Each Sunday our goal is to share a piece of gold with you. Some small piece of information that helps you to have a better week and achieve a better outcome.  

Part of a good culture is helping your team to always be learning. Good people want to be challenged and exposed to new things. However, we also must recognize that different people learn in different ways. Often, the reason that people are in their role is because of their personality, which contributes directly to how they learn.  

It has been a big challenge for us over the years to find the right way to get people engaged and excited to go through the training we need them to have, while also, and just as importantly, creating the space where they can learn and grow in the areas that are important to their personal life goals.  

Getting this right requires real conversations between the individual and the leader charged with their success. These conversations must focus on what the organization needs the person to learn, but also what builds enthusiasm for the individual.  

What comes from these conversations may be a bit of a surprise. Sometimes we find that people want to learn new skills and capabilities that are not associated with their direct role. Other times, their role and desired skills align very well.  

Either way it is important to embrace the goals on both sides and create a plan for achieving them.  

In order to retain good people, we must find ways to facilitate positive training experiences so that you can keep your team engaged and excited about the future. Some ideas that have proven successful for us are: 

  • Designating someone as a system owner for a new application to be introduced to the organization.  
  • Putting someone in charge of a process that needs improvement where there is a bottleneck.  
  • Designating a project for people to lead within their department or team.  
  • Putting someone in charge of an event (internally or externally) or a specific function within that event.  

For many in our organization, we’ve recently introduced a leadership training platform called Wildsparq. It is a program that focuses on different aspects of leadership such as giving good feedback, understanding how your coworkers communicate, and more. After completing the lesson each month, each participant is grouped randomly with several others in the organization who then come together and discuss the topics and takeaways from each lesson. This creates awesome conversations and accountability to the training as well as inter-department team building and unity. I highly recommend this type of approach.  

We must also share our lessons and learnings as leaders. It is important for everyone in the organization to realize that it’s okay to not know it all. This mentality creates a safe space for people to say, “I don’t know, but I’ll find out.” Which is way better than a BS answer.  

No matter what you do, make sure your team is in the mode of ABL (Always Be Learning). Leveling up individually adds up to a sum of success.  

The goal of AoD is to build better leaders who run better companies and change the world. Better leaders aren’t limited to the office, but at home too. If you’d like a copy of our Perfect Week Template, purchase your copy of Adapt or Die here and then go to adaptordie.com/assets to get started. I hope you enjoy it and figure out your perfect week! Don’t forget to include some ABL opportunities in it.