Chapter Five

Learning Flexibility and the Road Ahead

Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.

Mahatma Gandhi

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, pitch manure, solve equations, analyze a new problem, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.

Robert Heinlein

In our early years, most of us search for a career that fits our interests and talents: a path where we find a niche in our life situation so we can contribute, make a living, and find satisfaction. When we find that path, we tend to specialize and develop the characteristics that will make us successful. We develop a learning style that meets the challenges of our career choice and helps us master what we need to succeed. As we gain experience in our field and mature, the road ahead becomes broader and more complex with more challenges and choices that require different learning styles than our specialized style. It is here where developing learning flexibility and the skills and capabilities of other learning styles can enhance lifelong learning, success, and fulfillment.

This chapter explains how a strong learning style preference can help you to perfect your skills and create a comfort zone and shows how to avoid getting stuck in a rut. Learning flexibility helps you stay on course to make the learning way your approach to life. Learning flexibility can enable you to take full advantage of the full cycle learning as you face the challenges of the many transitions ahead of you in life—perfecting your special skill, rising to greater responsibility, changing career, finding a work/life balance, expressing your total self, and serving a greater purpose.

Why Do We Get in a Rut?

In almost everything, we play to our strengths—sports, friendships, home life, careers. Why wouldn’t we? Over time, strengths we overuse may become weaknesses. Since we tend to prefer one or two of the learning styles, the effectiveness of our learning style is limited to those situations that require its strengths and capabilities. Our knowledge and interests tend to relate to our area of specialization at the expense of other areas of our lives. We focus on our interests, paying more and more attention to them, while avoiding activities or experiences that we are not interested in or that we feel unskilled in. The well-worn pathways of our learning preferences are reinforced when we enter a field of specialization that allows us to seek the experiences that make use of our learning style. However, when we become entrenched in our preferences, we miss out on other possibilities. Being entrenched is like riding a bike in a well-worn rut. We move forward without the ability to steer the bike. But when we are aware of our preferences and able to use the other learning styles, we are more capable of responding to new situations with the learning style that is a match for the situation. Over time, this allows us to gain new strengths and capabilities that can transform our lives. This is more like riding a bike on a wide, open path; we can steer to keep our options open and respond to whatever challenges may arise.

Perfecting Your Special Skill: Beginning Your Career

As you begin your career, you will be well served to play to your strengths. This will help you to choose situations in which you can be successful. Pay attention to what interests you by using the Experiencing style to connect with your feelings about what you enjoy doing. Then use the Imagining style to generate many ideas about how your interests might translate into job activities, and use the Reflecting style to determine how these job activities might come together in a career. After you have identified a possible career path, you can use the Analyzing style to make a plan for looking into that career, the Thinking style to define your existing skills and your educational strategy for acquiring any skills you might need, and the Deciding style to commit to one course of action, however small, toward pursuing this career. Using the Acting style, try out a class, event, or volunteer opportunity that allows you to experience the career path, and then use the Initiating style to seek new opportunities to build and refine your experience.

The more you are able to use this learning cycle process to examine and develop your interests, the clearer your capabilities and career choice will become.

As you continue to build your capabilities within your chosen field, you will be called upon to become more flexible. For instance, a physician who prefers the Deciding style ultimately will need to work on teams, requiring more Experiencing and Imagining capabilities. A social worker who prefers the Imagining style will need to hone his skills in budgeting and strategy as he runs a department or writes a grant. Focus on your strengths at first and build flexibility along the way.

Remaining Specialized for your Entire Career?

Specialization is a necessary foundation in the developmental process, and most adults seem to find a comfortable niche within their field. Many professionals have built a satisfying life around their specialized preference. They find that they are comfortable and successful in their specialized role. Betsy, for example, used her Reflecting style preference to follow a career in academia. As a university professor, she focused on one field of study that provided tremendous personal fulfillment with time to conduct research and to write. She built learning flexibility to allow her to manage situations that arose within the structured, satisfying life she created.

If you are one of the fortunate few in today’s world who has found a long-term specialized career where your specialized learning style serves you well, you may still discover that you need other learning styles in order to perform at the highest level in your work. In the previous chapter we saw numerous examples of how people’s ability to flex to different learning styles enhanced and supported their performance, creativity, and life satisfaction.

