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What is the culture of learning?
Creating a culture of learning is very important in any organization. If you employ humans, learning happens in your workplace every day. We're biologically wired to learn.
Learning is necessary for survival and it’s an instinct. We constantly absorb information, determine what's important, and decide how to act. This guide explores six steps we can use to successfully create a transformative culture of learning in an organization.
What are people learning?
People learn about their positions, job skills, policies, procedures, and colleagues. They also learn how to power and influence, whether leaders are trustworthy, if risk taking is rewarded and if harassment is tolerated. In other words, they learn about the real values of the organization, not just those posted on their website.
Transformative learning
Transformative learning is the expansion of consciousness through the transformation of worldview and capacities of the self. It’s an act of changing how to see and do things.
According to the researchers, the three dimensions of transformative learning are:
Psychological – Change in understanding – knowledge, information, models, and theories shift the learner’s understanding and provide the “why”
Behavioral – Change in actions – the learner uses observation, application, and experimentation to do something differently.
Convictional – Revision of belief system – the learner permanently shifts a perspective or view, often through “Aha!” moment or insight.
Organizations with neglected learning cultures experience high talent turnover, struggle to keep customers, and ultimately fall behind competitors. Such organizations may be profitable in the short term, but they ultimately fail.
On the other hand, the organizations with the transformative learning culture thrive and succeed. At these organizations, it’s understood that learning is a natural process, that people yearn to grow. These organizations cultivate potential through learning opportunities and experience.
The role of learning is to maximize the potential of an organization by maximizing the potential of all the people in it.
Step 1: Honor the Ever – Present Nature of Learning
We should not treat learning as an event to be scheduled. It’s an unbounded resource because it’s in our DNA to be lifelong learners. Cultivate the potential to boost performance. In high-performance learning organizations, employees share knowledge with their colleagues at a rate four times greater than that of workers in lower-performing firms. Today’s learning is as much about communities, networks, sharing and collaboration as it is about knowledge and skill. Provide tools, technologies, and resources — coaches, mentors, laptops, tablets — for creating and sharing learning content. Make knowledge sharing a performance expectation.
Step 2: Value learning as Path to Mastery
Make it safe to take risks and to make mistakes. Celebrate achievements as much as easy wins. Understand that the cost of not encouraging failure is a shortage of innovation. Organizations with mature learning cultures – Accenture and Google – hold leaders accountable for actively demonstrating the importance of learning. Leverage leadership development to cultivate the “growth mindset” among senior, mid-level and front-line leaders. Encourage leaders and managers to model and reinforce key behaviors: intellectual curiosity, risk taking, learning from experimentation and failure, and managing change.
Step 3: Use blended learning to maximize options
In- person learning allows hands- on application and collaboration. On-demand learning offers flexibility and empowers people to learn at their own pace. Combine the two to effectively achieve the learning objective. Largely experiential to involve learning by doing rather than just theorizing.
Step 4: Make is Collective
Shift learning’s strategic focus from creating individual and course centric development strategies to building collective learning capabilities, in which learning is embedded into every role. Create “Collective” leadership instead of “Hero” Leadership learning experience to build a pool of talented people who can assume any leadership role when the need arises.
Step 5: Teach Managers how to coach
Build employee competence and confidence using appreciative inquiry, which is a method for learning rom peak performances. Make sure Managers know how to ask coaching questions that help employees cultivate their own wisdom and confidence.
Step 6: Evaluate performance based on learning
Measure learning along the performance to boost both. Reward growth and improvement. Recognize learning hunger and commitment to boost performance and productivity. Overall performance management processes to reward and reinforce continuous learning and development.
You can always contact me for a free consultation for online training for leadership coaching and counselling and my other successful program which is mindset transformation. Learning should never stop. Here is FREE workbook to boost your confidence as leader for you to download for free. Here is the link.
Happy Learning!
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