LEARNING MINDSET
PERSONALIZED GUIDANCE REPORT
Learning is a skill, and intentional learning is a mindset. Developing and nurturing your mindset will lead you to become an intentional learner. And harnessing learning skills can build your self-esteem, boost your career, and increase your satisfaction with life.
To give you personalized guidance, we have measured three personality traits and the sub-traits. that influence your ability to learn intentionally:
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Openness: A high level of acceptance of new experiences. Openness comprises the personality sub-traits of curiosity, variety seeking, risk taking and optimism.
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Focus: The ability to concentrate and focus your attention. Focus comprises perseverance, self-starting, structured thinking, and tough-mindedness.
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Planning: The act of thinking about the activities required to achieve your desired goals. Planning comprises forward planning, adaptability, autonomy, and reflection.
Your most preferred approach to learning is
OPENNESS
This personalized report has been created to help you evaluate and reflect upon the factors that influence your intention to learn. In addition to the guidance offered in this document, we will link you to worksheets for improving your weaker traits. Read on to learn more about your quiz results!
Here is an index to the overview and topics addressed in your personalized report:
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Openness
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Curiosity
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Variety Seeking
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Risk Taking
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Optimism
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Focus
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Perseverance
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Structured Thinking
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Self-Starting
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Tough-Mindedness
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Planning
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Foresight
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Adaptability
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Autonomy
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Reflectiveness
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Potential Barriers and Your Personalized Learning Guide
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More About a Learning Mindset
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How can I develop my intention to learn?
OPENNESS
Breaking down openness into its sub-traits of curiosity, variety seeking, risk-taking, and optimism will help you build on your strengths, and evaluate your weaknesses. This process will help ensure that you are open to learning new things.
CURIOSITY
Curiosity is an essential quality of lifelong learners, who pursue learning for its own sake and are eager to make new discoveries. This personality sub-trait drives their willingness to research topics they know little about and find the answers they need.
YOUR PERSONAL GUIDANCE
Your responses indicate that you are curious to find out about the latest developments in your field of interest. That’s a good thing, but it can lead you to seek new experiences that distract you from problem solving or decision making.
UNDERSTANDING OTHERS
Other people might be more or less open to new ideas than you are. Understanding other individuals’ levels of openness will help promote constructive conversations among you and others.
Individuals that are less curious like tried-and-true, traditional methods. Being less curious can lead to passing over new ideas. Developing curiosity helps individuals learn.
Individuals that are not usually curious are inquisitive from time to time. Recognizing levels of curiosity and developing curiosity helps with intentional learning.
Highly curious individuals learn about the latest developments but can often seek new experiences that can distract them from problem solving or decision making.
VARIETY SEEKING
A desire to seek new and different experiences is a powerful personality sub-trait that naturally encourages lifelong learning.
YOUR PERSONAL GUIDANCE
Your responses indicate that your approach to work and learning is to seek new experiences. You tend to have a variety of interests. You probably prefer the latest methods and strategic ideas to solve problems. However, variety can compromise efficiency and reliability in the solutions you seek. Be aware when seeking new experiences are more of a distraction that a benefit.
UNDERSTANDING OTHERS
Other individuals might seek out new and different experiences to a greater or lesser extent than you. Understanding others’ proclivity toward variety-seeking behavior can help you engage more effectively with them.
Individuals that do not naturally seek out variety prefer familiar situations and interactions. They are comfortable with repetitive activity. They tend to approach work and learning as practical, tactical, and efficient. However, this approach may lead to losing out on opportunities which may bring success
Some individuals appreciate both innovation and efficiency, but neither one to the extreme. This approach may lead to missing opportunities that might bring success.
Individuals that seek variety in work and learning enjoy new experiences and tend to have a diverse set of interests. When problem solving, they tend to prefer the latest methods and strategic ideas. However, variety can compromise efficiency and reliability.
RISK TAKING
Lifelong learners are likely to regard risks as opportunities, although it’s important to keep a sense of balance when it comes to risk taking. Recklessness is not the idea here, but a sense of adventure and a willingness to challenge one’s comfort zone are key elements of curiosity.
YOUR PERSONAL GUIDANCE
Your responses indicate that you are willing to take risks and adopt new ideas helps you unlearn and re-think old assumptions. However, be cautious when reconsidering the core knowledge, you have gained over the years.
UNDERSTANDING OTHERS
Other individuals may be more or less open to risk than you are. Understanding others’ risk-taking appetite can help you evaluate your own actions and decisions.
