They were such voracious learners; I should have guessed something was up. In a recent Leadership Lab I was facilitating, two people, who attended from the same company, were very motivated learners. They asked a lot of great questions, probed with âwhat ifâsâ and even asked questions during breaks about how I constructed several exercises.
When I commented on their eagerness to learn, one of them said, âWe have to present what we learned to the rest of the management team on Friday, so we really want to make sure we are well prepared.â Aha! What a smart idea.
They went on to explain that everyone who goes to a seminar or conference is required to come back and present what they learned to their peers.
In addition to asking employees to share what they learned with peers, you could ask them to make recommendations about how to apply their learning to their job or to the department. This will make everyone who attends a continuing education event a sponge and it will have the added bonus of creating a healthy dialogue about what they think should be changed.
Here are some additional ideas to help you leverage your development dollar:
- Start a book club. You could run it as a team event, selecting a book and discussing a chapter a week. This would enable you to pick relevant subject matter that applies to your workplace and create a common language about ways to apply what they are reading and learning.
Or, select a handful of books and ask individuals or pairs to select one on which to read and report. This will multiply the number of new ideas the group is exposed to. It also is a good way to develop presentation skills. The presentations could even include handouts with key ideas to discuss.
- Shadow someone in another company. This can be done much like the well known âTake Your Child to Work Day.â You could ask to shadow a colleague in another company, to see how they are running their operation or how they are managing their projects. If your company is implementing something new, sending a few ambassadors to another company that has already implemented it could shave weeks off the learning curve. For instance, a software vendor might be willing to introduce you to one of their clients who are ahead of you on the learning curve. Of course, the people who shadow would be expected to share what theyâve learned.
In another version, you could shadow colleagues within your own company. This could be particularly useful if there are two areas that serve one another or even get into conflicts. Itâs a great way to break down the walls between internal departments.
- To break down silos and generate learning try having employees fill in for one anotherâs departments during vacations. For instance, someone (or a group of people rotate) from the sales department to fill in for someone in customer service. Even a day or two of answering customersâ questions will be an eye opener and create some empathy and understanding about the other end of the sales process.
- Rotating duties in a key job can also be developmental and revealing. For instance, in a local bank, they eliminated the Receptionist position in the main lobby. But the customers didnât know where to go for special services and ended up standing in line to ask a teller. The staffâs solution was to have everyone rotate as a Greeterâincluding the executives. It puts everyone in touch with the customers as well as demonstrating the importance of personal service, which is the bankâs mission.
- Another way to cross-pollinate ideas and develop people is to rotate someone to a different department or facility, to help with a project. A client I work with has done this very successfully, by assigning talented employees, who have been trained in process improvement, to different departments to work on targeted problems.
- Conduct a Project Debriefing Session, after large projects. Too often, groups chase after the next project without reflecting on the lessons they learned on the last one. The ground rules of a Debriefing Session should include âleave your rank at the doorâ and have an honest airing of what went right and what went wrong and lessons learned.
These ideas can help you develop your employees, inject new motivation and break down barriers. Whatâs keeping you from getting started?
