Bradley Staats, in his book Never Stop Learning: Stay Relevant, Reinvent Yourself, and Thrive, posits that to stay relevant and competitive at work, we have to become dynamic learners. Dynamic learners have both specialized knowledge and broad knowledge. However, knowing is not enough. We also need to understand how to learn. Staats offers eight different strategies for how people can master learning. Here, I will focus on three that are most relevant: be yourself, play to your strengths, and learn from failure.

Be Yourself

I have written before about what happens when we fake it till we make it. Staats dives deeper into this topic and clearly states, "dynamic learners don't try to conform; they're willing to stand out." Standing out, being yourself, and being original may sound simple, but in reality, those are very challenging positions for most people to embrace.

Organizations want their employees to fit in, follow the rules, conform, and meet expectations. When we do that, we get rewarded with positive reviews and lower stress. It seems to be a win-win situation, except that when we act like others, we often limit our ability to learn. I never thought about it this way, but Staats says, "Being yourself leads to learning."

When we are being ourselves, we are more motivated to put in the necessary effort. We are also more positive. Acting authentically brings out positive emotions that reshape and improve the learning process. In contrast, when we are uncomfortable with ourselves, and when we imitate others, we typically try to fit in, which can have negative consequences. Research has shown that suppressing your identity to act like others can lead to psychological and cardiovascular problems. This is why we should follow Staats' advice:

"Be yourself. You'll be more positive, more motivated, and able to engage in more open learning."

Play to Your Strengths

Most people, myself included, tend to fixate on our weaknesses. Back in my corporate days, I would quickly dismiss all the positive feedback and only truly hear anything that was even remotely negative. We often believe that to get better, we need to work on our weaknesses. Just like Peter Drucker, Staats disagrees with that approach and suggests that we should play to our strengths. Utilizing our natural aptitude is more motivating, and it increases our chances of success.

Although playing to our strengths is a more effective tool for learning, we typically focus on our weaknesses, because we believe that we need to excel in everything to achieve long-term success. However, as Staats points out, we only have 24 hours in a day. If we choose to spend our time working on our weaknesses, we miss the opportunity to continue developing our strengths. Also, no matter how much we work on certain weaknesses, we may never improve in those areas. In business, especially, focusing on our strengths and what differentiates us from everyone else is a winning strategy.

Learn from Failure

There are so many famous quotes about failure, from Thomas Edison's "I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work" to Mark Cuban's "It doesn't matter how many times you have failed, you only have to be right once" to J. K. Rowling's "It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all – in which case, you fail by default."

All of those quotes are immensely rational and make perfect sense, but when we look deep inside, we realize that our reactions to failure are emotional. The reasons we fear failure are often irrational. We should acknowledge that most people are afraid to fail, but it should not stop us from moving forward. As Staats remarks, "When we open ourselves to failure, we invite entirely new possibilities for learning."

It is true: if we are not failing, we are not learning. The two go together. When we try new things, they do not always work as expected. Some would call those situations a failure, and some would look at those situations as Thomas Edison did: an experience in which we learned what does not work.

Staats suggests that we are reluctant to be open to failure because we focus too much on success. We prefer to play it safe and not veer too much outside the norm. We also tend to overemphasize the possible negative outcomes. Staats cites research that shows that people do not usually act unless the potential gain is twice as much as the risk.

We need to be open about failure. While we might fail at something new, it should not stop us from trying. Transparency about failure helps people realize that everyone fails. Knowing that simple truth can improve performance and encourage others to try new things.

"Mistakes aren't a necessary evil. They aren't evil at all. They are an inevitable consequence of doing something new (and, as such, should be seen as valuable; without them, we'd have no originality)." - Ed Catmull, the co-founder of Pixar

Conclusion

While learning is hard, it is a never-ending process. Without continual learning, we risk becoming irrelevant or getting stuck in a job that is no longer meaningfully rewarding. By being ourselves, playing to our strengths, and learning from failure, we can become dynamic learners and create an endless source of meaningful work.