5 MINUTE READ

Continually learning and reinforcing your skills can give you a competitive edge and make strategic thinking quicker and easier. Knowledge will improve your confidence and credibility. Leadership, for example, is not a one day course which makes a Continual Personal Development (CPD) document an advantage. In this way, you can keep on track of your learning to assess and evaluate further opportunities and analyse the impact and outcome of your experience. Tracking and monitoring your skills, knowledge, and experience will demonstrate the training and development for a more advanced and complex depth of understanding. 

You cannot underestimate the importance of learning. These are the following benefits:

• skills and knowledge
• confidence in making decisions
• motivation as part of a team or collaboration
• the ability to bring fresh insights and the latest thinking
• deep level understanding
• management of complexities and unusual scenarios

Embedding your knowledge enables you to translate it into new individual and collaborative plans by taking action. The Action Overlap Model © shows knowledge as Capability. It shows that with Capability without Creation and Commitment, Action does not occur—all three C’s need to overlap to provide the fundamental impetus to take Action. With Capability and Creation without Commitment, there is no Determination or Direction. Capability along with Commitment offers Determination yet lacks Drive and Direction. Action takers often need to think quickly and act fast. Therefore, being fully informed to make practical and reasonable decisions is supported by having a sound knowledge base. In times of crisis, this is undoubtedly the case. In a world of constant connectivity, your actions and reactions can impact your reputation. Demonstrating your ability to think strategically with Confidence and show leadership will build trust.

When your knowledge is self-directed and self-motivated, your learning is at a highly personal level because you emotionally identify with what you want to learn. Education becomes an intentional practice and can be improved with reflection and review of your skills to reduce shortfalls. Self-education is about acquiring knowledge of skills without having someone else teach them to you.

Valuable subjects to learn are:

• interpersonal
• creativity
• listening
• written communication
• problem-solving
• conflict resolution
• organisational
• leadership
• your industry knowledge

Many people learn “just in time” when the information becomes most relevant. It is essential to understand which learning method is most suitable for you. Formal training of something specific may not necessarily be the answer. The less formal side of personal development has a broader application with various tools and techniques. Regardless of the route taken, you will experience a period of excitement at first,  followed by emotional overwhelm as the information is processed, a potential feeling of dread and finally, a stage of acceptance as it embeds.

The following are some of the means that you might find helpful to acquire your capabilities.

• reading
• how-to-videos
• audiobooks
• flashcards
• group learning
• imitation
• observation
• Infographics
  

As a thought leader, it is crucial to gain insights into your industry to enable you to practise ethically and offer informed judgement to manage your reputation and maintain trust with your clients, customers and stakeholders. As a brand, you need to be three dimensional and not focused just on products and services, which is considered shallow. Build your brand based on your ability to improve, face challenges, learn from your experiences, and become a guide for others with an authentic and robust reputation enough to “weather the storm”. PR offers you this kind of reputation management and therefore should not be an afterthought or bolt on to your marketing strategy but an essential part of the process.