Grow Learning Culture with Your Learners Through These 5 Opportunities

Great learning culture is hard to define and sometimes difficult to build, maintain, and grow. However, learning culture is simply all about learning, being open to learn; it is about curiosity and hunger for learning. As a learning leader, you constantly learn on your own, learn on the job, learn in collaboration with others, and take some formal training, too. Your learners take the same approaches. From a perspective of a learning leader, the best way to meet your learners is via community-based learning.

In this session we will explore five opportunities, along with success stories, that enable you to learn with your learners, to establish a direct two-way flow of information and inspiration. The learning culture is best built collaboratively, with the leaders and learners acquiring new knowledge, sharing experience, and discussing what they learn—together. Spending time with your learners pays off immensely.

Opportunity #1: Although in a leadership position, experiment and show you can! Pioneer a piece of solution, define standards, and validate them with your team and a closed learner community. You will learn from their feedback; learners will recognize you as a role model and will be motivated.

Opportunity #2: Stay with your learners for a “stage” or two on their learning path. You not only get the feeling about the program, you also give recognition to participants, show your passion for learning, and show you can learn something, too. Participate in some pilot programs (part-time) to learn first-hand about the feedback and consecutively build better solutions.

Opportunity #3: Carefully listen to your learners’ questions and analyze their feedback. The feedback will not only trigger new learning and force you to seek for new solutions, it will also help you identify entirely new opportunities.

Opportunity #4: Listen to their success stories (as all good instructional designers, facilitators and instructors do). You will not just learn and have a story, you will also demonstrate you care for their transfer of knowledge on the job. And the learners truly value when you re-tell their stories, feature them in case studies, etc.

Opportunity #5: For every learning program you finish, conduct a “lessons learned” session with the learners! Be personally involved, if possible, and make sure the learners get an opportunity to talk. Share results with the learners and demonstrate you acted upon the feedback and improved your solutions next time. Be maximally transparent.

In this session, you will learn:

• How spending a part of a learning journey together motivates your learners
• How analyzing your learners’ feedback and acting upon it improves their retention
• How much learners value it when leaders share their success stories
• How important “lessons learned” after the program can be, especially when done together with your learners