Breaking the Learning Glass Ceiling

What deep diving expeditions taught me about staying in learning — even when you’re supposed to already know.

This is one of the ways I’m unpacking what high performance really means when agency and exploration meet.

Get this as a pdf – click here

Here is the post that started this all.

I’m having to relearn how to learn. This is part of a series I’m writing — exploring the connection between agency, high performance, learning, and exploration.

I hope you find some gems here that help you level up too.
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The problem with being 50-something (cue blush and embarrassed shuffle) is that I’ve been around the block.
My “value” now lives in my experience, in being the person who knows. I’m no longer the learner. I’m in that “expert” zone.

It was so much easier to be successful (and a high performer ) when I was still a learner.
In corporate, when you level up, you shift.
– From doing → to leading.
– From learning → to teaching.
– From making → to enabling.

But here’s what doesn’t shift: the need to  learn, be wrong and figure it out.

And I think that’s why I’ve been feeling stuck. Because I know high performance needs learning and I am caught in the tension of performance and speed and the even trickier ‘expert’ trap.

That’s why exploration matters to me. Deep diving explorations are more than achieving outcomes. They are about high performing teams and adapting at speed. For me,
It’s a blend of progress & learning – fast.
Not failing fast. Learning fast. (There’s a difference.)

Most of the things I want to do next? I don’t know how to do them… yet.

But because I know how to explore, I trust I can figure it out.
I trust that I can use what I already know to cross the gap from here to there.

That’s what being an explorer means to me – finding ways to get from here to there. Adding in what I don’t know, adapting what I do so that it creates that outcome..

This year I’ve been trying to reconnect to that part of me that feels lost as I have well, gotten longer lived. I am trying to understand what it really means to explore and how I can re-connect with that without being 2 days away from Auckland in 25knot winds and bouncy sea.

Well Ok, I started there – solo sailing up to the Bay of Islands — 4 ten-hour days each way

Then I figured I may need something a little easier, so water colour painting, hardly risky or scary until I find myself an hour in, no idea what I am doing, a perfect picture I am supposed to be reproducing and hating every minute.

And then there is Tai Chi. Which I love and that means I find myself in the step of wanting to be there without taking the time to get there.

All of these quests I have taken on require me to be new.
All of them put me out of my depth.

And that brings me to the story I want to share with you next. How 3 hours of Tai Chi showed reminded me what learning is and has given me the clues to start to use that in my everyday

So if you’re still with me — let’s go deeper.

🧭
This is exploration — empowerment in action.
Agency isn’t given. It’s built.

#ExplorersSpark #PerformanceCulture #Leading