Individuals who are risk averse tend to be conservative or set in their ways. They do not take risks and prefer a safe path. Being risk averse may make them miss opportunities to unlearn old assumptions and re-think their ideas. Developing a positive attitude about risk taking can enrich their learning process.
Some individuals tend to take calculated risks and will try new ways only if there is sufficient evidence that they are worthwhile. While it is important to carefully evaluate risk, building an even more positive attitude about risk can lead to valuable opportunities to unlearn old assumptions and re-think ideas.
Individuals who are willing to take risks taking and open to applying new ideas will be able to quickly unlearn old assumptions and re-think their ideas. In keeping an open mind, they must also be cautious when re-thinking the core knowledge, they have gained over years of experience.
OPTIMISM
The tendency to be happy and positive in any situation enables individuals to see the silver lining in dark clouds. This sense of optimism help individuals approach learning enthusiastically.
YOUR PERSONAL GUIDANCE
Your responses indicate that you tend to oscillate between being positive and skeptical, largely based on the situations you encounter.
UNDERSTANDING OTHERS
Some individuals may be more optimistic than you while others lean more toward skepticism. Understanding others’ attitudes can help you gain perspective when faced with uncertainties.
Some individuals are realistic in most situations rather than being positive. This approach may act as a hurdle when an optimistic outlook is required to sail through uncertainties or move ahead in trying times.
Some individuals tend to oscillate between being positive and realistic largely based on the situations they encounter. Not adopting a single approach can be helpful.
Some individuals have a very positive attitude even in times of adversities. However, this can sometimes prove to be detrimental if the problem is not evaluated realistically.
FOCUS
Focus is crucial for your learning mindset. Here, we will explore its sub-traits of perseverance, structured thinking, self-starting, and tough-mindedness.
PERSEVERANCE
Individuals who possess the sub-trait of perseverance approach their learning goals with determination and patience.
YOUR PERSONAL GUIDANCE
Your responses indicate that you tend to shift between being extremely focused and casual as you work toward your goals. Becoming more consistently focused will help you develop greater perseverance in your learning journey.
UNDERSTANDING OTHERS
Other individuals may display perseverance to a greater or lesser extent than you. Understanding others’ levels of determination may help you adjust your efforts as you pursue goals.
Some individuals tend to approach goals in a relaxed and spontaneous manner. Developing a more focused approach will help them in their learning journey.
Some individuals tend to shift between being extremely focused and casual in their approach toward their goals. This may be useful if the goal at hand is well matched to the amount of effort it requires.
Some individuals tend to work toward goals in an industrious, disciplined, and dependable fashion. However, when the goal is unattainable through sheer perseverance, a very focused approach may lead to disappointment or burnout.
STRUCTURED THINKING
Individuals who structure their thoughts and take a well-organized approach to projects stay focused on their goals and are not easily distracted.
YOUR PERSONAL GUIDANCE
Your responses indicate that you are sometimes structured and linear in your approach but at times you can tend to be spontaneous and prone to multi-tasking.
UNDERSTANDING OTHERS
Other individuals may be well organized and structured in their thinking to a greater or lesser extent than you. Understanding how others organize their thoughts can help you in planning and structuring your own learning journey.
Some individuals prefer to multi-task and be involved in many projects and goals at the same time. However, too little structure can jeopardize their results.
Some individuals are sometimes structured and linear in their approach, but at times they tend to be spontaneous and prone to multi-tasking. Choosing to be less structured can sometimes hamper their efforts.
Some individuals process information in a structured, linear, sequential manner. This can be advantageous in planning their learning or attaining their goals. However, being overly structured as it may cause them to overlook newer concepts or practices that could benefit them.
SELF-STARTING
This section discusses the tendency to start initiatives on their own. Self-starters take initiative, drawing energy from within to start new projects. They do not need continuous encouragement and prodding.
YOUR PERSONAL GUIDANCE
Your responses indicate that you may at times be proactive about the tasks you want to complete, but sometimes not. Being more consistently proactive can help you in your learning journey.
UNDERSTANDING OTHERS
Other individuals may be self-starters to a greater or lesser extent than you. Understanding others’ proactive spirit can prove to be a source of encouragement in your learning journey.
Some individuals are casual about responsibilities, unorganized, or less proactive than others. Developing a proactive attitude can help them in their learning journey in many ways.
Some individuals may at times be proactive about the tasks they want to complete and sometimes not. It can be useful to evaluate a situation to determine whether to be proactive or not.
Some individuals have a strong will to achieve and do not need external motivation to get started. However, they may tend to start a project before getting the complete picture and to lose focus as their learning journey continues.
