I'm going to kind of jump into our theme overture, our theme du jour here
Learner. And so I'll just begin
with just a short description as I try to kind of boil down the
essence of what this theme is.
I really think Learners have a natural curiosity and enjoyment
of learning experience that leads to ever evolving paradigms and
ever-expanding perspectives. And
while Learner is a Thinking theme I have really come to believe that there
is an emotional part to this theme.
It's people who enjoy the process of learning.
There is an energy that's created. I have this
theory and I think I've had moments of this as a Learner, I call them,
you've heard of a "runner's high", I think there may be a Learner's
high. When you're exposed to some new information
or you have some new experience
or you're introduced to some new concept, and there's
this energy rush that you get.
And so I really see it as really
people who get an emotional boost from experiencing
and learning new things. I think people who have Learner
enjoy learning curves. They like how it feels to be
in learning mode and to some degree we don't like how it feels
we don't like it when we get on what I would call a learning plateau,
where we know everything there is to know about something or we
it's when Learners can kind of get bored sometimes when there's nothing new left
to understand. So they kind of look for: "okay what's the next learning
mountain to climb?"
It's interesting that learning is the
second most frequent theme found in people's top five in our database
of 11 million plus people.
I think that the number is about 29 percent. It's right behind Achiever at 32.
So there's quite a few Learners out there and it's not surprising. I mean
to some degree these are people who buy books and
these are people who
come to development programs to some degree so our database may be a little
bit skewed because of that.
Some words that I would use nouns and adjectives that might fit,
there are probably more:
Student, explorer,
discoverer, self-helper, continuous improver,
experts. Adjectives would be:
curious, interested, inquisitive,
open-minded, studious, passionate,
competent. I think the balcony
of Learner is it's someone who is always learning,
catches on quickly, interested in many things,
finds life to be intriguing. The
the basement is that sometimes we might become kind of a "know it all,"
or we may lack focus on results,
or we learn a lot; produce little,
or we may be perceived as kind of bookish.
I think
Learner is often confused with other Thinking themes and
Paul is a great example of someone who has lots of Thinking themes in his
dominant themes. He has
Learner, Input, Ideation, Intellection, Strategic and Analytical
in his top six. So sometimes those all kind of blend together. So the
way that I like to kind of get to the clarity of a theme is by
comparing it and contrasting it.
So I'm going to try to compare
and contrast
Learner with some of these other
Thinking themes to kind of
see how it stands out from them.
Learner/Input. How I would compare those is that
Learners really enjoy the process of learning, the experience of learning;
whereas Input really is more about the content of learning,
the stuff of learning. And obviously if you got both of them
you enjoy both of them. But another way that I might say that is
people who have Learner like the learning experience. People with Input
like the learning equipment,
the things that lead to learning things like books and tools
and information, websites.
Comparing Learner to Intellection,
I think Learner is more
external. It's about the world out there.
It's all of the experience, all the new information.
It's all the new ideas, it's about exploring new.
Whereas I think Intellection is more internal.
It's really thinking,
it's more about focused on deep understanding, deep internal
understanding, whereas Learner is kind of broad, quick
exposure. So it's this kind of inside out
thing. Learner with Analytical;
I think of a Learner as an emotional
student. I think of Analytical
as a logical student. So there's almost this emotional
kind of logical difference that you see in
Learner and Analytical.
So those are some ways to kind of help distinguish and I'm hoping that
Paul can kind of give us some more insights into how he
parses these different themes inside of his own soul.
I think it's also important to think about how
many times...
We talked about a theme gesture.
My theme gesture for Learner, we tried to include these.
I think this is a theme gesture
for Learner, kind of scratching one's head.
Its kind of the maybe the universal symbol for "I don't quite
understand yet but I'm gonna figure it out." I think that's
what Learners do. They have this
kind of natural curiosity that kind of leads them to
learn more. Another way that we could kind of compare
these themes, another Thinking theme that we could compare
Learner to would be Context.
Context is really about Learners who are more historical.
They really study the past. That's actually
outside of self too, it's kind of behind us but it's
but it's certainly outside us.
So I find that Learners are people that like to be
kind of like to be on the frontier,
whatever the frontier is. They like to be on the cutting edge because that's
where things are new, that's where things are fresh,
and I think that's where Learners are the most alive;
in those moments where there's something new to encounter,
new to understand. And as a result I think Learners are people who,
I had this in this definition: they're people
who love the process of learning and that leads to
ever-evolving paradigms and ever-expanding perspectives.