How to Build a Learning-Centric Performance Culture

Elevate your company's learning culture by embracing and maximizing the true potential of knowledge acquisition. Transform your approach by scheduling learning sessions during the early hours of Monday or Tuesday, a simple yet powerful strategy that significantly enhances the applicability and impact of acquired insights. Unlike the common practice of relegating learning activities to the latter part of the week, typically during lunch or late afternoon for the sake of convenience, prioritizing learning at the beginning of the week reaps profound benefits. In my experience, having successfully influenced companies to shift their learning sessions to the start of the week, I observed a remarkable increase in instances where newly acquired knowledge was promptly applied – sometimes within mere hours, and in other cases, within a day or two. This not only translates to more direct and meaningful contributions to the company but also ensures that the acquired knowledge is retained and not lost over the weekend. Beyond the immediate impact, there exists a subtle yet significant psychological effect when learning takes place early in the week. Initiating the week with a focus on learning sends a powerful message – we prioritize what we do first. By demonstrating a commitment to learning from the outset, a team communicates that learning is a valued and essential aspect of their work. This shift positively influences the team's mindset, attitude, and approach toward continuous learning.

Many of my most treasured memories as a leader are learning together with my team. Whether an article or TED talk that we discussed at our all-staff meetings, quarterly manager learning sessions, dedicated learning hours, or 1:1 conversations, learning creates community. With the many things already on your to do list as a manager, it can feel overwhelming to add one more thing to the list. The good news is that there are ways to grow your team’s skills without adding more work to your plate. Here's the thing: Building learning into your workplace isn’t just a “nice to have.” Organizations with a strong learning culture have 30-50% higher engagement and retention rates. In my newest article, I share six tangible ways to build learning into your workday to help grow your team’s skills: 1. Incorporate a learning goal into your team's annual goals 2. Add learning to your meeting agendas 3. Dedicate time for synchronous personalized learning 4. Create learning cohorts 5. Share learning and failure stories 6. Introduce a retrospective review Building a learning mindset in the workplace helps the team improve and innovate, invests in individual team member’s professional and personal growth, and strengthens your company’s organizational culture. Which learning strategy resonates most with you? ____ Hi, I'm Shanna (rhymes with Donna) Hocking. I help universities and nonprofits develop leaders, strengthen workplace culture, and advance fundraising.

For 20+ years, I have led high-performing teams. Ready to find out how I do it? There are many possible actions a leader can take to create successful teams, from scheduling 1:1s... to encouraging risks... to celebrating wins. Each action stacks on top of another, allowing for powerful results. Unfortunately, the sheer number of possible actions can feel confusing, if not overwhelming. I have found it helpful to group different actions into the following categories: 🚀 Engage 🚀 Educate 🚀 Empower And I ask myself the following question: 🚀 Which is the result that I want to affect? Engage A happy team is an engaged team. If you want each person to feel connected, motivated, and valued, then you must create a positive and inclusive environment. • Build trust through reliable, consistent, and authentic interactions. The team needs to know that your actions and words align with one another. • Communicate with transparency. People are quite adept at sensing half-truths and hidden information, which result in worry and gossip rather than focusing on tasks. • Motivate by acknowledging and celebrating successes. • Set a recurring schedule of 1:1s. These are the most important meetings you can have with each person! Educate Prepare the team to meet current and future, unforeseen challenges with new skills and knowledge. There must exist a culture of continuous learning. • Identify gaps, and then train, coach, and set new challenges. You want to minimize missing skills, knowledge, and experience. • Provide feedback, both the positive and the negative. Successes become repeatable actions. Failures are remedied. • Create opportunities for each person to advance towards their professional goals. • Share knowledge with the free flow of information between employees. Encourage questions and create a written repository of documented knowledge accessible to everyone. Empower Individuals should have the knowledge and inspiration to solve hard problems. They should own the outcomes. • Foster an environment of autonomy, allowing each person to work independently toward goals. • Give support as the team works towards goals. However, do not micromanage! There are many paths to reach a goal, not one path set by you. • Provide the tools for each person to succeed in their role. • Recognize each person's unique strengths, and provide opportunities for projects, tasks, and responsibilities that tap into the strengths of the individual. These three points have constituted my leadership strategy for years and years. It provides the right framework to pinpoint what results I want to achieve for a more successful, resilient team. PS. Which of these categories would help your team the most? 🔔 Follow Chris Cotter for more on #leadership.