Most people find that toward mid-career and beyond, life becomes more complex as career roles evolve, challenges arise, and opportunities present themselves that demand a different approach. These tensions press individuals to navigate the learning cycle in different, creative ways, choosing between the pairs of opposite styles. Over time, developing strengths in all of the learning modes is the strongest approach to resolving a dilemma. Most of us, however, are in the process of reaching that goal and thus approach life with some combination of our preferred learning style and a few of the other learning ways.

A focus on learning will eventually allow you to make life a continuous process of learning rather than worrying only about learning content. You will increase your awareness, have a more sophisticated grasp of the world, and manage yourself in a highly creative way. What might not be immediately evident is that these shifts also make your life richer and expand your potential. So while no universities teach adults how to continue maturing, the learning way is the key to full development and to facing life’s challenges.

Rising to Greater Responsibility: Learning to Develop

As a new associate, Martina practiced law under the direction of a partner at her law firm. As she continued her career, she discovered that her professional role extended beyond providing expertise, and it was a stretch for her Analyzing style preference. When Martina became a partner at her law firm, she realized that she was essentially running her own business within the context of the firm. Her roles extended from the practice of law to include the business of law. She was called on not only to provide direct legal work but also to include client relations, business development, staff development, strategy formulation, and leading collaborative teams. As Martina moved forward in her career, she experienced a transition in which the increasing demands of her job required a more holistic approach and a greater repertoire of capabilities. She had expected to complete her career without veering from the role that came naturally.

Martina preferred her comfortable role of providing direct legal service; however, she recognized that lawyers no longer have that luxury of clinging to their favorite roles. Now, as in any highly competitive and entrepreneurial situation, law firm partners must possess capabilities to assume all roles. In order to transition successfully, Martina needed to learn from experience.

Professionals move from the specialized learning style they use early in their careers to a more integrated, flexible approach later in their professional lives. This integration is only realized if they decide to meet the challenge by developing new capabilities. A mature professional is called upon to use a complex set of skills and fill many roles that focus on clients and content, meaning, and outcome. Building a repertoire of capabilities and roles requires a learning attitude that can be difficult for specialists who have become successful from excelling in a particular field.

Each learning style represents a partial set of your capabilities. By understanding your learning style, you have an overview of your current strengths and capabilities, a clear description of the styles you have yet to develop, and a map for your professional growth.

The path of integration depends upon your dominant and nonexpressed learning preferences. If you have a Thinking preference, you will shift your focus to the Experiencing style emphasizing emotions, relationships, and sensory experience. If you prefer a Reflecting style, you will shift toward Acting by taking charge, initiating change, and taking new risks. When you shift your perspective to the nondominant learning ones you may have previously repressed, you will begin to experience yourself as a process. The new way you navigate the learning cycle using a nondominant style can change your self-identity.

Returning to the example of Martina: once she began to shift her orientation on the learning cycle, she experienced situations as well as herself in an entirely new way. She explains:

I used to scan for problems and react. When something would go wrong, I looked for people to blame just like I had been blamed as I was coming up in the ranks. It’s all I knew how to do. But, my partner was the best role model I could have imagined. He never got rattled or reactive; he never lost his cool when situations were tense. Instead of blaming others or blowing up, he became creative and brought out the best in all of us. He always seemed to get better results in the long run. When I took on leadership positions, I started practicing his approach. My learning style preference is Thinking, so it took time to use the Experiencing style and to become more reflective especially when I wanted to (over) react. As I gained more experience from sticking with some uncomfortable moments, I began to see those situations as opportunities to become more creative in my responses. At times, I could slow down these situations, which gave me time to process. Now I can observe when others are caught in automatic reactions. I feel so relieved that I have overcome those habitual responses. I have a different perception of myself because of this experience.

