Why Knowledge Mindfulness is the Key to Personal and Professional Development

Virtually every CEO that I know has wondered, at one time or another, whether the Peter Principle is true. Can it really be that people get promoted until they stretch beyond their level of competence—and then stagnate in whatever role they’ve proven themselves to be unqualified for?

Fortunately, people are a bit more complex than that—and they’re also capable of learning and improving. Everyone—from a janitor to a global CEO—can find themselves in roles they aren’t prepared for, but everyone is also capable of learning, developing, and growing into new roles.

That’s the good news. The bad news, of course, is that this kind of growth doesn’t happen automatically. We need to work for it! That’s where the idea of personal development—and professional development, which is another side of the same coin—come in. The best workers—again, from custodians to CEOs—are constantly striving for growth, and working to identify and overcome their shortcomings in both their personal and professional capacities. 

Growth is a knowledge problem

We don’t often think about personal or professional development in terms of our knowledge, but I’d argue that by definition this kind of active and mindful knowing requires us to be equally active and mindful in the way we relate to knowledge.

First, however, we need to recognize the different domains in which personal and professional development can operate. These are many and varied, but here are some of the most important ones:

• Physical development. This might mean hitting the gym every morning, or going for your annual physical and being sure to take the meds your doctor recommends, or simply getting up and walking around for a few minutes every hour. It might even mean focusing on your physical environment—getting out in nature once in a while, or creating a soothing and nurturing workspace that lets you be your best self every day.
• Mental development. This can mean many things to many people, from reading a book a week or working toward a postgraduate degree, to setting aside time each day to journal and reflect, to learning Japanese or mastering a new programming language. Anything that keeps your neurons firing and your brain adapting to new things might have a role in your mental development. 
• Emotional development. We all have emotional strengths and weaknesses, so we all have room to grow on an emotional level. Some leaders might need to learn to keep their temper in check, or to deal more productively with frustration; others might need to be more decisive or forceful in dealing with departmental conflict. Often, emotional development also means giving yourself permission to feel and pursue joy, and making space for your own wellbeing.
• Spiritual development. This can mean religious growth, but it certainly doesn’t have to. Often, spiritual development really means getting in touch with the things you believe and value and care about: if you’re suppressing your own inner feelings or unexpressed truths, it’s hard to work at your best and much easier to find yourself burning out over time. 
• Social development. Social development is a big one, and not because it’s possible to learn to “make friends and influence people” more effectively. Our social selves are the way we manifest and model all the other aspects of our personality and identity, and thus the way that we, as leaders, steer others onto more positive and productive paths. That’s something we should all be actively pursuing and working towards. 

When we talk about personal development, in other words, we aren’t talking about just one thing. We’re talking about a portfolio of different interconnected areas where growth is possible, and where it’s possible for us each to invest time and energy and resources in fostering our own development in both our personal and professional lives. But here’s the kicker: we can effectively hit two birds with one stone by investing in Knowledge Mindfulness.

The need for Knowledge Mindfulness

What makes Knowledge Mindfulness so important in this context? It’s really that personal and professional development are the natural consequence of Knowledge Mindfulness.

Look at it this way: to balance our personal and professional development across many different areas—physical, mental, emotional, and so on—and then project our growth outward in ways that nurture others and spur them to grow and thrive too, we need a deep level of awareness and understanding. We need to understand ourselves, of course. We need to understand the context we’re operating in. We need to understand the other people around us. And we also need to understand the interconnections between all these things.

This awareness of the interconnectedness of these things is a critical part of Knowledge Mindfulness. The more our knowledge maturity grows and deepens, the more we begin to understand all the different components that make up our own selves, and the more we begin to see how the connections between these components and the outside world operate.

Through that knowledge maturity—through that high awareness and deep understanding—we begin to learn how to cultivate and optimize and intervene in these flows of energy and knowledge. That’s important because it lets us ensure we’re investing our energy in the right places, and striving for the right things as we think about the ways in which we need to grow and develop. It also lets us understand what those around us need in order to grow, and how to provide them with the encouragement or guidance they need to develop their own selves in a mindful and purposeful way.

So if you’re looking for a path to personal development, which is a critical part of (and interwoven with) today’s professional development, then I’d suggest you start by thinking about the level of knowledge maturity you’ve achieved. Understanding yourself is the first step toward improving yourself—and the more you deepen your knowledge maturity, and progress toward Knowledge Mindfulness, the easier it will become to identify the areas where you can most effectively invest in yourself and in your team.