Thank You to Those Who Referred First Time Attendees to Boston! • Angelina Sabatini
• Jenny Greenlief Baird • Kay Allen • Kelly McAndrew • Lauren Mendenhall • Mike Andrews • Monique Makhlouf • Tom Law • Rachel Richal
• Serah Morrissey • Shannon Achilarre • Shannon Ciccotelli • The teams at: Opus Whataburger
• Braxton Gray • Calvin Banks • Carlye Henderson • Jana Sharlow • Chaley Butler • Corban Nichols • Dina Taher
PresidenTalks (Un)Learning to Let Go As always, I walked away from the summer CHART conference with a host of new concepts to mull over, along with dozens of practical ideas I wanted to implement. One of the ideas that resonated most strongly with me was something Ty Bennett addressed in his opening keynote: the concept of unlearning . Unlearning is the conscious, intentional practice of discarding that which no
CHART President Jennifer Belk White, Ed.D., SPHR, CHT
longer serves us. In Ty’s example, while training for American Ninja Warrior his sons had learned how to do the lache, the movement of swinging from one horizontal bar to a second. However, when they then tried to learn the linked lache, which involves swinging from one bar to a second and then a third, a fourth, and so on, the skills that made them great at the single lache caused them to be unsuccessful with the linked version of the move. They had to unlearn the old movement in order to successfully learn the new one.
I walked away from the session not only with respect and appreciation for the hard work and commitment that it takes to become an elite athlete (and admiration for the poise of Ty’s sons as they spoke about what they had learned from their training), but also with the beginnings of both a “to learn” list and a “to unlearn” list. I was reminded of the book What Got You Here Won’t Get You There , by Marshall Goldsmith. Goldsmith addresses the need for unlearning as we advance in our careers, noting that the very traits and habits that help achieve success as individual contributors can become obstacles to further advancement. He suggests creating a “to stop” list, noting behaviors to eliminate that may be undermining leadership effectiveness.
As trainers, a focus on unlearning can be helpful both for ourselves and for those we support. Unlearning can help us support a newly-promoted multi-unit leader who was an exceptional GM but is struggling in the new role; it can also allow us to stop unwittingly holding ourselves back because we haven’t given up an old behavior that is no longer beneficial to our growth. What are you adding to your “to unlearn” list today?
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