When Martina expanded her specialized Thinking approach to incorporate the Experiencing, Imagining, and Reflecting styles in her own unique way, she was able to connect with others, imagine different possibilities, and pause to allow situations to settle, even in the most trying times. She found that her ability to use the other learning styles in authentic ways changed the way she approached the Thinking style, too. She was less compelled to disconnect and to become dispassionate. She was able to reflect back on her previous behavior and recognize that she had believed there was only one right way to do things, though now she could see a vast array of possibilities. After developing new learning capabilities, Martina was no longer hostage to this rigid belief. She was learning new and more sophisticated ways of feeling, perceiving, thinking, and acting.

Creating a Second Act: Transitions and Career Change

Change is beyond our control; it happens whether or not we are prepared for it. Transitions, on the other hand, are situations that require us to reorient and redefine ourselves. An adaptive and flexible approach toward lifelong learning can guide us in intentionally adjusting to transitions with resilience, openness, and courage. The learning way allows us to manage transitions by continually learning from our own experiences, understanding our own unique style, and creating a learning-based strategy to transform ourselves while we are adapting to changing circumstances.

William Bridges, the renowned expert on transitions, identified three phases in any transition: the end of one period, the neutral zone, and the new beginning.¹ Li experienced these three phases as he adapted to losing his job as a financial analyst through downsizing after a merger. He used the steps in the learning cycle to guide him through each phase.

At the end of the first stage, the ending, he intentionally used the Experiencing style to connect with his own feelings of vulnerability and fear as he processed the knowledge that his job would be eliminated. Li’s typical response would have been to withdraw and deal with the situation in a solitary fashion. Instead, he connected not only with his own values but also with others in the same situation in the Imagining style before making sense of the situation in the Reflecting style. In the Analyzing style, he created a plan to organize all the information he would need to consider before deciding what to do next. This plan allowed him to make some independent judgments about the financial implications of his situation in the Thinking style. Li used the Deciding style to commit to saying goodbye to all of the people in his department before his departure. In the Acting style, he implemented his transition plan before using the Initiating style to enter the next phase of his life with optimism.

While in the neutral zone, Li approached learning with a different emphasis. Because he had so much more life experience than when he had first chosen his career in finance, he knew that he would need to reconnect with his feelings and intuition. Initially he focused more on being than doing. He spent time in quiet reflection to connect with his deepest desires and fears. He created a personal vision that included the values that guide him and his greatest hopes for the future. This took time alone and time in conversation with trusted advisors, family, and close friends. Also, he reflected on the parts of his life he would want to keep the same and those he would want to change.

As he took his time, new ideas began to emerge. Li recognized that he had entered his current career more out of a need for a stable income than for any innate interest. He had quelled his interest in the field of human resources that seemed too soft to ensure that he would always have a job. Li discovered that he most enjoyed his career when he was coaching and mentoring new employees in his department. He realized that while he understood the principles of financial analysis, such as what made for a good investment, he did not know much about the process of coaching. As he investigated the field, he found that the specialty of retirement coaching was emerging in response to the number of baby boomers. Although this involved more than simply looking at finances, Li was drawn to the field for its holistic approach.

As he moved toward action, Li became discouraged as he looked at his strengths, weaknesses, education, and experience. He compared his current reality to what he would need to tackle this new interest. Li decided that he could not make the career transition immediately or in one step. It was too risky since he needed to pay his mortgage and college tuition for his daughter. He did, however, commit to a timetable that would allow him to measure his progress against his goal: within eighteen months, he would complete his retirement coaching program and log enough hours to achieve his certification before launching his own business. As Li implemented his plan, he found that he approached life with new purpose.

Li continued to spiral around the learning cycle as he learned his way through his transition. Although Li made some alterations to his plan as he gained more information by trial and error, within two years of leaving his position in financial services, he was situated in his new career.

Work/Life Balance: Making Work and Life One

Becoming an expert can have the unintended consequence of creating a limited sense of self and an unbalanced life. Professionals rise to the peak of their field by perfecting their specialized skills in a work environment that is competitive and oriented toward rewarding individual achievement. However, an integrated, balanced life is holistic, involving more collaboration than competition.

