‘Learning Organisations’ are resilient organisations
The ability to learn, grow and adapt is touted as the most important factor in organisational success in today’s volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous (VUCA) world.
As they say, “The only constant is change”.
Don’t just take my word for it, check out Harvard Business Review and Forbes.
As humans, we notoriously dislike change and uncertainty. They are a threat to our safety and the comfort of the status quo—even when the status quo doesn’t serve us well.
You’ll relate to this if you’ve ever tried to change a habit you know is not good for you!
So, if organisations are full of humans who don’t like change and uncertainty, how can we create a culture of learning and growth that is so desperately needed for us to thrive as individuals, teams, and organisations?
Many organisations have systems and processes for ‘lesson learning’ including:
Debrief meetings
Lesson logs
Action logs
And so much more
This is what I’m talking about here.
This blog attempts to go deeper, considering what is really needed for organisations and their people to embody learning as a way of being.
What is a Learning Organisation?
Let’s start with the end in mind.
A learning organisation is one that models and enables continuous learning, growth, and adaptation at the individual and organisational levels.
As ever, it begins with the leaders. They set the tone and make the weather.
Modelling – Leaders in learning organisations listen deeply, are curious, and engage in active inquiry. They check their assumptions and own their mistakes publicly.
Enabling – They empower and develop others, not taking over when the heat is on. These leaders ask skilful questions and enable individuals and teams to thrive in the face of challenge and uncertainty.
In other words, a learning organisation is one that embraces a coaching mindset as a way of being from the highest levels of leadership all the way through to the shop floor.
What would you see, hear, feel in a learning organisation?
When you become a learning organisation, having successfully embedded a coaching culture, you will notice your staff:
Continuously reflecting (alone and in groups) - Curiosity levels rise when people learn to question and challenge their perspectives and open up to ‘what else might be true?’
Challenging each other to think broadly and deeply - Candour increases when people learn to dissociate challenge from their sense of self (i.e. stop taking it personally). This happens as they internalise the foundational premise for coaching—that everyone is ‘creative, resourceful and whole’ including themselves. The psychological safety created in these environments enables people to have real, authentic, difficult conversations that fundamentally improve the quality of the work.
Supporting each other to overcome the root causes of problems, not fixing symptoms - Genuine curiosity leads us to think more deeply about issues. We uncover that the problem is, in fact, not the problem but something completely different or more profound.
Leading with confidence, authenticity and vulnerability - Greater awareness of self, others, and context allows us to notice when we are triggered into survival, protective behaviours. It enables us to proactively step into our ‘adult’ ego state where we are calm, clear, curious, courageous, and compassionate—and we can support colleagues to do the same.
Does this mean that all we need to do is send our leaders on a coaching skills training course? Well, yes… and no. Training leaders in basic coaching skills will only get you so far.
What gets in the way of people embodying a learner/coaching mindset?
The trouble with leaders is that we are human.
What holds humans back from operating in this way is complex, but it boils down to three key factors.
They don’t know how 🤔 Our survival brains spend decades teaching us to make meaning, form judgements, make assumptions, avoid upsetting people, and perform and do not fail. We learn that 'to know’ is to survive and climb the corporate ladder! The systems in which we operate often reinforce these beliefs by promoting people who are experts at what they do.
Oftentimes, we don’t even know these mechanisms are operating in our brains and our psyches until we learn to open our minds to other perspectives and consider ‘what else might be true’. The good news is that curiosity, non-judgement, and vulnerability are learned ways of being.
They believe that they need to have the answers 😰 - Our sense of self and their value at work is in ‘knowing’—being curious and making mistakes doesn't sit right. This is especially true of leaders who have rapidly climbed the ladder and might experience imposter thoughts and feelings. These may drive us to prove that we deserve our spot at the top table, usually by having the answers and being right.
Again, we can shift these beliefs and create new ones that better serve our intention of being curious, open and non-judgemental. It takes time and requires deep personal and team reflection.