TOUGH MINDEDNESS
Strong-willed individuals are able to face reality. Obstacles and extreme situations rarely throw them off course.
YOUR PERSONAL GUIDANCE
Your responses indicate that you stay focused on your goals even in times of adversity. This is a positive, vital sub-trait, but pushing yourself beyond your limits can lead to stress and burnout. It is good to give up sometimes, especially when you may be pursuing a mistaken right goal.
UNDERSTANDING OTHERS
Individuals have varying levels of tough-mindedness. Understanding others’ strength of may inspire you to move ahead in difficult times.
Individuals who are not tough-minded tend to give up on their goals or tasks in times of adversity. Developing tough mindedness can help them push through difficulties and reach their goals.
Some individuals are tough-minded or not, depending on the situation at hand. This approach can be applied after a thorough analysis of the situation.
Individuals who are tough-minded stay focused on their goals even in times of adversity. This is a positive trait but pushing beyond one’s limits can lead to stress and burnout.
PLANNING
The ability to see ahead of time, make plans, follow through on or adapt them as needed requires forward planning, adaptability, and reflection.
FORESIGHT
Detailed planning requires foresight that takes every aspect of a project into account. Individuals with foresight find it easy to follow rules and stay true to their plans.
YOUR PERSONAL GUIDANCE
Your responses indicate that you sometimes plan well but may prefer to be spontaneous in some situations. Developing your ability to foresee what’s needed and make detailed plans based on those needs would help you achieve your goals more consistently.
UNDERSTANDING OTHERS
Individuals may be planners to a greater or lesser extent than you. Understanding others’ ability to anticipate details and their differing attitudes toward planning can help you envision your learning journey.
Some individuals work on their immediate goals and do not plan ahead. Thinking through what’s needed and working out the details ahead of time would help them set goals and work toward them.
Some individuals plan for some things but may prefer to be spontaneous in other situations. Using both these approaches can be good, but it is important to understand that long-term goals need proper planning. Spontaneity is useful for quick decisions about immediate situations.
Individuals who tend to work with foresight and vision carefully evaluate what the future may hold and plan accordingly. They may find that planning too much in may not be wise in these changing times. As they move forward, they may need to add something they did not include in their original plan.
ADAPTABILITY
Adaptable individuals tolerate changes and adjust to them easily. They grow accustomed to new things and work easily in fast-paced, ever-changing situations.
YOUR PERSONAL GUIDANCE
Your responses indicate that you are likely to adapt to some situations but not all. Being more open to change would help you perform better in today’s fast-changing world.
UNDERSTANDING OTHERS
Other individuals may be more adaptable than you and others less so. Understanding others’ levels of adaptability can help you identify your respective comfort zones.
Some individuals would rather stay in their comfort zone than change their course. Being open to change would help them succeed in today’s fast- changing world.
Some individuals adapt to certain situations but not all. It is good to be adaptable; however, it is also important to hold your ground. Making that careful distinction is a skill.
Some individuals are willing to incorporate any needed changes as they pursue their vision and goals. However, they may find that being too adaptable can make it difficult to hold their ground and substantiate their views.
AUTONOMY
Autonomous individuals work well on their own. They are independent, confident, and able to make critical decisions on their own.
YOUR PERSONAL GUIDANCE
Your responses indicate that you sometimes regard your work as interlinked with that of others but can work independently at certain times. You probably decide whether to work independently or within a team based on the situation at hand.
UNDERSTANDING OTHERS
Other individuals may be autonomous to a greater or lesser extent than you. Understanding others’ need for independence and the ability to make decisions on their own can help you when working on a task with others or building teams.
Some individuals may regard their work as interlinked with or dependent on other people. They may find it easier to work with others than independently. However, it is good to develop greater autonomy for situations that do not involve teams or work partners.
Some individuals do not always believe that their work is interlinked with that of others. They and can work independently when required. It is good to be both independent and collaborative -- and to understand which approach works best in a given situation.
Highly independent individuals do not want their progress to be dependent on others. However, it is good to work and consult with others, particularly while setting goals or planning for the long term.
REFLECTIVENESS
This section discusses the tendency to think through situations, actions, and people. Reflective individuals tend to think deeply about situations, actions, and people before forming opinions about them.
YOUR PERSONAL GUIDANCE
Your responses indicate that you tendency to reflect on your tasks and thoughts helps you make course corrections and achieve your goals. However, contemplating too much can slow your response and inhibit action.
UNDERSTANDING OTHERS
Other individuals may be reflective to a greater or lesser extent than you. Understanding others’ approach to reflection may help you anticipate their speed of decision making and immediacy of response.
