The Toad is in Grade 4 and over the last several weeks it has struck me how many lessons happen around the age of 9 that apply to your adult career.

The top 4 lessons the Toad has highlighted for me include:

You have to plan your own workload and be aware of your work/life balance.

Although the teacher still does a lot of prompting and reminding the second half of Grade 4 has seen the Toad have to recognize multiple looming deadlines, manage his time across his activities and his wish for free time and the skills and benefits of good project planning.

You have to utilize the skills of others to be successful – and information doesn’t always come from the boss

In a classroom of 30 kids, the teacher doesn’t have enough time for all of the questions and specific instruction. The Toad is strong in math, listens and follows instructions well and is pretty adept at technology. His classmates recognize those strengths and seek him out when they need help and he turns to others for support in areas that he feels less confident in.

Working in  groups is great but you have to decide how to cope with the underperformer

The Toad is a strong student who takes pride in completing his assignments and meeting his teacher’s expectations. He has learned this year that not everyone shares those values and that some people will make very little effort on projects and group work. Deciding how you want to handle that situation is a big deal.

Some people are really abrasive and some are just plain nasty

You don’t get to choose your classmates. In the Toad’s class, they restructure the desk set-up every month – both the configuration (rows, pods, circle etc.) and who sits together. This shuffle requires that you have to learn about your newly assigned neighbours - how they work, what their strengths are, things you have in common and things you disagree about. Some people talk a lot, others don’t say much, some people are messy and others are very neat, some are kind and gentle….well and some are the opposite of that. How you decide to deal with the more abrasive or nasty mates is a big deal.

Each of these situations mirrors what happens in our workplaces. Given some of the challenges we face at work, perhaps we should think about spending the day in a Grade 4 classroom to remind us what we learned back then.