Growing Your Career: Never Stop Learning

Here it is - March - the beginning of spring, warmer weather and the rebirth of those things that hibernate for the winter. How about your career – has it been in hibernation for the last few months? Over the next four weeks, we’ll cover skills you may consider to help grow and nurture your career.

Let’s get right to it:
“Never stop learning”. That’s the motto for an adult community ed school here in my area. While they are promoting their class offerings, this saying is literally applicable to each and every one of us. While you may have the ability to take classes after work and on the weekends, some may prefer to look at learning opportunities during their work week and work hours.
In addition to typical classroom settings, here are some ideas to help you never stop learning:

Cross train within your company to learn how other departments fit together to form the whole organization.
Attend training classes conducted by your company’s training department or attend outside programs; ask your supervisor to bring in outside trainers to present specific topics of interest
Mentorship – be one or become one. Either way, I see the same benefit – wisdom from a more experienced person and/or the new ideas and perspective from a fresh newcomer in the workplace.
Management and skill development books on tape – put your commute time to good use.
Books – surround yourself with those relative to career development. Read cover-to-cover or pick out nuggets from chapters here and there.
Master mind groups, formal or informal, which are incredible support systems
Associations within your industry. Hear what your counterparts are doing and thinking in their companies.

If you take only one or two of these suggestions and implement them, you are opening yourself up to an abundance of new ideas. Go ahead, pick one this week, take some simple action steps (visit your training department for upcoming classes, shop the book-on-tape aisle at the bookstore, take a wise co-worker to lunch to discuss mentoring), and open your mind to another point of view that can make a big difference for your career.

One more reason to never stop learning: It keeps your mind young and healthy! The more you use those synapses – message connections between your brain cells – the stronger they get and the more they increase. Furthermore, if you learn something that excites you, you learn it faster and train those synapses to make strong connections. Read You: Staying Young, the Owner’s Manual for Extending Your Warranty for more information on the biological benefits to keep learning!

Please post your ideas on ways to Never Stop Learning!