Because of my credentials and position, I've had the privilege and pleasure of being invited to speak at several different conferences: from Chicago and London, to Dubai and Doha, to Cairo and Singapore. I am very glad and grateful that I enjoy speaking to people and that I am good at it. But my joy and skill are borne from quite a lot of work. Preparing for a half-hour talk, for example, can take me 10 hours. In the process I learn even more about my subject matter: from retention strategies and succession planning, to economic and psychological theory on the recession, to leadership lessons from Macbeth.
I also have the privilege of listening in on other speakers and having conversations with all sorts of attendees at the conference. Besides the ask-listen-talk algorithm I've mentioned, learning is also about exploring, reflecting, and probing. On a few occasions, for instance, I've created two columns on my notepad: on the left are notes from the talk, and on the right are notes from my thoughts. I've jotted things down on my old iPhone using its Notes application, too. But often, while in conversation, I will simply take mental notes, which I'm actually better at than jotting things down, and then I download the stuff from memory onto journals in my laptop.
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