Make Every Encounter an Opportunity to Learn

Make every encounter count.

On a flight to Melbourne in 2002 with the late John Caldon – former Deputy MD of Macquarie Group – I was seated a few rows back and noticed that John was in a highly engaged conversation with the passenger seated next to him.

Curious, and thinking it might be someone important, I asked John as we were exiting the airport: “Who was that guy you were speaking to on the flight?”

With mischievous clairvoyance, John replied: “Ahh, someone very important, Adam.”

“He’s the guy that fixes your loo when it breaks down”, he chuckled. It turns out that the guy he was speaking to for an hour was a self-employed plumber.

“I learnt a great deal about how to lay pipes, how to repair them and how to fix a leak. You never know when that might come in handy.”

Every person is in someway superior to you – find out how, and learn from them.