Some individuals tend to be spontaneous and immediate rather than contemplative. Reflecting on their thoughts and actions would lead to more effective learning.
Some individuals do not always reflect on situations but take the time to contemplate some situations before responding to them. Reflecting on actions, thoughts and ideas can lead to good decision making and learning.
Some individuals reflect carefully on their tasks and thoughts, which helps them make course corrections and achieve their goals. However, contemplating too much can inhibit action and immediacy of response.
Potential Barriers and Your
Personalized Learning Guide
Lifelong learning is a strategy to develop your understanding of yourself, others, and the skills that you will need for your future. Being stuck in the past leads to a less fulfilling life. In this section we help you understand the barriers to learning that you might be encountering and how to develop yourself despite these potential barriers.
Overcoming barriers is not as hard as it sounds. Success starts with:
A. Identifying and naming barriers accurately
B. Recognizing and understanding them
C. Learning how to remove them
The Learning Mindset quiz has identified some of your barriers so let’s dive in and provide you some tips for helping you overcome them.
Barriers To Learning
Anyone can become an intentional, lifelong learner, but most will need to overcome a few barriers along the way. Potential barriers fall into three categories:
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Barrier of the Mindset. This impedes our ability to unlearn old concepts, rethink assumptions, and seek out novel experiences and ideas.
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Barrier of practice and distraction. Today’s world and devices provide numerous distractions which holds us back from taking time to develop ourselves.
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Barrier of foresight and reflection. Planning, thinking ahead, and reflecting on our learning experiences can be powerful tools for developing ourselves, if we use them!
Barrier of the Mindset
Seeking new ideas and novel experiences, together with the ability to re-think opinions and perceptions, is the engine of intentional learning. A learning mindset can be cultivated, even by those individuals who don’t consider themselves naturally curious. Curiosity gets your learning started. Curiosity is awareness, an openness to ideas, and an ability to make connections between different concepts.
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Curiosity provides inspiration, which is strongly correlated with an intrinsic desire to learn.
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Curiosity feeds your ability as a self-directed learner.
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Curiosity doesn’t diminish with age, so it can serve you at any point in your career.
Although your learning methods will change over time, curiosity will keep the spark of motivation alive. The worksheet provides exercises for strengthening your curiosity. We recommend using the worksheets to help you in this learning journey.
Talent Transformation has developed a worksheet to help you develop your mindset to be open to learning.
Barriers to Practice
Practice is critical to learning. Trying, failing, refining your approach, and trying again are at the heart of skill building. It’s said that practice makes perfect, but it is essential to know what to practice.
Doing things over and over does little to build your skills, but "deliberate practice” leads to expertise. Deliberate practice is a focused effort to master a skill at the right level of challenge / difficulty by targeting the skill gaps just beyond your current set of skills. The practice is not too hard, too easy, nor too close to what you can already do. It offers right level of challenge, focused on precisely the skill you need.
Talent Transformation has developed a worksheet to help you develop your skills to practice and learn.
Barriers of Distraction
Everyone faces distractions, but it is important to demarcate time for learning. You must control how you use your time and balance your responsibilities. Although there is no formula for making time to learn, a few strategies will help you find time for learning even on busy days. Please refer to the worksheets to get started.
Talent Transformation has developed a worksheet to help you develop your skills to track and reduce distractions.
Barriers of Foresight
Learning is fruitful when it is purposeful and goal oriented. Foresight helps individuals reduce errors, set realistic goals and plan wisely to reach them.
Talent Transformation has developed a worksheet to help you develop your foresight, recognize the pros and cons of your choices, and help with decision making.
Barriers to Reflection
Metacognition, or reflecting on your own thinking, plays a critical role in all cognitive tasks, including your ability to learn from situations. Reflection is a diagnostic skill that helps you evaluate yourself and determine your learning needs. It helps you understand your past performance and sheds light on what you can do to improve – including what to do and what not to do.
Reflecting is helpful before, during, and after a task. Equally important, reflection lowers your barrier to change. It leads to self-efficacy and confidence, which builds resolve to take on increasingly hard challenges. Facing these harder challenges strengthens existing skills and builds new ones.
Talent Transformation has developed a worksheet to help you develop by reflecting on your learning experiences.
MORE ABOUT A LEARNING MINDSET
Learning is a skill, and intentional learning is a mindset. Nurturing such a mindset and harnessing a one’s learning skill can boost their personal and professional life and deliver a competitive edge. Over time, an individual who persistently develops their learning mindset can become a lifelong learner. This may include ups and downs in the learning journey. Perhaps they will struggle to learn about and master unfamiliar topics. Perhaps they will need to unlearn certain things and rethink them. Being an agile learner, always willing to learn, is key to long-term career success.
