Leaders Stop Stalling: Build a Winning Learning Culture Now

If culture is defined as ideas, customs and social behaviour of a society then organisational culture is intrinsically linked to each and every person within an organisation. In relation to learning and development a positive view and an ingrained custom must be supported and modeled by all levels of the organisation including senior managers.

Lately I have been delivering organisational training including building resilience, growing emotional intelligence, leadership, effective time management and challenging conversations. Whilst there is a good gender, cultural and age balance almost exclusively the attendees are not in leadership positions. This would indicate that whilst the organisation supports development, the senior managers are not modelling the behaviour when it comes to self-development.

This may not be surprising, perhaps those in more senior positions have formal qualifications and feel they can hone their skills in daily practice. I thought that too until my learners started to share some of their experiences. It would appear in some circumstances, leaders are providing training to staff to mask the leader's own deficiencies. One example being an organisation where staff were stressed by organisational changes and having difficulty coping. Instead of the organisation’s leadership group dealing with the underlying issue of ineffective change management strategies, employees were sent off to resilience training. In other examples learners have described poor management strategies, overwork and under resourcing.

Organisations have a competitive edge when they encourage and foster a culture of learning and development. The worth of learning includes staff feeling more valued and engaged with the organisation, there is also increased productivity in the long term with improved skills and knowledge. The permission to learn and develop gives employees an opportunity to seek new and innovative ways to achieve the organisation’s vision. Supporting employee’s development strengthens the trust between employees and leaders.

But why do leaders recognise the importance of this development for their employees but not themselves? There are three main barriers for leaders.  

1. The main excuse is a lack of time, they are so busy they can’t give themselves a break to focus on their own development. This is where the leader needs to step back and ask themselves is their lack of leadership skills causing some of the issues they are facing and could focus on developing these skills have longer term benefits than just getting the job done. 
2. Some leaders may think leadership training is below them and there is an expectation they are already proficient in these areas and don’t need leadership development. This is the delusional leader who thinks these issues are because of knowledge gaps of their staff rather than their own.
3. Organisational culture. Either there is no commitment to learning and development or perhaps worse it has a “tick the box” attitude where employees are sent off to training to spend the training budget without an understanding or belief in the benefits of learning and development.

Effective leaders recognise they have knowledge or skill gaps and then they will fill those gaps so they can build career flexibility as they progress from one job to the next. At each step of their leadership journey, they should take the time to focus on honing those skills for their organisation, their employees and themselves.