The culture doesn’t allow it 🛑 - Being a ‘knower’ is highly valued. There is no time allowed or value placed on exploring, enquiring, questioning, and challenging assumptions. For a shift in culture to take place, the whole system needs to shift with it. For example:
Reward systems
What is valued
The way people are recognised and praised
The consequences of making mistakes or ‘not knowing’ need to align to incentivise people to work in this way. This is a big one! So, how do we get there?
This is all starting to feel like hard work, right? Yes, it is. But, it is also one of the most meaningful and powerful things you can do for your organisation and your people (see HBR and Forbes above). Keep reading.
Get the enabling environment right
The first thing you need is a commitment to this way of working across the organisation at all levels of leadership and across all areas of operation. It requires a clear vision of what this looks like, down to the behaviours you will see when you get there.
Then, you will need alignment across all recruitment, performance management, pay, and reward systems and in the language people use to celebrate ‘success’.
If ‘busyness’, long hours, and ‘doing and fixing’ is valued more than reflecting, long term, systems thinking and improvement, curiosity, inquiry, and enabling others then training in coaching skills is doomed to fail. Do not pass go, do not collect your resilient organisation.
Invest in building coaching skills and mindset
Once the enabling environment is conducive to learning, leaders are ready to develop, practice, and embody coaching skills and a coaching mindset.
Not all coaching skills training courses are created equal. For me, in light of the first two barriers described above, it’s extremely important to focus as much of our attention on the leader-coach’s own radical self-enquiry as it is on learning the skills of coaching.
Leaders do their own work
Leaders need to learn about themselves and gain a greater understanding of the beliefs that sit beneath the surface of their own protective behaviours. They need to be more self-aware.
By going through a process of radical self-enquiry, leaders learn to be more compassionate with themselves and others. They reach a better understanding of the human condition, of what makes us who we are—not by learning about it cognitively, but by experiencing it for themselves.
This is the fuel of vulnerability and curiosity - Knowing that I am human and imperfect and everyone else is too allows me to be genuinely curious about what might be going on for another human.
Without radical self-enquiry, we bring all our messy bits into our conversations and relationships with others. In other words, we project. This can be extremely damaging, unethical even, depending on the situation and relationship.
For example, if I believe that my worth is in how much I know, I will never be able to refrain from jumping in and offering solutions to my clients. If I believe that my worth is in who I am and how I show up in service of my client’s own creative thinking, I can let go of my need to prove and fix.
Leaders develop coaching skills
The most important coaching skills for leaders to develop include:
Active listening
Presence
Curiosity
Building rapport
‘Contracting’ i.e. setting clear expectations for conversations
Structuring a coaching-style conversation
Noticing patterns of behaviour, thoughts, feeling, and language that their colleagues may not have noticed in themselves
Giving clear feedback on what they are noticing and hearing
Playback and paraphrasing
Noticing their own judgements and assumptions and parking them, non-judgmentally
To develop these skills requires input from experienced coach trainers, a lot of practice and regular, expert supervision in groups or 1:1.
When leaders from within an organisation develop these skills together, they make a commitment to themselves, each other, and their organisation. They adopt a common language and establish ways of working that they can hold themselves and each other accountable for.
It is this combination of factors that, I believe, lays the foundation for becoming a learning organisation that is nimble, adaptable, and able to ride the waves of change and uncertainty with wisdom and resilience.
They are the principles upon which I have built my learning organisations training offer which you can find out more about here.
My last cohort was delivered virtually to 37 leaders in a single organisation across five countries, two continents, and three time zones (in two groups). They reported the following impact (in their own words):
“We’re being more curious, solving problems collaboratively rather than being so directive”
“I’m more open to challenge and hearing different perspectives. I get less defensive now.”
“I’m far more self-aware. I’m more likely to notice when I’m falling into drama dynamics and try to pull myself out”
“I find it easier to talk to supervisors about issues/challenges than before.”
If this sounds interesting and you would like to explore what it would be like to work with me, get in touch and let’s chat.