Last week I wrote about Honesty, Wisdom, & Leadership.
In that blog, we defined wisdom as the accumulation of knowledge and experience. We also discussed the importance of honesty in relationship to wisdom.
This week, I want to do a little deeper dive into the topic of knowledge and experience. Specifically knowledge in the context of education and experience in the context of events or occurrence we experience throughout our lives.
A Tale of Folks
A few weeks ago I was on a return flight home from a trip and had the opportunity to watch a movie entitled, A Complete Unknown, it is a biographical film about Bob Dylan. In it, Edward Norton plays the famous singer-songwriter Pete Seeger who was instrumental (pun intended) in helping Dylan launch his music career and his eventual meteoric rise to stardom.
For those of you who have never heard of Pete Seeger, he wrote, “This Land Is Your Land” “Where Have All The Flowers Gone” and “If I Had A Hammer” the last two which were made famous by the Mamas & The Papas.
He also wrote “Turn, Turn, Turn.” which was made famous by The Byrds and quite a few other hits back in the 60’s. So since he was a complete unknown to me, I thought I would do a little research on him and in doing so I discovered some fascinating facts.
Education & Experience
Pete was an extremely controversial figure, he was an out-spoken activist throughout his entire life and even a member of the communist party for a few years. I’m sure he acquired an incredible amount of very diverse experiences in his 94 years on this earth.
Sometimes, regardless of whether you agree with a person’s politics or their beliefs, you can always learn something from them if you’re open-minded.
Pete also attended Harvard for a few years, so I am sure he acquired a certain level of education as well as knowledge.
One of the things he learned is the difference between education and experience when he was quoted as saying, “Education is when you read the fine print; experience is what you get when you don’t.”
Which begs the question: How do you see the differential between your education and your experience?
Either Way, You Need Both
Having an education is important. It can certainly help your resume, get you an interview, a chance to prove yourself, and maybe even a job. However, relying solely on your education will cause you problems, especially if you believe you are the smartest person in the room or a know-it-all.
In other words, just because you have read some books, attended two, four, or even six year of college doesn’t make you a subject-matter-expert, wise, or worldly.
Without the years of experience under your belt, you are only half-way home. You see when you rely solely on your education, you open yourself up to becoming myopic in your views. Also known as being short-sighted in how you might view things.
If you rely solely on your experiences and do not have the education or knowledge you may come across as uneducated or short-sighted as well . Why? Because you only see things through the eyes of your own past experiences. And a they say in the commercials about investing, past history is no indication of future performance!
You need both education (knowledge) AND life experiences, all of them, both the good and bad, if you want to be truly successful as a leader. Sometimes it is the bad experiences from which we learn the most important lessons.
What Do You Need More Of?
As a leader you need to continuously improve, you may need either more knowledge and education or you may need more and a wider range of varying experiences. Especially, if you’ve gotten complacent which is a reason Why Some Leaders Are Failing!
Sometimes leaders fall into the trap of thinking that they know-it-all or they have enough years of experience and that they don’t need to change, learn new things, or try something different…so they coast
If you are a leader and you are coasting, you are probably going downhill!
Don’t do that to yourself and please don’t do that to your people. You are so much better than that and your folks deserve way more than that!
So here is my questions for you this week:
- Do you have a lot of knowledge but need more and different experiences?
- Do you have a lot of experience but need more knowledge or education?
- Do you need a little more of both?
- How and where can you get more of what you need?
- What actions will you take as a result of now having this knowledge?
Becoming wise is not a destination, it is a life-long journey that never ends. It broadens, widens, and deepens the more knowledge you acquire and the more experiences you have along the way
It is my sincere wish that this information may have helped to open your eyes AND your mind to see things a little differently than you did just 5 minutes ago…who knows you just be all the wiser for it!
Till Next Time!
