"The secret of the true scholar"

The philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, "Shall I tell you the secret of the true scholar?  It is this: Every man I meet is my master in some point, and in that I learn of him."  Think about that for a minute.  Emerson is basically saying that no matter who we meet, he or she knows more about something than we do.  It doesn't matter if we know collectively more about a lot of different things compare to that person, in all likelihood he or she will know more about at least one thing that we don't know much about.  What all of this means is that we should take advantage of every opportunity to learn something from every single person that we meet. 

John F. Kennedy once said, "Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other."  What does that exactly mean?  Well, Webster's Online Dictionary defines the word indispensable as absolutely necessary.  Based on that definition, then, Kennedy is emphatically stating in no uncertain terms that leaders must be learners. 

The author Brian Herbert (the oldest son of the science fiction writer, Frank Herbert, author of the Dune series) said this, "The capacity to learn is a gift; the ability to learn is a skill; the willingness to learn is a choice."  In other words, we can choose to walk around this world with our eyes open and learning, or we can choose to walk around this world with our eyes closed and not learning.

Putting it all together then, leadership is dependent upon accepting, with confident humility, that there is always something that we, as individuals, can learn.  We must actively choose to be open to learning from others, even those who report to us.  Learning is an active process.  So is leadership.  By choosing to lead, we must first choose to learn.