Lessons in Learning 1: Let's start with Why
I believe that one of the most important things leaders need to be able to do is to create environments where people learn, everyday and always. Environments where people feel empowered and enabled to take responsibility for their own learning and to try new ways of doing things. We shouldn’t expect leaders to instinctively know how to do this - we have to help them to learn how. That’s exactly what I’m exploring in my new bi-monthly blog series “Lessons in Learning”.
To say that creating environments where people learn, everyday and always, is one of the most important things for leaders to do is a strong statement and one that I firmly believe. Before I get into what a learning environment looks like and how to create one, I want to take a step back and start with why I believe this and why it’s such an important leadership skill to develop. In a nutshell I think there are four key reasons:
There’s loads of evidence to show that internationally, the organisations with the most engaged, motivated and high performing workforces work in ways that are grounded in learning
My own learning journey, that I talked about in my business birthday blog last time (The cave you fear to enter really does hold the treasure that you seek — Kath Smythe Collective), has changed how I am who I am and how I do what I do. So I bring lived experience of the impact that an openness to learning everyday and always has.
Having talked to many people about learning, the passion with which they talk about the benefits of being part of a learning environment is palpable.
While there is no silver bullet, I think that learning environments are at least part of the answer to addressing the prevalence of low confidence that I’m seeing and hearing about across workforces and leaders
Motivate and Engage
Learning environments keep us motivated and engaged for better performance
What does the evidence tell us
People who know me know I love a good podcast or audio book. I’m all about the spaces where people and organisations come together and I’m fascinated by learning about anything to do with workplace psychology, culture change and generally how we get the best out of ourselves and each other. I’ve spent the last few years diving into the musings of people like Aaron Dignan, Brene Brown, Bruce Daisley, Daniel Coyle, Sam Conniff, Alex Barker, the Corporate Rebels and Matthew Syed to understand what the most pioneering organisations in the world are doing and learning. For me, there are six big themes that underpin how the most pioneering organisations do what they do - and all relate to learning - learning about yourself, about others and about what works and what doesn’t:
Start from what Aaron Dignan describes as a “people positive” perspective - people come to work to do a good job and can be trusted and given responsibility
Give people a level of autonomy that enables them to get involved in stuff that matters to them - and this includes things that sit outside of their job description. Give people the freedom to experiment, contribute ideas and get involved in delivering projects that change things. Create spaces to reflect and learn.
We learn so much through the relationships we build - stuff that helps us understand each other and work together better - so social time matters
Transparency and access to quality information is a great leveller and enables people to learn
Good IT systems act as an important enabler to collaboration and co-operation helping people to talk to each other, share information, work together and work efficiently
The best performing organisations stay with the tough stuff. This means feedback is routinely asked for and openly received, people feel safe to disagree and work through challenges together and, to quote Dan Coyle “there’s no learning without reflection”. Asking simple questions about what’s going well, what’s not and what could be done differently is an important start in building learning cultures.
This evidence is even more compelling when you consider the Gallup research, cited by Joost Mennaar and Pim de Morree in their Corporate Rebels book, showing that worldwide only 15% of employees feel engaged in the work they do. They estimate that globally, £7 trillion per annum is lost to disengagement.
People Positive
Most people want to feel engaged and motivated and come to work to do a great job
What are the Benefits?
Only 10% of what we learn at work is learned through formal training. I think it’s time to get more deliberate in creating environments that enable and empower people to learn every day. Learning environments are spaces where we learn together and learn informally and when we do this we build relationships, understanding and trust. These relationships mean that we are more willing to share approaches, resources, challenges and opportunities and help create safe spaces where there are no daft questions and we are comfortable with exposing ourselves to friendly, constructive challenge. The relationships built also enable us to draw on other people’s experiences and reach out when we don’t have an answer - how have you…..? Has anyone……? Being exposed to these wider experiences helps us to think differently about how to do things, helps us see synergies across different roles, teams and functions and creates a sense of being in it together which helps us to feel more resilient. Working in a learning environment improves motivation, efficiency, effectiveness and ultimately performance. Powerful stuff.
What’s it got to do with confidence?
In my work I talk to so many people who lack confidence. People who don’t know what their own strengths are, don’t know whether they are being effective, don’t know what they could do differently. It’s endemic and I think it's probably got worse with the pandemic because organisations have been so focused on getting the job done that some of the good stuff that helps us to be effective - like performance conversations, time for development, access to coaching and mentoring - have gone out of the window.
When we learn about ourselves - our strengths, our behaviours and our nuances - we better understand how to get the best out of ourselves. When we learn about others, we understand how to work together in ways that play to our individual and collective strengths and we build trust that brings multiple benefits. When we look outwards and learn from what others are doing and when we feel empowered to experiment and try new things we learn how to do different in ways that work for us and our organisations.
With this knowledge comes an inner sense of confidence. Confidence that we know ourselves and how to bring our best selves. The confidence that comes from knowing how to navigate complex organisations and systems to get to the right people who can work with us to find the right solutions. And confidence that there’s a whole movement of people across the globe who are working on issues similar to ours and that by learning how they are approaching things, we are equipping ourselves with the best possible chances of success.
I’m passionate about learning and I hope I’ve convinced you why creating learning environments is an essential leadership skill. You might be wondering what a learning environment looks like? I’ll talk about this in my next blog and try to bring it to life because if we haven’t experienced working in a learning environment, how can we be expected to know what one is? And if we don’t know what it looks like, how can we even start to build one?
