment Is Good for the Brain?
Imagine for a moment that, upon entering the public education system, everyone is required to create a personal learning portfolio, meant to last through university. In the portfolio are the usual samples of work, graded assignments, and notes. But there are also journal entries, hundreds of them, documenting your thoughts and reflections on what you have (and haven’t) learned. Imagine being able to go back and read these entries, one year or 10 years later, to reflect on your learning journey as a whole. How might this influence the way you approach learning in general?
Researchers divided employees in a job training program into groups, and for ten days of the program, some of the employees were asked to reflect on what they had learned for 15 minutes each day. When the employees were given assessments at the end of their training, those in the reflection groups performed 23 percent better than those who hadn’t been given time to reflect, according to reports. According to the researchers, reflection leads to a stronger feeling of self-efficacy, which in turn leads to improved performance.
“When we stop, reflect, and think about learning, we feel a greater sense of self-efficacy,” Francesca Gino, one of the study’s authors, told Forbes. “We’re more motivated and we perform better afterward.”
Author Preston says, “We think replaying memories during rest makes those earlier memories stronger, not just impacting the original content, but impacting the memories to come.” “Nothing happens in isolation,” says Preston. “When you are learning something new, you bring to mind all of the things you know that are related to that new information. In doing so, you embed the new information into your existing knowledge.”
So, there you have it. Reflection is not some wishy-washy, new-age teaching strategy meant to bore students to death. It actually improves performance. And that’s why it’s such a powerful tool in the learning process. Reflection helps us organize, make sense of, and better remember what we’ve learned. Following are five ways self-assessment through reflection can aid learning.
Benefits of Self-Assessment
I want to summarize some of the benefits from self-assessment:
1. Interpreting
Interpretation is a fundamental part of learning, but rarely do we take the time to interpret the learning process itself. Did it take you very long to learn a new concept? Would more context or background have helped? Are you finished studying or do you need another session? Interpreting your own learning helps you recognize patterns and habits that you can adjust for optimal retention.
2. Organizing:
Most of us do not take the time to mentally organize individual concepts into more general patterns of cause-and-effect, or to break large concepts down into smaller points. Usually it’s an instructor’s job to do this as he or she designs a lesson, but there’s no guarantee it will be done effectively. The advantage of self-assessment is that you can give yourself the opportunity to organize information however you want. The result is stronger connections between concepts and, ultimately, better learning.
3. Connecting:
When you assess your own learning, you make connections between all sorts of things you wouldn’t otherwise think about. You see the relationships between learning environment, study habits, instructional methods, subject matter, and so on., and over time it becomes possible to manipulate these factors in order to best suit your learning preferences.
4. Guiding:
Once you reflect on what you’ve learned, what you haven’t, and what you’d like to, you will have a much better idea of how to guide your own learning. And you’ll save yourself a ton of time. Imagine sitting down to study for the Graduate Record Examination (GRE) and having a written summary of your strengths and weaknesses in algebra, which you recorded four years ago while studying for the Student Aptitude Test (SAT). What a time-saver!
5. Retaining:
How often do we “repeat history” when it comes to learning? And how often is it because we haven’t reviewed or used a piece of information since we first learned it? The more we think about something we’ve learned—whether through written, spoken, or reflective means—the more likely we are to remember it.
The 10 Essentials of Self-Assessment
At the most fundamental level, self-assessment is about being more aware. You could call it mindfulness or metacognition, self-reflection or introspection, whatever term makes the most sense to you. The important thing is that you take the time to do it, and once you’ve gotten yourself into the habit of it, it will be easier to view learning as something you have control over.
Here are the ten steps I suggest you begin with:
1. Record what you know and what you don’t:
You can determine the right time to do this for yourself, whether it’s after a study session, a lecture, or even a test. The point is to do it, because most of us don’t. Most of us passively absorb information in the hopes of retaining it, and this is simply not enough.
2. Measure notes taken against material remembered:
Is there a positive correlation between the amount of notes you take, and the amount of information you remember come test time? If not, you may want to rethink your note-taking habits, especially since you are sacrificing your attention to the lecture if you are constantly writing things down. Maybe you should try tape-recording the lecture instead and writing notes later.
3. Test yourself frequently and in different ways:
You won’t really know what you know until you test yourself. So, do it frequently, daily even, and in different formats. If you used flashcards yesterday, challenge yourself to give a mini-lecture on it today. The more variety, the better your brain will remember it.
4. Measure retention over time:
If the goal is to retain information for as long as possible, you’ll need to keep reviewing it occasionally over time. This is where learning portfolios can really help. But you’ll need to start seeing beyond midterms and finals, toward real-world situations in which you can use the material to your advantage. (If you can recall it in 10 years’ time, that is…)
5. Note your interest level:
The courses you struggle with are not always the courses you find uninteresting. And the courses you find uninteresting aren’t always the ones you struggle with. When you don’t get the grades you want, identify what the real reason is and take steps to solve the problem yourself.
6. Test your ability to relay information to others:
This is the “true test” in my opinion. If you can’t explain a concept to someone else, you haven’t really learned it.
7. Connect new material with prior knowledge:
This is something only you can do, despite how much background or context an instructor tries to provide. You are the only one who knows your “proximal zone of development,” and therefore the only one who can connect new material with prior knowledge in a way that helps you remember both.
8. Test recall out of context:
Why is it so hard to answer trivia questions? Because they force you to produce information out of context. But that’s exactly what makes a champion quiz player so impressive: the ability to recall a detail or fact completely out of the blue, without associative clues or the original context in which it was first learned. One memory technique, called interleaved practice, suggests that alternating flashcards from different subjects within the same study session is actually better than keeping the subjects separate.
9. Make progress more personal:
“Progress” is not about test scores and grades; it’s about learning. Becoming more involved in our own learning early on, through a personal portfolio or other means, will make it easier to actually care about it and to think of it as an ongoing, interconnected process.
10. Measure study habits against results:
There’s no use employing the same study strategy time after time if it doesn’t work. So how do you know whether it works or not? Your test results and grades should give you some indication. But while most of us simply aim to “study harder” next time, we should instead aim to “study differently,” acknowledging that progress is in our control.
Chapter Summary
From the ideas and concepts that were shown in this chapter, I would like to remark some of them:
• Those who consistently succeed are those who are best at learning new skills.
• Today, the worlds of learning and personal or professional development are literally at your fingertips.
• After several years of contemplating how you would do things differently and better, you finally have that chance to demonstrate your ability to make a difference.
• Fight for your project, communication is key, stay ahead of the curve, know what you know, and what you do not know.
• Change is the only constant.
• Get to know your team.
Reference
Bucero, A. 2015. The Influential Project Manager: Winning Over Team Members and Stakeholders. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press.