I am like that only...

Experience is a compelling teacher. It is also a tough teacher – It administers the test before explaining the lesson. As with lessons learnt from compelling and tough teachers, we tend to remember what experience teaches us (at least more than what we remember from books.)

Most of us also tend to trust the lessons we learn through experience. You may tell a child not to touch the fire a hundred times and she may still touch it. Once she touches it, she will never do it again.

I believe that successful people learn more from their experiences. In most professional services, a strong technical background from a reputed institution is often a prerequisite. Therefore, from a purely technical perspective, there may be little to distinguish between a successful and unsuccessful professional. What distinguishes a successful professional is her ability to learn more on the job (another term for experience) and leverage those lessons to beat the competition. Successful senior managers usually have a large arsenal of challenging past experiences, from which they draw courage, inspiration and sustenance, apart from the confidence required to address new challenges (and become yet more successful.)

Now there lies a critical human resource and leadership development challenge. Let me quote two instances that I remember from last year. In both instances, a junior manager had complained about his senior manager’s behavior to the competent authorities. In both cases, the senior leader was found to be bullying and intimidating, bordering on being abusive. When confronted, this is what both said (paraphrased, of course):

• You are welcome to complain, but that’s how I work…

• I will try to change, but being aggressive is in my DNA…

While it is tempting to judge (and maybe predict the imminent decline of) the two senior managers, it may be worthwhile to take a step back. Here we are, with two successful professionals, who have risen to senior positions based on their past successes. Their experience has clearly taught them what works and what doesn’t (which is usually a rather subjective matter, but human beings are prone to generalizations.) In the process, they have come to trust their “way of working” and “DNA” as the means (and often the only means) to success.

It is therefore natural that successful and senior people will be highly reluctant towards feedback that requires them to change the way they work, especially if the feedback is from their peers or juniors. This attitude of “I know how it’s done” resulting in a resistance to learn becomes a critical barrier for sustained leadership development.

It is amazing to note the number of middle to senior level managers who believe that there is little or nothing left for them to learn. Offer some feedback, and you will be entertained (or bored) by epic war stories from their past, which invariably make them look like gladiatorial heroes.

I suppose an affective antidote to this is to remember that we all get promoted to our level of incompetence. Fearing this imminent incompetence barrier may be a motivation to keep looking forward, rather than past “spikes.”