LIFE LONG LEARNING AND POSITIVE LEADERSHIP

                                                                        MY GRANDFATHER, CHARLES BAINES IBERRI

“When the student is ready the teacher appears.” This Buddha quote resonates with me for so many reasons. It resonates for me primarily because I believe leaders, teachers, coaches, must commit daily to being a perpetual student if we wish to see perpetual growth in ourselves and our organizations. I have had the great fortune to work in so many different industries, US Army, public housing, senior living, automotive, logistics, imaging, defense contracting, oil and gas, and education.  Each of these experiences, and most specifically, the people that ARE these organizations impart to me, I believe, more knowledge than I impart while I serve them. 

I believe that the ability to constantly add value to others is to add value to oneself.  Moreover, integral to this is listening and learning. Listening and learning are to our personal development what rain and soil are to the plants of the earth…. essential. Great ideas are born, I believe through listening and learning. Trees cannot provide fully ripe fruit without proper nutrients and water received from the environment. So too, I believe, that people cannot bear the fully developed “ripe fruit” of thought, without the ‘nutrients’ drawn from the people within our environment through listening and learning. Leaders, teachers, coaches, can better ensure their wards maximize their potential and gifts through instilling the desire to always learn…it is the pursuit of learning, growing, improving, that helps us be better, not necessarily in the achieving. A goal achieved, is a milestone in the road of our journey lifelong learning. 

The below excerpt, from educational philosopher, Paulo Freire's Book "Pedagogy of Freedom"  which beautifully captures how we must be aware that no matter what we have learned, there is still more and out journey of ‘education’ is never complete.

"It is our incompleteness of which we are aware that education as a permanent process is grounded. Women and men are capable of being educated only to the extent that they are capable of recognizing themselves as unfinished. Education does not make us educable; it is our awareness of being unfinished that makes us educable and the same awareness in which we are inserted makes us eternal seekers. Eternal because of hope. Hope is not just a question of grit or courage it is an ontological dimension of our human condition." -Paulo Freire

“It serves no purpose, except to irritate and demoralize the student (or my team member) … for me to talk…and at the same time act with the arrogance of a no all.” “Reflecting on the duty I have as a teacher to respect the dignity, autonomy, and identity of the student…” Paulo Freire

“How can I be an educator (or leader) if I do not develop in myself a caring and loving attitude toward the student (or, my people, whom I am tasked to serve as their leader), which is indispensable on the part of one who is committed to teaching to the education process itself. “…all educational practice requires the existence of subjects who while teaching, learn.” Paulo Freire

Listen, learn, grow, share. My grandfather passed at the age of 96 and at his bedside was a book. To the end he considered himself ‘uncomplete’ and a work in process. I learned so much from his reading, his stories his life…I feel so fortunate to have spent so much time with him and learned so much from him.  I shall share stories about him another day.  As I have shared previously form the late, great John Wooden, “A leader who is through learning…is through.”