Erik Dane suggests that when experts are faced with dynamic, unpredictable conditions within their area of expertise, they increase their flexibility to remain open to possibilities, information, and options for action. He recommends that experts deliberately focus some of their attention outside their specialized field to find “doubt-inducing exceptions” to their beliefs about the best approach for their work. He points out that doubt is often considered an important element of wisdom. This doubt functions not to reduce experts’ confidence but to build their flexibility by helping them question their own habits, use their creativity, and seek out additional challenging experiences.²

In addition to developing flexibility at work, we must strive to create balance between work and life, applying the same vitality and energy we bring to our careers to all areas of our lives. The balance between body and mind is important, particularly when our physical health becomes an issue or when our work is stressful or mentally taxing. Often we must break the confines of the technological, fast-paced, civilized world and reestablish our connection with the organic beauty of the natural world in order to feel balanced. As we expand our specialized learning style, becoming more flexible in our approach to learning and appreciating those with different learning styles, we can establish a sense of centeredness and balance as we understand how the different parts of the cycle make up the whole. Seeking balance through the learning cycle frees us from implicit assumptions and opens new possibilities and perspectives.

Logan, a financial analyst who preferred the Reflecting style, found that his learning style was a good fit for his career. His preference didn’t work as well for parenting. When with his two-year-old son, Logan recognized that he spent time passively watching him instead of actively playing. Next time they went to the playground, Logan recognized this tendency to sit on a bench observing. To his amazement, he reported that he could use learning style flexibility to help him improve his own and his son’s experience. He said,

I started with the Acting and Initiating styles by playing with my son Aiden. I got up and pushed him on the swing. I don’t know why it never dawned on me to do that before when I have been at the playground with him. I used Experiencing to stay engaged and present—not to think about the past or the future—just to pay attention to being with my son. I felt this incredible love for my son as I hugged him when he got off the swing. I used the Thinking style to remember what children of his age should be able to do by themselves. Finally, I went back to my Reflecting style to watch Aiden playing. As I did, I was amazed at how paying attention to the other learning styles added to my experience and helped me learn about myself.

As Logan was able to integrate other styles in his parenting approach, he also gained confidence that he could practice them at work, too. Eventually, Logan’s facility with other learning styles even helped him to use the Reflecting style intentionally when he believed the situation called for that style. His ability to build learning flexibility helped him to create a whole, balanced life that brought him happiness on every front.

Expressing Your Total Self

Many of us have focused our attention and energy on building a life around our chosen interest. When you do this, you may begin to define yourself by what you know or do. You may be among the many professionals who specialized early by becoming a physician, engineer, nurse, lawyer, manager, educator, accountant, or social worker. The life of a professional can be comfortable, secure, and fulfilling. It provides job security, but the defined demands of the role can ultimately thwart your ability to fulfill your own needs. Recognizing this inherent conflict triggers a need for learning flexibility and the ability to integrate all the learning styles. You may recognize this need gradually, or it may happen in an instant as a result of a crisis such as divorce or job loss. For others, the need may fade into the background because they are so entrenched in their current life and lifestyle. It’s simply too disruptive to respond to the conflict.

If you use a Thinking preference, the shift brings a new focus on the Experiencing style with emphasis on emotions, relationships, and sensory experience. If you have primarily used the Reflecting style, you will shift toward the Acting style by taking charge, initiating change, and taking new risks. When you are able to shift your perspective by integrating the nondominant styles of learning that you have previously ignored, you begin to experience yourself as a process. The new way in which you navigate the learning cycle using the nondominant style can even change your self-identity.

What are the benefits of this integrated life? You will both adapt to and create your own life situation by changing your situation as you see fit and letting your experiences change you. Brazilian educator Paulo Freire noted that in order to change you must feel like the director of your own life, the “subject” instead of the “object.”³

People who have integrated their preferred and nonpreferred ways of learning find that they become more capable and mature. They do not allow what is typical to dictate what is possible. Nora provides an example. Living in a small town, Nora found that she did not initially miss her career in nursing as she easily fell into life as a professional’s wife. While her husband carried on his surgical practice, she focused on her home, children, and community volunteerism. She relied on her Experiencing, Imagining, and Reflecting preferences to be present, to help others, and to be patient. These styles also helped her to work well on teams, inspiring others to imagine new possibilities for the community. Nora recognized that she was skilled at working interdependently with others; however, she was not as familiar at being independent in thoughts or actions. Once her children were away at college, Nora began to pay attention to learning more about herself and her own needs. This meant that she had to build capabilities in the Thinking way to separate from the present moment. She had to build her ability to use the Deciding way to firmly commit to what was important to her. And, because independence is impossible without taking action, Nora had to learn to behave in ways that allowed her to express her own uniqueness.

