We usually accept that teaching others can be a generous thing to do. Being willing to learn from others can also be generous, and a powerful way to engage the best in them.

What do your team or your colleagues know that you don’t? Have you made an effort to find out? Are you helping to create a culture of curiosity and mutual support in which people expect to learn from each other up and across the organizational chart as well as down?

If you’re leading a team, it may feel a bit unsettling to encourage people who report to you to show that they know more than you do, but of course they do. We’re not omniscient. An excellent way to bring out the best in people is to ask them to teach or explain something, even in small ways through the day. Then make the effort to actually learn it and make use of it.

The point is not to make conversation or single out people with little “relationship” tricks. The point is to train yourself in the habit of learning from your team. It helps to ask about things you have some natural interest in, but you can also find ways of being genuinely interested in what each person can offer. You might be surprised at what you can learn, and from whom. Everyone has something to teach, though it may be submerged. You can create conditions for them to discover it and offer it. That’s what makes learning a leadership practice of generosity.

There’s a lot of talk these days about “learning organizations.” What that really means is organizations with a culture of curiosity and mutual support where everyone practices learning from each other in little ways every day. Then when the “organization” needs to learn, the people in it are already good at it, and know how to engage the full spectrum of their abilities, together.

Here are a couple of ideas. What works for you?

Curiosity practice – If you’re not naturally inclined to seek out what you can learn from your team and your colleagues, you can start with safe territory. For instance, if your child is doing a history project, ask people when they’re settling down to a meeting whether anyone knows about that historical period. Ask them a question your child is addressing, and let everyone hear the answer. Share the answer with your child, and report back what they say. Or if you’ve heard that one of your team members speaks another language, ask them to teach you some phrases. Actually learn the phrases, accept coaching on pronunciation, and play with those phrases when you see that person again. The possibilities for learning are many. You can be as creative as you like.

It matters less what you learn, and more that you are open to learning from everyone.

Putting-to-use practice – The more immediately practical kind of learning is the kind that directly benefits the team’s efforts. Do you have lunch and learn sessions where people can present or report to their colleagues on relevant topics in which they have particular expertise? If you do, set the example of asking questions, being careful not to sound as if you’re testing them. Is there something in the tactical plan you’re not clear on? Who can explain it? Let them explain it to you when others can hear too. In any situation, try to notice opportunities for people to show what they know in a useful way, and then help their teaching to emerge.

We can all use any allies we can get, right?. Work is challenging, and having to do everything alone, feeling that we have to make it all happen, this is exhausting. How can we find more allies to support our goals at work?

One way is to broaden our idea of what can be an ally. Not who, but what. With some thoughtful attention, we can make use of the situation around us as an ally to accomplish our goals for us.

For example, if we need to confront a difficult situation with people, we want everyone to come to the meeting with an open, flexible state of mind. The meeting room itself can be our ally in this.

Here’s how it works. If we walk into a room full of little gilt chairs with white cloth covers tied over their backs, or into a room with leather swivel chairs around a gleaming table, or into a room of stacking plastic chairs, we feel different in each room as soon as we walk in. The chairs alone have the ability to influence our state of mind. When we want to influence people’s state of mind, we can create conditions in the environment that can accomplish this goal for us. We miss an opportunity if we ignore the chairs.

Here’s a famous story.

Nelson Mandela needed to make peace with General Viljoen, an Afrikaner who led the militant white resistance to change in South Africa. After some work through intermediaries, the general was willing to meet and talk. He expected this meeting to be with himself and his allies on one side of a conference table, Mandela and his allies on the other, with a lot of intense disagreement and animosity, possibly leading to some concessions on one side or another.

Instead, Mandela invited the general to his own house. They sat near each other in comfortable chairs in Mandela’s living room, and Mandela himself served the general tea. Their human allies, who would in fact have been antagonists, waited in another room. By the end of the meeting the general had agreed to stop fighting.

Of course it wasn’t just the living room chairs. Nelson Mandela had an extraordinarily powerful personality and great skill with people. But he was also known for his skill at gathering all the allies he could. The conference table would have been a further antagonist in the conversation, another barrier between them to be overcome. The comfy chairs, where the two men could sit together, were a disarming pacifier that allowed the general to feel, in his whole being, the sensation of peace, even before any negotiation began.

Of course, the most disarming and pacifying room in the world would not have worked if the general had walked in and said, “I’m not meeting here. I’m not one of your neighbors over for an afternoon chat.” Mandela knew whom he was dealing with. He knew that protecting family and home life were the main concerns of both whites and blacks, and he used this to advantage by meeting in his own home, where the chairs could be his allies.

Who are you dealing with? Is your board room your ally in your encounter with them, or does the gleaming table become another barrier between you? What kind of chairs will be your allies in helping everyone adopt an open, flexible attitude? What kind of room? If you think you don’t have time to go down the street to hold the meeting at the local pub, how much time will the pub save you by changing everyone’s state of mind for you?

We have more allies than we think, if we take time to consider what, not just who, they are.

May 2015 be a year of health, openness and flexibility for us all.

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Would you please help me for a short, one click moment?

For 2015 I’m refining the basic marketing language for what I do. Please tell me if the descriptions below make you want to say, “I need that. Tell me more.” Your intuition about this question will be a really big help to me in seeing how to grow my business.

Just click the number of your choice below. (If you want to choose more than one, just come back to this email after the first.)

Choice 1 – “I work with leaders to achieve two essential goals: Better performance and deeper commitment for your people, and greater mastery of your own personal practice of leadership.”

Choice 2 – “I help executives and influencers change people’s attitude, because attitude changes everything.”

Choice 3 – “I help leaders lead their people, and themselves, to bring their personal best to work.”

Choice 4 – None of the above really make we want to say, “Tell me more.”

Good morning everyone!

The child is born, the candles are lit, the days grow longer again. The celebrations are soon over, and it’s time to enjoy ourselves.

At sea, the sun rises from the edge of the world and the ship’s crew rises with it. We scrub the decks and polish the brass before breakfast. When the ship is clean and shiny, she becomes a worthy mirror for the new day, a mirror that reflects back to us the best we each have to offer.

In the city, my cooking pot is clean and bright, and my oatmeal bowl is patterned in blue. There is a chip in the rim, which fits my thumb nicely, and brings a moment of sharpness and attention when I touch it.

In  the dojo, the Aikido master Wendy Palmer works with her Japanese teacher to bring the fullness of herself to her training. Her teacher cries out to her, “I want to see your NOBLE. I want to see your AWESOME. I want to see your SHINY.”

Our noble awesome shiny is with us always, of course. But when it’s hard to find, the world can be our mirror. Polishing our brass, cleaning our pot, touching the sharpness of real things, whatever we do to make the world bright and vivid makes life mirror-like. The mirror commands us, and the command is, “See this noble awesome shiny. Enjoy yourself. Enjoy yourSELF.”

When this command is hard to give, the mirror-like world can give it for us.

I wish you all a new year full of your most noble awesome shiny.