How Can We Create a Workforce Full of Lifelong Learners?

We all agree that the world we work in today is so different from the world that was when our current learning systems were designed. Everything around us—our workplaces, our workforce, and entire industries. And learning—continuous, lifelong learning—is a bare essential for us to keep up.

The people who will flourish in this new world are those who can a) learn to learn, b) learn to unlearn, and c) learn to relearn. Yet, in a recent global survey of 1,000 business leaders, conducted by Infosys Knowledge Institute, these skills received short shrift. Respondents were far more likely to list teamwork, leadership, and communication when asked which skills they considered to be important now. While this thinking limits the tremendous potential in the talent market, the finding itself points to the huge latent competitive advantage for companies that actually nurture learnability and embrace lifelong learning.

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Here are three points to ponder as we try to help the workforce learn better.

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3. It’s smart to doubt your idea

Argue like you’re right, but listen like you are wrong. So says Adam Grant, the Wharton psychologist and author of Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World.  Being able to doubt your own idea is an essential skill for any problem-finder. It’s very different from debilitating self-doubt. While doubting yourself can be paralyzing, doubting your idea can energize you to test new hypotheses, experiment with possible outcomes, and refine your approach. The process may not always feel comfortable. It’s rarely easy to discard a favored technique or a soundly researched hypothesis that just seems right. But few things at work are more thrilling than the moment we conceive of new ways to look at a problem—because the solution is suddenly that much closer.

Read the whole story (subscription may be required): Quartz