Over the course of the next few years, Nora found that she could tap her abilities to be both interdependent and independent. Her life became full of variety and diversity. By building capabilities in learning styles that were opposite to her preferred style, she had integrated her ability to use all the styles in a unique, creative way. She had balanced and integrated all parts of life and all parts of herself. Even though she experienced change and even stress, she seemed to experience less turbulence than she would have previously. Her experience in managing the tension of her dilemma of independence-interdependence had helped her to manage other tensions that often cause conflict and drama for others.

Serving a Greater Purpose

In the first part of our lives, we are primarily concerned with finding ourselves, establishng our identity, and achieving independence, competence, and success. The preoccupation with ourselves can be especially intense in individualistic cultures like the United States. Maturity gives rise to empathy and an urge to care for others, usually first within our families and later in the wider community and the world at large. With increasing competence and power there comes the responsibility to contribute more to the greater good.

Empathy and caring for others brings a powerful sense of purpose and meaning. When we contribute to the success of others, our work outlasts the span of our own lives. Caring also means careful work that ensures quality in the services and products we provide others.

Mark was an expert when it came to personal career achievements. He was a successful, top-grossing salesperson preparing to take over the sales and marketing helm for his employer. As he crafted his strategy to make his mark, he looked back at his own career. He was aware that he often acted in self-interest by prompting customers to make short-term decisions that benefited his sales quotas rather than paying attention to what was in their best interests. In fact, he had even fought management when they proposed giving a percentage of profits back to the communities they served because it would impact his bonus. As he accepted responsibility in his new role, he wondered how could he make changes that would express more care for his employees, the work of his department, and his customers. He thought about how investments in the community could make a difference in so many lives both within and outside his company.

Mark was experiencing the challenge of generativity: the ability to enact change. As he accepted responsibility for the organization, he was also given the power to transform it. He grappled with how to care for relationships, how to encourage careful work, and how to use his power to provide leadership while still caring for himself. Mark used the Imagining style to identify his values and the values of his colleagues. In the Reflecting style he took many perspectives, trying to make sense of how he could use this information to begin to change.

Mark included the Analyzing style to structure policies that promoted ethical practices and institutionalized new ways of working to benefit everyone in the company. Mark wanted to be logical as he approached this challenge, so he carefully analyzed the quantitative data that supported his decisions. He would not be showing care for others if he made hasty decisions that jeopardized the business in the long term. Mark found that the Deciding style allowed him to identify the most beneficial investment for employees: training and development. He also made sure to identify a way to measure their success in delivering these programs.

Mark used the Acting style to implement his plans to take care of himself and others. One way he did this was to incorporate daily exercise into his routine. He served as a role model for others when he held “walking meetings” with colleagues so that they could get some exercise and conduct their business simultaneously. Mark continued to seek new opportunities to serve a greater purpose. In doing so, he practiced the Initiating style.

The learning way has broader implications than career—it applies to all life situations. Specializing in one style can be beneficial at times, but an overreliance on that style ultimately limits your ability to achieve learning flexibility and to benefit from all of the steps in the learning process. To build flexibility, you need to practice the learning cycle every day. The next chapter focuses on strategies you can use to incorporate the learning way into your life.

Checklist

Determine how your learning flexibility is supporting or challenging you in your current situation.

Reflection

You may find it helpful to journal about your use of learning flexibility in your current life situation. Below you will find prompts for your reflections.

Consider your career path. Did you play to your specialized strengths or adapt to skills that were not your preference?

What are your nondominant styles? What capabilities will you gain when you develop flexibility in these styles?

If you specialized in your career, have you remained specialized or built your learning style flexibility? What are the benefits and challenges of your choice?

Do you hold back from participating in certain types of situations? Are you in a rut in any part of your life?