How do you like to learn? If you have ever examined learning styles, you may be familiar with the VARK model - visual, auditory, reading/writing and kinesthetic. This theory claims we all learn in one of four ways - visual learners prefer symbols, auditory learners listen, reading/writing learners write notes, while kinesthetic learners try things out. The theory was that most people will fit neatly into one of these boxes, but we now know we combine them depending on the situation. This is ‘multi-modal learning’.

Rather than trying to put people in boxes, I prefer to think of learning as just being open and curious about the world and allowing new ideas to form. Building resilience increases our capacity for this, as we become more receptive to new ideas and open to our values being challenged.

The pandemic has challenged our values and beliefs like never before, and will continue to do so as we all adapt to new ways of living and working. Resilient people have an open mindset and will find this helps them spring forward into the new normal. They don’t close themselves off from new information which challenges their existing beliefs. Instead they see change as an opportunity and can reflect on what they have learned. Now is a great time to consider what you have learned over the past few months. What will you do differently as a result of the pandemic? Are you adaptable to change, and can you respond to it in an agile way? What new learning will you take forward and what will you leave behind?

For me, having a growth mindset is key. A study of 7th grade kids in New York demonstrated that developing a growth mindset, by helping kids understand the brain’s plasticity and ability to learn, dramatically improved their maths grades when compared to those with a fixed mindset, who believed they would never be any good at maths, and so didn’t feel motivated to try.

I recently saw a fantastic example of a growth mindset in action. You may not know this, but The Resilience Coach sponsors Ria Powell, an 11-year-old footballer. I went along to watch her play and was blown away by her resilience. When I asked her how she’d prepared for the match her answer demonstrated a great growth mindset. She set herself goals - to tackle better, pass more, and score a goal, then she put her plan into action. She tried a new approach and most importantly she was not afraid to fail. This is a critical part of learning that adults often lose, or have conditioned out of them by their education.

We are taught in school that making a mistake is bad and should be avoided. The lessons that are given the greatest focus and priority are maths, science and English. Humanities are further down, while music, art, dance and drama are often at the bottom. What if it were different? What if creativity was valued as much as maths or literacy? And what if we were given more permission to make mistakes?

As adults we learn to avoid making mistakes so we don’t look foolish in front of colleagues or other peers. As children we have an open, curious mind and are more willing to have a go, even though we might not get it right. Yet as we grow older we learn not to share our ‘out there’ ideas in case others think they are silly. We avoid giving our opinion in meetings in case others disagree. In other words society conditions us to develop a more closed mindset.

But what if we created working environments where people were allowed to make mistakes? Where testing and sometimes failing were all seen as a positive part of learning and development? What if we were able to share our ideas without any fear of judgement? This is called a psychologically safe place. I meet many clients who do not feel they work in a psychologically safe environment. It leads to stress, burnout and unfulfilled potential. Employers suffer because they don’t get the best from their teams, and the colleagues suffer because they don’t feel psychologically safe.

As many start to return to the office after Coronavirus I would love to see more workplaces focusing on creating places of psychological safety, as they would reap the benefits of a happy, engaged creative workforce with a great growth mindset.