WHY AND HOW COMMUNICATORS SHOULD BE LIFELONG LEARNERS
By Gini Dietrich
As my co-worker, Laura Petrolino, recently wrote, professional development and keeping your skills fresh through ongoing learning are essential for today ' s communicator. I have a friend who, at 4 p. m. every day, shuts down what she is working on and opens some sort of learning. It may be a course on Coursera or Lynda. It could be an article she ' s been meaning to read. It might be a webinar she downloaded but hasn ' t been able to watch yet. Or it could be some sort of hands-on training that helps her do her job more efficiently. It ' s for only 30 minutes, but she does this every single day. She has an appointment in her calendar and nothing— and I mean nothing— prevents her from " attending " that meeting. Though it ' s only half an hour a day, I ' ve watched her grow in many ways because of it. Here ' s the other thing about her: She ' s the leader of a very successful, multi-billion-dollar company. From the outside perspective, you ' d think she has it made. She doesn ' t have to keep learning. She ' s already where most of us yearn to be and never get. Still, she has learned to program. She has learned another language. She
48 | PRTIMES AFRICA MARCH 2016