My dad has a hunger for knowledge. Even at an age when most people retire professionally, he has this amazing habit and desire to acquire knowledge.
Knowledge makes us flexible, and I have witnessed this as closely as it gets with him.
During one of our recent conversations, he asked me a question,
"Why is Lion the king of the jungle?"
Like most people, my first response included adjectives like power, strength, beauty and a few other physical ones.
What he told me (and this may be more philosophical than scientific) is that it is the flexibility of mindset that makes Lion the king of the jungle.
Flexibility to adapt to a diverse external condition. Flexibility to have a strategy for the situation and not staying fixated.
Some of my biggest career mistakes include taking a similar stance when managing the relationship with my boss or with my teams. Just because it has worked in past, there was no guarantee that it would work again and it did not.
In fact, even with the same manager or team in the same organization but different career stage, this has to change.
Are we extremely hard conditioned around “I am Who I am” and demonstrate this more often than needed?