Anyone working in employee engagement and leadership development spaces regularly espouses the importance of providing timely and relevant feedback. Feedback is absolutely an important way of recognizing the accomplishments of and giving course corrections to a team member. However, what is often minimized (if not outright overlooked), is the role of feedback in creating a culture of continuous learning.
I spoke with lifelong learner Mark Herschberg, author of The Career Toolkit and creator of the Brain Bump app, about the small shifts that can make learning a habit in our organizations. As someone who helped found MIT’s Undergraduate Practice Opportunities Program– dubbed their “career success accelerator”– Mark definitely had a few lessons to offer. Here are the top 3 things you’ll learn from his episode:
- Pivoting is all about communication and mindset.
- Clearly define the intended purpose for all your communication channels.
- Use learning pods to create cross-team accountability and knowledge.
Lesson #1: Lack of clear communication and leader bias are two of the biggest barriers to change.
Mark is often called in as a fractional CTO or CPTO, which means he’s continuously engaged in change management processes. When I asked him how he gets teams ready to pivot from their initial plan, he identified communication and mindset as two of the biggest barriers to successful change initiatives. To effectively advocate for change, he borrows an idea from the medical field and suggests “triaging” the biggest pain points. Those pain points typically fall under two categories: project management and leadership. In terms of project management, he recommends getting a clear sense of the time, money, effort, and risk involved as the first step. The second is understanding any political battles that may come up as a result of the leader’s biases. “We get trapped by our own success,” Mark notes. And in a world that is dynamic, we cannot allow ourselves to get stuck in static thinking. Identifying a strategy for convincing a reluctant leader that change is a good thing will require a skillful gaining of trust to overcome this particular political battle. As the person spearheading the change initiative, triaging these pain points will help lead you to success.
Lesson #2: In a world with a variety of communication tools, be clear on which ones to use based on the type of message and audience.
With the explosion of communication tools in the last five years, you’d think it would make sharing information easier. Instead, what we’re seeing is an overreliance on an old tool– synchronous meetings– with little to no guidance on how to use platforms like Slack, Jira, Microsoft 365, text, among many more.
Mark’s guidance on how to improve organization-wide communication is two-fold. First, get clear on the type of message you’re sharing. Is it a broadcast, where information is shared with those who need to know; a decision, where an answer about next steps must be reached; or is it coordinating, where all attendees are checking in on progress, sharing updates, and agreeing on next steps? Being clear on the type of message will not only help you identify if a meeting is necessary, it will also help you identify who needs to be in the room if a meeting is what you need.
Which leads to his second point: get clear on which communication tools to use for each type of message. If it’s a status update on a project task and you want it delivered through the project management platform, outline the formatting and type of information you want to be shared through that medium. If it’s an organization-wide update, then get clear on how to not only use the live broadcasting features of Microsoft Teams but also on how you want your people to participate (i.e. can they still be working and tune in; if they have questions how do they pose them and get them answered, etc.). The more time you spend outlining the expectations and methods for using each communication tool, the more time you’ll save in the long run.
Lesson #3: Make learning communal!
In rapid-growth organizations, curiosity and a desire to learn are critical. To make these traits part of your organization’s culture, Mark suggests implementing learning pods. Made up of 6-8 people, these small learning communities will help you do more than just upskill your employees. In learning pods, you also see greater degrees of employee engagement because it shows the company cares about their development, which helps with retention as well. It also ensures that everyone who joins your organization speaks a common language both for the processes and tools they learn, as well as for how they learn. And lastly, because the pods are made up of folks from different teams across the organization, you create internal networks that aid in de-siloing and increase efficiency.
To learn more from Mark on how to create a culture of continuous learning, make sure to watch the full episode!
About Best Places to Lead
Your company has the potential to be great. The leader’s responsibility is to unlock that potential – or doom it to mediocrity.
On the LIVE Best Places to Lead show, you’ll learn the hard-fought lessons from the front lines earned by business leaders who have already had their teeth bashed in and lived to tell about it. We’ll share the tips, tricks, mindsets, and frameworks that allow great leaders to lead differently.
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