One of the aspects I love about my current role is that every day is a new opportunity to learn something. Part of that is the design of the job, and how innovative our department and organization is as a whole. The other part is the fact that I’ve come to grow to welcome a lack of knowledge; basically, adopting, for lack of a better phrase, “a child’s mindset.” By going into every situation forcing myself to look through the lens of “there are no stupid questions” or, just as easily, “I’m the least intelligent person in the room” it makes it much easier to ask questions that might seem naïve or uninformed to some. And, with that mindset, it is pretty easy to ask just about any question, as there are no negatives to anticipate coming from making the ask!
The nice part of growing into a perpetual question-asking role is that it forces learning to continue. I’m always getting deeper insight into how others think and in asking questions, I’m providing myself with additional strands that I can explore to build upon my learning in the future.
What’s funny is that prior to seeing the value in continuously questioning, I never would have considered questions as the foundation to learning. I would have thought for sure that it would have been the answers that would keep us going.
Yet I’ve learned that through our questioning we build a reserve of yearning for learning, and that, in turn, helps us to continuously strive for improvement!