Help Your Team Become Better Learners
Adopting a growth mindset can inspire individuals and businesses. From a personal standpoint, building new skills helps people stay sharp and may even enhance mental wellbeing. Developing relevant capabilities also improves job prospects in the long-term.
For organizations, it’s essential that employees embrace growth because the majority of companies are facing significant gaps in the capacities their workforce has today, and the talents that are needed for the business to succeed in the future. A focus on learning helps to overcome these challenges and empower individuals and companies to achieve their goals.
Given the time constraints most employees experience, development may sometimes feel like a chore rather than an opportunity. Managers can change attitudes and amplify progress by using simple strategies to help their direct reports become engaged learners.
5 Ways to Inspire Employee Development
1) Reflect on completed projects.
Whether an initiative was a success, a failure or somewhere in between, there are sure to be useful takeaways. After employees finish an important assignment, encourage them to think about two questions:
What did you discover from the experience that you’d like to take with you going forward?
Knowing what you know now, what would you have done differently?
Supervisors may use the prompts in one-on-one meetings or an email to reinforce knowledge gained from the project. The reflection encourages staff to identify positive elements to inform their work in the future as well as determine deltas to improve on.
2) Encourage ownership.
To engage team members in their education, give them a stake in the process. Partner with direct reports to collaboratively identify learning targets and new capabilities that they want to build. Work together to define the timelines to expand their expertise.
As members of the workforce design their training plans, make sure to support people in the way they want to be encouraged. Some employees may want to do their own research while others may be interested partnering with their managers to brainstorm options. By asking staff what help they need, supervisors support the process while still giving individuals the latitude to own their learning.
3) Share discoveries.
A great way to reinforce development is by having staff teach others whatever it is they are studying. Apply this concept in regular team meetings by inviting one person to share their new knowledge each time.
The focus could be on anything, as long as it a new learning to the employee. Some sources could include an inspiring article, a work hack as well as a conference or a webinar they attended. Managers and direct reports can integrate these teaching sessions into annual development goals.
4) Encourage holistic thinking.
When kicking off a new project, supervisors can utilize the Emergenetics® Profile to encourage their teams to exercise their brains. Using the Emergenetics template, ask staff to consider the task through the lens of each of the seven Attributes.
Utilizing this strategy, individuals create new neural pathways by reflecting on perspectives that may not come naturally to them, which can inspire a-ha moments and discoveries. Holistic thinking has the added benefit of considering a situation from multiple angles, which typically enhances decision-making and creativity.
5) Promote feedback.
When coworkers give and receive input, it improves creativity, innovation and collaboration. Managers can inspire this habit within their teams or departments by creating space for sharing and promoting a culture where all ideas are valued.
Add a couple of open-ended questions to gatherings and brainstorming sessions, such as:
What could we start doing to improve our outcomes?
How could we refine this concept or approach?
What should we stop doing?
When individuals embrace growth as part of their day-to-day work, it inspires all sorts of possibilities. With five small steps, managers will plant the seed for even greater development that supports their team members and the entire organization.
Find out more about how Emergenetics can enhance training initiatives. Explore our Certification programs or fill out the form below to speak with one of our team members today!
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