{"id":946,"date":"2014-01-26T22:23:37","date_gmt":"2014-01-27T05:23:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ghostinthepixel.com\/?p=946"},"modified":"2014-01-26T22:23:37","modified_gmt":"2014-01-27T05:23:37","slug":"learning-from-heroes-and-villains","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ghostinthepixel.com\/?p=946","title":{"rendered":"Learning from heroes and villains"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><!--?xml version=\"1.0\" encoding=\"UTF-8\" standalone=\"no\"?--><\/p>\n<div style=\"font-family: Arial;\">Being a professional designer means you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re always learning on the job, extending and expanding your repertoire of expertise from prior contexts via the current situations as they unfold. Inherent is the notion of being a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153reflective practitioner\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (echoing Donald Schon) channeling what you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re observing, hearing, and doing into valuable lessons safely stored for future use. (Or you might publish them on a blog for the community at-large ;-)\u00c2\u00a0<\/div>\n<div style=\"font-family: Arial;\">\u00c2\u00a0<\/div>\n<div style=\"font-family: Arial;\">Learning happens in other ways too, not just through skills workshops or reading books. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s vital to be constantly learning from the people you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re working with, including those that inspire you, and perhaps even frustrate or anger you.<\/div>\n<div style=\"font-family: Arial;\">\u00c2\u00a0<\/div>\n<div style=\"font-family: Arial;\">Below is a proposed framework of identifying a range of personal learning sources, beyond the commonly valued \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Mentor\u00e2\u20ac\u009d:\u00c2\u00a0<\/div>\n<div style=\"font-family: Arial;\">\u00c2\u00a0<\/div>\n<div style=\"font-family: Arial;\"><strong>Peers<\/strong>: Co-workers who enable a kind of ambient, incidental learning in immediate context through conversations, collaborations, and creative outputs. Tends to be more free-form and serendipitous.<\/div>\n<div style=\"font-family: Arial;\">\u00c2\u00a0<\/div>\n<div style=\"font-family: Arial;\"><strong>Leaders<\/strong>: Senior-level individuals managing or directing you or your teams and projects. You can learn from their observed actions and statements, how they communicate, convey and embody their values\/goals\/beliefs, particularly in times of stress and challenge, while confronting obstacles or new unsavory information. Leaders can become an effective role model or a mirror for what not to do, as well.<\/div>\n<div style=\"font-family: Arial;\">\u00c2\u00a0<\/div>\n<div style=\"font-family: Arial;\"><strong>Mentors<\/strong>: Highly experienced professionals who may be assigned (or requested), whose relationship is a targeted one, with dialogue specific for your professional needs. Mentors serve as a coach or critic that challenges your assumptions and beliefs, offers healthy skepticism, and generally raises other considerations, as well as useful validation and personal encouragement. They are considered the sage guide with a personal connection for you and your career.<\/div>\n<div style=\"font-family: Arial;\">(Note: lately there has been popular business world discussion of having \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Sponsors\u00e2\u20ac\u009d beyond just Mentors, who can actively enable your professional ambitions and growth tracks in a more participatory manner\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6Hmm!)<\/div>\n<div style=\"font-family: Arial;\">\u00c2\u00a0<\/div>\n<div style=\"font-family: Arial;\"><strong>Heroes<\/strong>: Ideal, loftily held up figures of prominence, perhaps some proven legendary status via rigorously developed, esteemed body of work or significant influence. This is most likely someone you have never meet in person (and probably never will\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6and it could be someone who has died long ago as well), but you feel some kinship to their philosophy, vision, work ethic or temperament. Heroes are aspirational, certainly not perfect\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6but they hold admirable qualities that you resonate with individually and want to express in your own work.<\/div>\n<div style=\"font-family: Arial;\">\u00c2\u00a0<\/div>\n<div style=\"font-family: Arial;\"><strong>Villains<\/strong>: Yes, this sounds dramatic but there are certain individuals that we simply don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t like and strongly disagree with, who hold a contravening point of view that clashes with our deeply held beliefs&#8230;but you can learn from them too! It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not just \u00e2\u20ac\u0153negative learning\u00e2\u20ac\u009d of what <em>not<\/em> to do, but by studying their ways, applying a Socratic method to their suspicions and challenges, you can discern some kernels of wisdom. And remember the old saying \u00e2\u20ac\u0153keep your friends close, but your enemies closer\u00e2\u20ac\u009d\u00e2\u20ac\u201dand in the game of design, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s often a back-and-forth game of politics and influence, nothing personal just business ;-) Villains can be very useful to your career development, without their knowing it.\u00c2\u00a0<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Being a professional designer means you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re always learning on the job, extending and expanding your repertoire of expertise from prior contexts via the current situations as they unfold. Inherent is the notion of being a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153reflective practitioner\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (echoing Donald Schon) channeling what you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re observing, hearing, and doing into valuable lessons safely stored for future use. &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ghostinthepixel.com\/?p=946\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Learning from heroes and villains&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_themeisle_gutenberg_block_has_review":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-946","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general-stuff"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghostinthepixel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/946","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghostinthepixel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghostinthepixel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghostinthepixel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghostinthepixel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=946"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghostinthepixel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/946\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":947,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghostinthepixel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/946\/revisions\/947"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghostinthepixel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=946"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghostinthepixel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=946"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghostinthepixel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=946"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}