According to a number of studies, learning agility predicts up to 25% of leadership success! Wow, if that is true, what if we could measure it and use this information for hiring and promotion decisions. Good idea – and the good news is you can!

So what is learning agility? It can be described as: The ability to deal effectively with complexity and ambiguity.

People with learning agility connect the dots faster on problems that others can not seem to solve. They are self aware and know their own strengths and blind spots when handling situations. They like to experiment with new ways of doing things, and they are motivated to achieve results. Actually they are almost childlike in their approach to learning new things, with lots of curiosity and imagination.

Research has shown that learning agility is pretty randomly distributed in the work place and there does not seem to be a correlation between learning agility and age (some old dogs can learn new tricks after all!), gender, or years of experience.

So how do you go about assessing someone’s learning agility? There are pretty accurate assessment tools out there that can really help. One such tool is the Cognitive Processes Profile which is a computer based game simulation. It takes about an hour and a half to complete but the results can be very enlightening. Think about using something like this the next time you want to stack the odds in your favor when hiring or promoting a leader in your organization.

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Quote of the Day

The person who gets the farthest is generally the one who is willing to do and dare. The sure-thing boat never gets far from shore ~ Dale Carnegie