What Leaders Can do to Encourage Learning and Development

You probably already know that organizations with a culture focused on learning and development are more profitable, more innovative, and have significant market share. But how can leaders create an environment where learning is valued and rewarded?

Align with strategic goals

Your organization’s success depends not only on your current capabilities but also on your team’s ability to grow and adapt.

The first thing execs should consider is how learning strategies align with business strategies. Once you’ve set strategies for profitability, growth, and your product and service mix, set learning targets to support these goals. Train not just for expertise but also for awareness. You may have a handful of expert people, but others need to know how to find and leverage experts.

As leaders, we must keep our eyes on the ball and ensure we have people positioned for the long term to get there. Consider multiple facets of the skills and knowledge required for long-term success:

• Industry-specific skills and knowledge
• Role-specific and technical skills
• Business acumen, such as economic and financial knowledge
• Your whole product or service lifecycle, including supply chain and customer support functions
• How data is used within and across your organization (and how to protect it)
• And, of course, interpersonal skills

Remember that all skills are learnable

Interpersonal skills, often called “soft skills,” tend to get overlooked when leaders set up their learning and development (L&D) goals. Many people view these skills as ones that employees have inherently. Or not. Nothing could be further from the truth.

When considering strategic learning goals, help your employees distinguish themselves from the robots:

• Communication

• Interpersonal skills

• Management skills (even for non-managers!)

• Followership and teamwork

• Customer service and support skills, including empathy and compassion

• Resilience and change responsiveness

• Inclusive leadership

  
  

All these skills are learnable! Few of us are born knowing these things. Others have learned them, and we can too!

Have dedicated learning and development staff

Companies should have roles, teams, or departments dedicated to executing the strategic learning strategy. Executives should allocate resources to support the learning and development function within the organization. For example, L&D professionals should be encouraged to maintain rigor in their methodology and pursue certifications and other continuing education opportunities. Companies have more remote workers and more people with cross-functional roles. In addition, younger professionals tend to be increasingly tech-fluid. Short, just-in-time training videos on YouTube may be a better option than, or a complement to, full-day training courses.

For these reasons, learning and development professionals need ongoing training and professional support. If you don’t have dedicated L&D staff in your organization, consider outsourcing your training needs.

Onboarding

Beyond our selection processes, we must remember that employee engagement starts with the onboarding experience on day one. Have a solid, rigorous, and defined onboarding process that introduces the industry first. New college hires, workers returning to the workforce, and employees transitioning from other sectors need to understand the basics of your industry.

Next, explain both the written and unwritten rules for the company. What things make someone stand out as an outsider who tells you they’re new to your company? Make sure you’re sharing those right away so people can integrate quickly! Then, move on to nuances within the department, job function, location, or a particular role. Your goal should be to give each new employee a 360-degree view from a brand new vantage point. What questions do they have coming in? Give them enough time to ramp up on those things they don’t know.

Meanwhile, remind them about the skills and knowledge that got them in the door in the first place! Ongoing Talent development never ends. We all have opportunities to learn and share. Develop learning plans with targets for varying levels of competence. When someone has mastered a skill, have them teach others. Teaching is a great stretch goal for emerging and aspiring leaders. This knowledge transfer process also helps us retain intellectual capital before people leave our organizations. Knowledge transfer doesn’t have to be in the form of one-on-one mentoring. Encourage employees to create blogs, and participate in video interviews and other creative outlets. This way, you can make “paying it forward” part of your office culture.

Also published here.