LEARN HOW TO LEARN: Developing Impactful Learning Cultures

Developing our teams and finding new ways of working together have taken on a new urgency as we adapt to living in a Covid world. In this series of four posts we look at how to develop an impactful learning culture that can transform your organization from within – despite what is happening in the outside world.

This first post sets the scene as we share the changes taking place in the L&D landscape and start to look at program content for the new world of work.

What is changing?

As professional coaches, one of our main points of contact within companies is the HR department, and more specifically the Learning and Development (L&D) teams. After all, coaching is about changing our habits and behaviors and developing new skills or refining the skills we already have. Whilst collaborating with L&D professionals about how to make learning more effective for organizations, the four of us have noticed how this area is changing and we set out on a mission to research this subject and to see how the vital issue of learning could be tackled in today’s changing corporate landscape.

What have we observed in the L&D landscape?

1. We observe that L&D are increasingly important if companies are to execute on strategy.
So, this is great news for learning professionals, as it means that companies are keen to invest in this area and to develop their workforce. Budgets are constant or are increasing.

We also see that the VUCA (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous) world that we hear so much about and which has been so strongly reinforced by the Covid-19 crisis, means that ongoing learning has become vital for companies as they try to make sure that they have the skills for the continually shifting landscape that they’re navigating.

New skills are constantly emerging and these skills either have to be learned by the existing employees or brought in via new hires, which brings us to our second observation.

2. We observe that companies are experiencing difficulties in hiring staff (talent wars).
Hiring talent has become more competitive, with digital skills in fierce demand. Two lines of attack are open;

  • up-skilling the employees you already have via learning initiatives so that they can meet upcoming challenges
  • creating an environment that is more appealing to talents looking to change company and also more stimulating so that current employees want to stay within the organization.

 

3. We observe that individuals are placing more emphasis on learning as a major component of their employee experience and engagement.
Learning is cited as the top-rated challenge in Deloitte’s 2019 Human Capital[1] survey and in the same survey, individual respondents rated the “opportunity to learn” as being in their top reasons for taking a job.

4. We observe lack of time prohibiting employees from taking part in existing programs.
Which leads us to one of the major challenges brought up during our research; how much time do people dedicate to learning? Most corporate executives are already on a challenging schedule often working on cross-functional projects and across multiple time-zones. Digital technology means that we are rarely off-line, so when do they actually get time to learn?

5. We observe that learning is not just vocational but is now a life-skill.
The digital transformation means that many roles will become redundant as automation takes over.  How will companies, and society in the broader sense, deal with the fall-out, as even skilled jobs are handed over to machines and artificial intelligence?

It’s a society wide issue, but it’s also clear that we, as individuals, need to take a larger view of our own learning and development. An initial qualification from a top university is no longer sufficient to hold down a good job or to build a successful career. Even adding on an MBA at a later stage, will not guarantee success. We need to develop learning itself as a skill, so that we can keep on learning and adapting to new challenges.

6. We observe that traditional programs are no longer appealing?
Traditional learning programs (where a group comes together in a set location, at a set time, with a field-expert or trainer) are frequently eschewed. They’re too time-consuming, or at least not flexible enough to fit into the varied schedules of the participants. The top-down approach of an expert who teaches to an uninformed audience is no longer acceptable either, particularly to millennials who favor a more participative style of learning.

Learners are looking for flexible access to learning that fits into their schedule, or which they can access “in the moment”, when the need for learning arises.

What we see that is emerging

We are moving away from a “one size fits all” approach to something which is more tailored. Today’s learning needs to be:

  • adapted to specific learning preferences,
  • available on-demand,
  • available to happen in-situ.

 

The Content of the learning

 In the not too distant past, non-technical learning often came packaged with neat titles. (e.g. conflict management). It was often marketed as being a set of tips and tools, with fool-proof rules that could be applied to every situation. If you’d done the conflict management training, then you could easily handle conflict in your team. At least, that was the promise, and to be fair, it worked well at the time.

In today’s landscape, change is happening fast. It’s not just the working environment that’s changing, but also the co-workers who we’re leading and the ecosystem that we’re working in. This means that the rules we may have learned rarely apply because each situation we’re confronted with is layered with nuances and exceptions. We don’t need tools and rules so much as we need meta learning and cognitive skills.

