The importance of establishing a culture of learning

Greg Kirwan discusses the importance of developing an effective learning culture.

In today’s world of work, leaders need to be more resilient than ever. The impact of the pandemic and a widely dispersed workforce have had major repercussions on the way leaders and their teams need to operate. It’s essential for leaders to be future fit and have the necessary tools at their disposal so that their actions are empirically proven to stabilise organisations. Leaders also need to be able to inspire, influence, and transform teams, be courageous and authentic, and increasingly need to change or strengthen the culture within teams.

In this series, Olivier Mythodrama’s CEO Greg Kirwan looks at how leadership teams can make a positive impact, what happens when leaders get it wrong, how they can overcome challenges and why they need to be future fit.

The role of leadership and development has changed significantly over the last few years. Greater emphasis is being placed on L&D teams to deliver learning that helps organisations retain their workforce and help them become future fit. This, coupled with a large proportion of organisations switching to offer greater flexibility to their workforce means there is the added need to bring people together to learn effectively and engage as a team.

Organisations have always needed to be future fit, but it’s now become a much higher priority. Teams need to have the relevant skills and understanding to take an organisation forward and be ready for any disrupting influences in the future. The pandemic has highlighted just how important being future fit is and how unprepared many organisations were to adapt in a crisis, so organisations are now looking to the learning and development team to find solutions and training to help build future fit workforces.

By developing an effective learning culture, organisations will benefit from:

Upskilling teams to work cohesively in a crisis and work effectively through change is so important to the success of an organisation. This may be a big challenge for some, so will leadership teams be willing to learn and embrace the changes that are necessary? As Shakespeare once wrote ‘change is the only constant in life’, so why does it catch us off guard and why do so many people react against it?

Organisations need to become more adaptable to change, learn how to manage the process and encourage their workforces to take that journey with them. Any uncertainty on that journey will cause unrest and potentially lead to an unhappy workforce or team members leaving. Learning can be a great help in this process. Learning how to manage and embrace change is an essential skill of today’s leadership teams. Learning empowers people and provides the tools to help them navigate that journey with confidence. If a leader is empowered, it is much easier for them to empower their teams and create a great work culture.

The pressure is on for learning and development teams to encourage and manage this change and also to embrace new methods of learning to allow their organisations to become future fit.

Olivier Mythodrama has been delivering innovative and thought provoking leadership training for over 20 years. The people and organisations we have worked with describe our training as life changing. We think they’re right. We already work with some of the world’s leading businesses. Are you ready to join them?