Continuous learning is the secret weapon of adult empowerment in our age of constant change. This is true no matter which part of adulthood a person is in. Unfortunately, few use it to full advantage. It is all too easy to lock oneself into the assumptions born of youthful schooling as the world spins on with new paradigms and technologies. It is just as easy to lose the learning edge in a mellowed-out midlife, leaving leadership to others.
Adults at any age who fail to stay abreast of our ever accelerating learning curve are at risk. Younger adults miss opportunities; older adults take on stereotypical “old” behaviors: they seem over the hill, passive, resigned. But adults who keep pushing into new learning of any type are questioning, imaginative, and daring. Continuous learning keeps a person vital, awake, and forward looking. As many parts of the world become a grayer culture, it must also become a continuous learning society if it wants to remain a leader among nations.
People in their twenties haven’t yet launched their first life chapter. Many are busy going to school to get ready for the great adventure ahead—the grown-up years: earning degrees, getting work experience, learning to manage in many settings, becoming experts in something. Many imagine settling down after all this for the long haul.
Those who are now older adults remember that early period well when training for their first adult life chapter took more than twenty years. When they launched their first dreams, they may have lacked experience, but they didn’t lack careful preparation and powerful determination. During the rest of their lives, they gained lots of experience but probably never again had such intense learning preparation. They now must engage in whatever learning they need if they are to sustain the great adventure of adulthood.
Coaches should ask themselves these questions about a client who seems ready to undertake a new learning agenda:
To begin discussion of a learning program with clients, a coach should ask, in one way or another, the following eight questions to encourage clients to begin constructing their own learning agenda:
Because abundant learning resources are available not only through recognized educational institutions but through informal learning groups and the Internet, it is possible for all adults to be committed to a continuous learning agenda that evolves and changes throughout the adult life cycle.
The whole global village is an adult’s campus. We can choose our own learning environments and formats: seminars, mentors, conferences, books, study groups, certification programs, advanced degrees, and ways to get connected. There is no paucity of adult learning opportunities near and far.
Adults do not want to sit at the feet of mere knowledge experts; we want to learn from masters of our fields—others who have applied the knowledge they are espousing to themselves and their professions. That is why so many conventional college professors do not appeal to midlife adults as appropriate teachers. The new adult teacher is a mentor, mensch, or master—someone who lives and breathes what the learner wants to learn. Many such experts are available around the world today. Each of us has to find them and hire them. We may not find them at conventional learning institutions, although some can be found there too.