Learn and Relearn

Last week we brought MOR Associates to campus to provide another leadership training session for IT staff and managers.  This time we invited the Crookston, Morris, and Rochester campuses to send participants.  We found their contributions really helped us to think more broadly across the UM System.  We greatly appreciated Greg Anderson and Lori Green, our trainers, for the fantastic job they did in helping us to work on issues that really mattered to us.  It was a great session.

We had eight new participants this time, including five from the other campuses.  During the morning of the first day, the new participants worked with Lori on some skills that others had learned in previous sessions.  I sat in on this session for the new people and found that I had a chance to relearn an important lesson that I have learned several times before.

The lesson that I relearned is that feedback is a gift.  When someone offers feedback, I should simply accept the feedback by saying, "Thank you."  Despite having learned this lesson several times, I find that it is so easy to forget it.  I have several examples over the past month where I got defensive, offered an explanation, or just generally forgot to say, "Thank you."  I have to keep reminding myself that thanking someone for feedback doesn't necessarily mean that I agree with the feedback.  It simply means that I appreciate the person going out on a limb to offer it.  I will get more out of the feedback that is offered by taking it along with me to mull over and decide later how to respond.

I think this learn and relearn strategy is perhaps just being human.  The hard lessons are the ones we have to repeat several times before we really get it.  And even then, we might backslide sometimes.  But practice makes perfect, they say.  I'll keep working at it.