5 minute read
Stepping Back to Leap Forward
“What do you want to be when you grow up?”
Margo Purcell
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It’s an age-old question and one that we continue to ask young people at earlier and earlier ages. We see a push for specialization when it comes to selecting education streams in high schools. We see pressure to pick a sport and stick with it (and only it) at younger and younger ages coupled with a fear that if they haven’t chosen and committed early enough, they have “no chance” at sporting success. Heck, we see Coding for Babies. I’ve worked with adults at the other end of this early specialization push. These are people who feel stuck in unfulfilling careers and ask themselves, “But what else can I do?” They are afraid to change jobs, companies or industries because they tell me, “It’s too late” or “I don’t have what I need and can’t go back to school.” People forced to change jobs/careers due to shifts in the industry or economy who are terrified of “starting over” and are anxious as they see diminishing years to achieve the career gains they want/need.
In his book “Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World”, David Epstein showcases career success in many fields from people who explored a wide range of areas and only specialized later (in their education and in their life).
But what about “Jack of all trades and master of none?”
Research doesn’t back that up.
Epstein studied the world’s most successful athletes, musicians, scientists, inventors and artists. He found that outside of fields of endeavour where the activities remain similar (even if the conditions change) - more hours of practice (specialization) early in life, did not result in greater performance. In fact, the exact opposite was true. The greater the diversity of activities and endeavours, the greater the amount of exploration and experimentations across fields, the greater the performance once they picked a specialization.
He also found that there tended to be greater satisfaction and career longevity since the specialization often came from discoveries through the years of generalization and was often informed by the cross-pollination effect of having had a wide variety of experiences and learning to draw from.
What does this mean for education?
We need to provide as many opportunities as possible to explore a wide
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WITH y a lot of responsibility.CAREERS, EVER eir future choices and whoYONE WINS We challenge employers to take on the future with our emerging talented students. Collaboration between Industry Education and the Community is essential to create a safe rewarding environment where youth can explore their career path and together we can #takeonthefuture. #TakeOnTheFuture #Collaboration #Careers
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range of fields of study and an even wider range of learning experiences. By experiences, we mean hands-on, learn-by-doing.
Test, Iterate, Integrate.
It means providing the environment for people to try new things, see how they work (or don’t) and support the learners in the discovery process which includes what they discover about themselves in the process. It means having educators be facilitators of the learning process - putting the ingredients for learning out without a preset recipe card of the “one way” to put the ingredients together. It means having everyone involved in the learning let go of pre-determined outcomes and instead be open to what emerges and the learning that comes as a result.
Designer Mindset
For us to do this on a large scale, we need anyone and everyone involved in learning (learners, educators, family, friends) to adopt a Designer Mindset. A designer mindset begins with determining what success looks like and being open to multiple views of success. From there, we define design as creating the conditions for success.
Sounds simple AND this too requires a range of curiosity and competence across multiple fields of endeavour. We need to dig deeply into human nature and the understanding of how humans behave and think. Without that, we are likely to build learning environments that fall short of the supports people need when they need them (maybe even failing to recognize that they need support at all). We’ve been applying these principles and concepts at InceptionU over the last four years through our Evolve programs. We’ve also been applying them to ourselves and our organization.
We are excited that we still have lots to learn. And we foster our own curiosity to continue to do exactly that.
As you look to design and lead your own education and career pathways, first and foremost, be curious about yourself. Pay attention to the signals you get (physical, mental, emotional, spiritual) that help you recognize which is the next best step on your path. You may notice things like: • your energy goes up
• you become so immersed as to lose track of time
• you experience ease even when stepping into something new or unknown
• you experience great satisfaction after learning even when it was challenging/ frustrating
• you repeatedly hear from others that they observe a positive shift in you when talking about or engaged in the topic/activity/subject
My co-founder Greg Hart often says “That attention is a scarce resource for humans. Paying attention to the signals that come from within is a very worthy use of that scarce resource. It is through this that you can look at the ingredients before you and create your own recipe for education and career success.”
