What is Learning To Be? Essentially, this is an attempt to document the process that I am using and refining to transform myself from a person of the 20th century to one of the 21st century. A closer look at the definitions:
Learning: The acquisition of knowledge or skills through experience, study or being taught;
To Be: To be is to exist, or to take place;
In 2017, I realized that times had changed. It changed how I expected an organization to function and how I worked. And, at the same time, I realized that this change could potentially be as monumental as a tsunami. The pace of change was accelerating faster than ever. As someone working in the tech sector, it was natural to experience rapid changes compared to some other sectors that change slowly, but even within the tech sector, the pace of change was just incredibly fast.
In 2019 I heard a talk on incoming emerging technologies which included artificial intelligence, blockchain, data science, the Internet of Things, and robotics. While I was aware of these upcoming developments, it always seemed like they would appear sometime in the future. That year I realized it was upon us. Are we ready for this change?
I had recently switched careers to leadership coaching, which I was inspired to do because of the rapid changes I was experiencing. After a global pandemic, when more people started to work from home, the way we collaborated, communicated, and connected adapted to video conferencing and social distancing. New sociological issues emerged from these disconnections. Even today we are grasping new ways of doing business with corporate leaders demanding workers return to the office and employees resisting. Although this mainly affects white-collar knowledge workers, we need to come up with more innovative ways of connecting.
There is a need for more innovative ideas to develop our relationship with each other. Change is hard. I always considered myself open-minded and creative, but I had trouble considering new perspectives, so I developed a transformation framework that can guide us through the process.
The name Learning To Be signifies a few things. Learning, because we never stop learning. It’s a continuum. Transforming ourselves, i.e., to be, begins with our self-concept, self-awareness, and identity. What role do we as knowledge workers play if artificial intelligence and data science do much of the analytical work for us (or as line workers when robotics performs manufacturing and warehousing tasks)? In a world where AI (Artificial Intelligence) is driving cars, writing news stories, creating code, what does that leave for humans?
Therefore, I wanted to develop a way of understanding how we feel and how our bodies process information based on the latest in neuroscience and somatic coaching. So, for you, what does that mean to be Learning To Be a 21st-century person?
Copyright © 2023 Devashri Gupta. All rights reserved.
