Power Acronym 48: B.L.I.S.S.

toward mastery

Leaders are readers.

So kudos for reading this Newsletter! 😉

But not everyone learns the same. Sometimes reading isn’t enough. Today’s Power Acronym speaks to that.

I was recently on a free sales training webinar and the facilitator, Laren Bailey of Factor8 shared this Power Acronym, B.L.I.S.S. as a framework for taking theory to practice and into mastery.

If you’re a leader or trainer responsible for improving the skills of a team, this is a great reminder of how to design what you’re teaching to ensure that it sticks.

Power Acronym 48: B.L.I.S.S.

Buy-In

If there’s not a sufficient reason to learn something, it’s a waste of time and energy.

This point highlights how important it is to communicate “the why” behind whatever I’m teaching.

TED Talks have this down to a science. Watch three or four and you’ll pick up on the fact that almost every speaker begins their talk with an emotional story or a thought-provoking question that hooks you in to hear more of what they have to say.

Buy-in isn’t all science, though.

Daniel Coyle, author of The Culture Code: The Secrets of Highly Successful Groups makes the point that along with Safety and Vulnerability, teams need a Shared Sense of Purpose.

“This is the way high-purpose environments work.  They are about sending not so much one big signal as a handful of steady, ultra-clear signals that are aligned with a shared goal.  They are less about being inspiring than about being consistent.  They are found not within big speeches so much as within everyday moments when people can sense the message: This is why we work; this is what we are aiming for.” - Daniel Coyle

Learning

“We don't rise to the level of our expectations, we fall to the level of our training.”

- Archilochus

My GPA was in the middle of the pack when I graduated high school.

When I got to junior college I struggled to keep up with 16 hours of classes, bills, and a social life.

I ended up dropping out multiple times and only felt confident I could graduate with a higher education when I took 2 classes at a time.

Then I got fired from my job serving tables.

That led me to drop out again and join the car business where I learned to sell, market, and build a brand.

There’s something uniquely motivating about having your back against the wall.

You could say I was “bought-in”. I knew that learning was the bridge between success and failure.

I think the Archilochus quote above has as much to do with learning as it does with personal responsibility.

If we don’t rise to the expectations, if we are not disciplined in improving our knowledge and understanding of what we’re up to, we’re not taking full responsibility.

Interaction

“Learning does not happen via Osmosis”!

That’s what my science teacher would say when she caught someone with their head sleeping on their book.

Her point was that the information will not permeate into your brain simply by laying your head next to it, as molecules will do in the osmosis process.

We must interact.

How do you interact with what you’re learning?

I underline, highlight, rewrite, and share what I’m learning.

Great speakers will encourage listeners for feedback through questions, applause or raising of hands.

Interactions in a small group setting can catalyze learning for everyone, making it a collaborative effort to make the idea manifest in the minds of all who are taking part.

Synthesize

“Creativity is intellegence having fun”

Often attributed to Albert Einstein, I think the above is a great quote for what it means to synthesize information.

Here’s a prompt:

How does something you just learned connect with something you already knew?

This might seem difficult to answer before, but we do this almost unconsciously with all sorts of information.

One example of this is when a new vehicle model or design is released.

Almost immediately after seeing it, you’ll hear someone remark “it looks like…”

It could look like a mash-up of different vehicles altogether, or in the case of the Tesla Cybertruck, a low-bit Laura Croft from the game Tomb Raider:

Experiment with the information you have.

What conclusions can you draw?

How does this change your perspective?

What new insights does the new information bring to what you already know?

How can you USE this information in your work today?

Support

I think many of my educational failures came largely from a lack of support.

I’m not trying to blame anyone. I didn’t support myself for a long time.

Eventually, support meant taking fewer class hours.

But I could have gotten a tutor.

As someone who loves to learn, I have to be careful not to chase rabbit trails too far.

As a leader, this Power Acronym reminds me that if the goal is mastery, then we shouldn’t always prioritize new information and instead facilitate ways that what is already known is more completely understood and practiced with greater skill.

Are you following your B.L.I.S.S.?

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