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Leaders Stop Stalling: Build a Winning Learning Culture Now

What most people do in their careers is to go to university, get a job and then stop learning. Stop learning and you stop growing. If you are reading this article you are not most people, you know that challenging your ideas with new learning and peer discussions will open up future opportunities that you would never discover by doing the same thing every day.

Leaders Stop Stalling: Build a Winning Learning Culture Now

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Does your organisation have a learning culture?

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.

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Encourage and foster a culture of learning and development

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.

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Three main barriers for 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.

Support at All Levels of the Organisation

A real culture of learning and development needs to be genuinely created and supported at all levels of the organisation. Management need to model their commitment to personal development and learning so that everyone in the organisation sees that learning and development is valued and without it the organisational vision may remain out of reach.

As the events industry struggles with the challenges of staff shortages and a people with knowledge and experience moving out of the industry to find more stable work, now more than ever a learning culture is essential in event and hospitality organisations and where possible it needs to be fast tracked as new people come on board. Here are some examples of training processes that you can use either for yourself or your team.

  • Re-enforcing the basics, understanding, and working on areas for improvement across all the fundamentals.
  • Immersive learning, learning on the job lets learners fully immerse themselves in the experience. To ensure its effectiveness though you must be able to provide structure around the learning and measure the level of skills and knowledge prior to the learning experience and afterwards. The most effective way of doing this is through questions and demonstrations. Make a list of all the things the employee must know and be able to do to be proficient in the task given. Check the list off when they can demonstrate the skills or the knowledge.
  • Structured work groups where experienced staff are working with less experienced staff, watching and learning is an effective way for your new team members to come to understand “this is how we do things here” without direct instruction. It’s also a good way for people to pick up good habits so make sure your more experienced staff are complying with policies and procedures before you let them lead the way.  
  • Event or hospitality case studies provide practical, real industry examples that can translate management theory into applicable skills. This is a great way for people to examine issues in a safe theoretical way before being needing to make real decisions in a live environment.
  • Peer-learning groups create an environment where peers can participate in knowledge sharing, collaboration and feedback, creating an environment with a powerful and personal experience that drives learning and builds effective teams.
  • Individual Guidance increases self-awareness and strengthens people’s capacity for learning. Guidance is used here instead of feedback which is backward looking and often has a negative connotation as feedback is most often used in a negative way. Guidance is giving people advice which is generally more specific than feedback and more actionable. Sure, it’s good to know if you are doing something wrong by getting feedback, but it is much more useful to get some guidance on how you can do things better in the future.
  • Reflection allows time to place learnings in a broader context and identify issues and establish the way forward. Giving people the permission and space for reflection is a great way to embed the learning and see positive results from the learning process.
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Lisa Price
Featured Uplyrn Expert
Lisa Price
Event Specialist
Subjects of Expertise: Event Management
Featured Uplyrn Expert
Lisa Price
Event Specialist

Subjects of Expertise

Event Management

Leave your thoughts here...

Avatar profile
Priyanshu Ranjan
  • 2024-01-06 01:29:07
Lisa Price's article highlight...
Avatar profile
Sahasra Kudikala
  • 2024-01-05 22:33:16
Learning is like our personal gui...
none-user
S Bhavadharani
  • 2023-12-29 14:05:32
I feel learning is a part of an in...

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