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Rick Fearnbaugh focuses on building better learning environments and organizational conditions that help employees reach their full potential. He is a U.S. Marine Corps veteran who holds a doctorate in strategic leadership and masters in executive leadership.

Learning beyond Immediate Business Needs

Most organizations say they value learning, but they really only value it when it produces a clear, short-term business return. If you attend this training course, you will become a better coach, which will make your employees produce more at a higher quality. Organizations tend to lean into this type of training and design their entire learning strategy around giving people knowledge on topics that matter to the business. This is just-in-time training. It is a reaction to a problem, not a proactive learning strategy.

This mindset creates a culture of learning as a means to an end. Employees realize that learning is not something we do unless the organization tells us to. That is unfortunate because the act of learning has countless benefits that will help employees become more productive and reach their full potential at work.

Developing Learning as a Lasting Skill

Regardless of what you are learning, the act of learning helps you become a better critical thinker, gain more knowledge, gain more experience and flex your learning muscle. All of this makes it easier to learn things in the future.

Learning is a skill. It is something that you can get better at if you practice, and it is also something you can get worse at if you do not use the skill regularly. Now think about our world today.

More and more real-world AI use cases arise every single day. This is not an AI article, but an important feature of the workforce that will only grow in its scope and use cases in the years to come. Organizations are finding that the pace of the world is moving faster, and they are figuring out they have to pick up their own internal pace if they want to keep up. This is why it pays to have employees with genuine curiosity and a desire to learn new things.

The Importance of Curiosity Today

AI might not be the major disruption your industry faces, but there is no question that the world is moving more quickly than ever before. AI has made that crystal clear. It only makes sense that organizations should be looking for ways to future-proof their success. And that starts with the most valuable resource: people. Curious employees do not need their organization to tell them to learn. They choose to learn on their own. They go out and seek knowledge, adapt quickly at work and focus on new opportunities rather than the negative aspects of change. Curious employees find opportunities in challenges and strive to understand things, and they help adapt policies and procedures to meet the needs of complex environments. Change is exciting when you are curious about what the future could hold and unafraid of learning new things. Employees who know how to learn and enjoy it are the biggest competitive advantage you can have in the modern world.

Advice for Emerging Leaders

You cannot hope to stay ahead of the pace of change forever. You have to build a workforce that helps you stay ahead of the pack. You do that by encouraging and rewarding curiosity, learning and growth because there is never a downside to learning. And the world today rewards those who can learn fast enough to keep up with it. The best way to prepare for the future is to develop a workforce of curious employees who are constantly moving forward, toward growth and progress.