Foster A Learning Culture
Welcome to June!
Since January, I have elaborated on each of the “Six Tips to Elevate Your Leadership & Retain Talent”, a free resource you can download from our home page.
In May I shared tips on how to “Motivate and Inspire Your Team”. It’s hard to believe we are exploring our sixth and final tip.
We’ve all heard one of the greatest challenges for CEOs and what keeps them up at night is managing human capital, which includes attracting, developing, and retaining talent.
A 2023 report by Gallup revealed that 59% of employees surveyed were “quiet quitting” and 41% of these “quiet quitters” cited they’d like to change engagement and culture to make their workplace better. To address this, the great news is the last two months I shared guidance on how leaders can nurture inclusion and belonging and motivate and inspire their team.
I will continue sharing guidance to help you improve your employee experience and culture as we explore how to “Foster a Learning Culture” this month.
1. Attract And Retain Agile Learners Who Demonstrate A Growth Mindset
Many employers prioritize learning agility, the ability to continually grow from experiences and adapt to new situations because it demonstrates a commitment to innovation and the capability to work as part of a team.
Three fundamental building blocks for learning agility are:
Navigating newness
Understanding others
Self-awareness
This is a much sought-after skill, and coupled with a growth mindset, creates a flexible and resilient workforce where talents can be successfully transferred across the organization.
So, where to begin? Emphasize learning agility when attracting talent. Incorporate behavioral questions that ask candidates to share when they learned from a mistake, how they overcame a challenge, or when they worked under uncertain circumstances.
To help retain talent, empower your team members and give them space and autonomy to make decisions. Delegate more challenging work or offer stretch assignments to those demonstrating higher performance. Lastly, provide clear, timely feedback to help develop their strengths and address their weaknesses.
2. Model Psychological Safety With Transparency, Vulnerability, And Honesty
Psychological safety is the number one requirement for high performing teams. Without it, members of a team will not be able to realize their full potential and teams will not achieve high performance.
Amy Edmondson, who coined the term psychological safety, shared the best lessons are learned from the biggest mistakes and the most powerful words leaders can say is “I need your help”. Showing our human side by acknowledging our mistakes and admitting we are not perfect creates a healthy work environment where others don’t feel judged or shamed for making mistakes and instead use the mistakes as a learning opportunity.
As leaders, it is important to model transparency, honesty, curiosity, vulnerability, and empathy. Being accessible and approachable, and explicitly inviting input and feedback demonstrates that we value our team members and their perspectives.
Psychological safety is vital to realizing the benefits of diversity because it makes inclusion a reality and it is inclusion, not just diversity, that creates collaboration within teams.
3. Effectively Communicate And Provide Clear, Timely Feedback
Performance management is a continuous process and should not be managed at a point in time for it to be fully effective. Four key points to remember:
Create open, two way dialogue
Reduce the subjectivity
Provide constant feedback, especially if your team member is not performing well
Balance evaluation and development
On the last point, be clear on the purpose of performance vs development discussions and separate these discussions when providing critical feedback to prevent your team members from shutting down as you are discussing their development.
Regarding critical feedback, don’t wait, focus on a few key behaviors and not on personality, be specific, confirm understanding, and follow up with positive reinforcement when they are demonstrating the desired changes. It is also important to recognize your team member’s specific accomplishments often so they feel valued and know what to do more of going forward.
Effective performance management increases motivation and engagement, enhances learning and development, provides insight into team members’ competencies, clarifies organizational goals, and aligns strategy and talent.
4. Provide Tools, Resources, And Training With The Time And Space For Growth
High performing organizations begin the onboarding process prior to day one for new employees and continue the onboarding experience beyond that first day so new employees feel connected and engaged. Otherwise, the less connected a new employee feels, the more disengaged they feel, as noted by a Deloitte study that cited 22% of turnover happens in the first 45 days. This includes ensuring new employees have the tools, resources, training, and time necessary to set them up for success in there new role.
Remember, onboarding is the first impression to employee experience. It shouldn’t stop there, however.
Training is key to ensuring team members are prepared for their roles as their roles evolve, and that they feel supported, valued, and capable. Training can have a direct impact on employee engagement and retention. Engaged employees want to grow and be challenged, and they are seeking to further their careers. When your organization is known for robust training and development, your organization will benefit from attracting talent, which is a huge competitive advantage in today’s marketplace.
Now what?
In this newsletter we discussed how to improve your employee experience and culture by:
Attracting and retaining agile learners who demonstrate a growth mindset
Modeling psychological safety with transparency, vulnerability, and honesty
Effectively communicating and providing clear, timely feedback
Providing tools, resources, and training with the time and space for growth.
This is my last of the “ Six Tips to Elevate Your Leadership & Retain Talent”. The great news is you can reference all of my newsletters on our Culture Corner page. Until then, be well and keep shining!
We at Cultivate and Thrive help women leaders by providing guidance on strategy and culture so that they gain clarity, work smarter, improve experience, and optimize their organization’s performance. Book a call so we can learn more about you and how we can elevate your organizational culture and performance.
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