In the LinkedIn research on skills most needed by companies in 2019[2], 57% of senior leaders said that soft-skills were more important than hard skills, and out of those soft-skills, the top five most needed skills are:

  • Creativity
  • Persuasion
  • Collaboration
  • Adaptability
  • Time Management

 

For leaders, the soft-skills can be even more developed and we find topics such as:

  • Emotional intelligence
  • Being comfortable with ambiguity
  • Self-awareness and self-reflection
  • Creating and holding a psychologically safe space

 

These topics can be difficult to pin down, particularly for an executive who may feel that she needs to develop, but may not be able to articulate exactly what her learning needs are. It’s easier to ask for “Management training” than it is to ask for “being comfortable with ambiguity”, but it is indeed the latter that is needed. So, we also need to be able to identify the skills which are needed and to articulate what they are and how they will impact an individual’s growth and performance.

Authors

Anna Gallotti, Selika Cerofolini, Jody Julien & Jo Leymarie.

Biographies:

Anna Gallotti

Anna Gallotti has 20 years of experience as an Executive Coach. She is the founder of two coaching companies, one based in Paris (since 1999) and one in the United States (since 2013). She recently also founded a micro-learning based company with worldwide exposure.

Italian, she lived 20 years in Paris. Since 2013 she has been living in New York and has been working between Europe and the United States. In 2001 Anna received her first coaching certification in Paris. In 2009 Anna became a Master Certified Coach +5000h coaching), examiner and mentor coach for the International Coaching Federation (40 000 members worldwide). She is also Vice Chair of the ITL Global Board at International Coaching Federation whose mission is to study the future trends of coaching and the impact of coaching.

Anna holds a BA in International Law at University of Milan (Italy) and a MA in European Law at University Paris V (France). Anna is co-author of 3 books: “Make the right Choices” (in English, French, and Italian), “L’art et la pratique du coaching professionnel” (in French) and “Coaching for Leaders” (published in Q4 2020).

For more information, go to: www.share-coach.com and www.welead-coaching.com
To contact Anna: anna.gallotti@share-coach.com

Selika Cerofolini

Selika Cerofolini is a Certified Professional Coach through the Coaching for Transformation program. She founded Joyful Path, a holistic coaching practice devoted to approaching personal and systemic evolution with a deeper look, a compassionate heart and a broader vision, for the benefit of the individual and the collective. Prior to shifting her career entirely to coaching in 2018, she held managerial roles in Development and Communication for Art Institutions for 7 years, while pursuing her interests in psychology, philosophy and along with a devoted meditation practice. Originally from Italy, she holds a BA in International Communications and an MA in International Relations and Diplomatic Studies from the University of Perugia (Italy).

Selika lives and works in New York, and you can reach her at selikac@joyfulpathcoaching.com.

Jody Julien

Born in the USA, Jody Julien holds degrees from Oakland University in Michigan and RIT in New York in the areas of International Business and Strategic Human Resources.  Trained and certified in both Professional and Life Coaching with over 500 clients and +2500 coaching hours to date. Held global Operations and Human Resources leadership positions for more than 20 years in North America, South America, and Europe, and is currently based in Paris, France.  She is the founder of J2 Coaching & Consulting since 2011, a global firm specializing in professional development and international organizational effectiveness. Jody is a keynote speaker for international organizations on the topics of Women in Leadership and C-Suite Transitions.

More information may be found at www.J2coaching.com or by contacting Jody directly at jody.julien@j2coaching.com.

Jo Leymarie

Born and educated in Britain, Jo Leymarie holds a BA in Law and French from the Metropolitan University in London. She has lived and worked in France for the last 30 years.

Jo has 25 years of business experience setting up and managing profit centres in France for international companies. She founded Walden, a coaching and consulting company, in 2015 to support managers and teams during transformations and to contribute to building a people-centred workplace.

She is a member of SOL France (Society for Organizational Learning) and her core subjects include sustainable leadership, organizational learning and diversity and inclusion.

You can contact her at jo@waldencoaching.fr, www.waldencoaching.fr

Bibliography:

Deloitte, Global Human Capital Trends 2019
Workplace Learning Report. LinkedIn 2019
https://learning.linkedin.com/blog/top-skills/the-skills-companies-need-most-in-2019–and-how-to-learn-them

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