The most essential learning skill may shock you. To illustrate, please consider what is the most important learning skill for leaders? Is it…

• Reading?
• Focus?
• Memory?
• Critical thinking?
• Application?
• Communication?

While you can make a case for all of them, I’d argue the most important skill isn’t one most leaders consider. It’s the ability to unlearn.

Many of the best learners I know are the ones who are willing to question what they know and to seek better, deeper, more expansive, and more integrative knowledge.

These are individuals who have faced a challenge or task before, but they are still looking for a better way. In other cases, they come across a new idea and they’re trying to figure out how to integrate it or use it, even though they already know a lot about a topic.

All of these require the willingness to abandon a belief or practice you once considered accurate or useful. It also requires the ability to tolerate ambiguity for a period of time.

The unlearning process comes into play after you have acquired a great deal of knowledge. It is here that you must dwell in a period of ambiguity as you consider whether it makes sense to test or even let go of your previous assumptions. You must create space to try something different from what you know has worked in the past. In some cases, you may need to disregard your training and even the very principles that have previously been responsible for large measures of your success.

Unlearning isn’t radical or undisciplined. It’s not about suddenly deciding that two plus two equals five.

Unlearning is the process of deciding to adopt a different framework, belief system or mental model. The founders of AirBnb shifted away from the belief that to make money renting vacation homes, you had to own the vacation homes. Uber and Lyft made a similar shift away from the notion that transportation companies had to own vehicles. Many great leaders I know ascended when they shifted how they engaged and managed their teams.

Which of your frameworks, beliefs or mental models is it time for you to unlearn?