The Joy of Learning: seven wisdoms

10th April 2025 |   Tina Berggren

Why leadership inspiration, collaborative learning, and joy impact us all.

Wisdom 1: Learning starts with a curious mind

“I have seven wisdoms for you. What you do with them is up to you. The only thing I ask of you is to remember them.”

“The first wisdom is about curiosity. Any learning starts with a curious mind. Be curious and you will never have a dull day in your life.”

Seven wisdoms? That sparked her curiosity. In her current role within the learning organisation at SAP, she often facilitated workshops where she could embrace her curiosity and learn new things every day.

She recalled a few years back when she was involved in creating a new approach for onboarding new hires. She felt that if the new hires had fun and were welcomed into a big family, they would learn more and become eager to learn even more.

Joy is really an undervalued force. We need to foster joy to ignite the desire to learn.

When she initially presented the idea of not using any PowerPoint slides and focusing on a collaborative experience through discussing with peers and working with concepts, she felt the resistance among her colleagues. Later she found multiple resources supporting her point about PowerPoint limiting the engagement of learners (Hill et al, 2012; Roberts, 2018; and Wanner, 2015). Although using slides could allow knowledge to be shared regardless of the quality of the speaker, it limits the room for comments and ideas (Norvig, 2003). She agreed with Konukman et al (2010) as they refer to PowerPoint being a teacher-centred way of giving instructions. This would limit the active peer learning and sharing that she wished the new hires to experience.