Never has a learning mindset been so important as it is today. Digital technologies, including artificial intelligence, are transforming the world of work. Today's workers will need to continually learn new skills to stay relevant in their current jobs and adapt as new occupations emerge. Research shows that the need for manual, physical skills and basic cognitive skills will decline and the need for technological, social, emotional, and higher cognitive skills will grow. Whatever the skills to be mastered, a willingness to learn is essential. The call to learn has never been more insistent. Even before the pandemic, lifetime employment was fading and there were demands that both executives and employees must continually refresh their skills. The pandemic has only accelerated the urgency of skill building, either to keep up with the speed of transformation or to manage the new ways of working.
Theories on learning offer different perspectives on how individuals receive, process, and retain knowledge during learning. Cognitive, emotional, and environmental influences, as well as prior experience, all play a part in determining how understanding is acquired or changed, and knowledge and skills retained.
Learning is the process of acquiring new understanding, knowledge, behaviors, skills, values, attitudes, and preferences. Some learning is immediate, caused by a single event (e.g., being bitten by a dog), but more often, skills and knowledge accumulate from repeated experiences. The changes induced by learning often last a lifetime.
Human learning starts at birth and continues until death via ongoing interactions between people and their environment.
The nature and processes involved in learning are studied in many fields, including educational psychology, neuropsychology, experimental psychology, pedagogy, and andragogy. Research in such fields has led to the identification of various sorts of learning. For example, learning may occur through classical conditioning, operant conditioning, or habituation. Complex activities such as play also can engender learning, and learning may occur consciously or unconsciously.
As interesting as it is to explore how learning occurs, the most important thing to understand is how open are we to learning.
Learning Theories
An intention to learn includes embracing the need to learn and developing a strong desire to learn continuously, almost like a reflective, automatic behavior. This requires two fundamental approaches: developing an open mindset and being curious.
A popular study by Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck on mindsets suggests that people hold one of two sets of beliefs about their own abilities: They adopt either a fixed mindset or a growth mindset.
A fixed mindset is the belief that personality characteristics, talents, and abilities are finite or fixed resources; they can’t be altered, changed, or improved. You simply are the way you are. People with this mindset tend to take a polar view of themselves—they consider themselves either intelligent or average, talented, or untalented, a success or a failure. A fixed mindset stunts learning because it eliminates permission not to know something, to fail, or to struggle. The fixed mindset does not allow people the luxury of becoming. They have to already be.
In contrast, a growth mindset suggests that you can grow, expand, evolve, and change. Intelligence and capability are not fixed points but instead traits you can cultivate. A growth mindset releases you from the expectation of being perfect. Failures and mistakes are not indicative of the limits of your intellect but rather tools that inform how you develop. Cultivating a growth mindset can begin with shifting your inner dialogue from beliefs about your ability (a fixed mindset) to beliefs about your opportunities and needs (a growth mindset) — for example, from “I am terrible at being disciplined and focused” to “I need to put in more effort and practice to become focused.” Similarly, “I’m not good enough to be a manager” might become “I need some additional experience before I can manage others.” Simple restatements have a dramatic impact on what you believe about your own abilities.
How can I develop my intention to learn?
Curiosity, the catalyst of a learning mindset, can be cultivated, even in those who don’t consider themselves naturally curious. Think of curiosity as the start button of your learning engine.
Curiosity is inquisitiveness, a need to know more. It is an openness to idea, and an ability to make connections between dissimilar concepts. Research tells us that curiosity matters for three primary reasons. First, inspiration is strongly correlated with an intrinsic desire to learn. Curiosity sparks inspiration. You learn more and more frequently because you are curious. Second, curiosity marks the beginning of a virtuous cycle that feeds your ability as a self-directed learner. Finally, research suggests that curiosity does not diminish with age, so it can serve you at any point in your career. Although your learning methods will change over time, curiosity will keep the spark of motivation alive.
CONCLUSION
Your DNA or upbringing do not determine your learning ability. By understanding more about yourself you can develop your ability to learn intentionally and build a better life for yourself and those around you.
Talent Transformation has developed worksheets to help you develop your skills. Some of the following worksheet may have been linked above as they have been recommended as part of your development plan – Developing Your Mindset, Developing Practice, Track and Reduce Distractions, Developing Foresight, and Developing Skills to Reflect.
