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Community, Culture and the future of your business
Community, culture and the future of your business
No matter how much experience or talent any of us may have, there is always benefit to learning (in the workplace and outside of it!) Sharing our learning with others is one of the best ways to build a culture of learning in our teams.
Whether it’s to build on the skills we have, to gain new skills, or understand new tools that help in how we work, embracing learning as part of our lives is the best way to expand our potential, and to experience the most we possibly can. More importantly, a business leader who embraces learning as a core part of their organisational culture will always see better results in their business.
‘Learning at Work Week’ is a Campaign for Learning event created with the aim ‘to build learning cultures at work’. For 2025 their key theme is ‘Get Connected’ – which, combined with the theme of this year’s Mental Health Awareness Week, ‘Community’, gives us the opportunity to have a very important conversation.
In any industry, and every organisation, the mental and emotional wellbeing of your people is intrinsically linked to their access to professional development. Having the support and encouragement of your Leaders and Managers, the guidance, mentoring and freedom to learn at work, in an environment where that learning is actively encouraged, gives your people the best possible resource for long term success – which benefits the business too!
As L&D providers we are, of course, passionate about learning in the workplace – because we know how much difference it makes to people’s wellbeing, as well as their careers. We know that our programmes help our clients, from a ‘business success’ perspective, but it’s important to remember that the most important part of your business, of your success, and of every single programme we design, is people.
It’s your people who bring you success. Your people who grow your business. Your people, and how they work together, support each other, share their skills, and collaborate. It’s easy to forget that a business is more than one homogenous entity; every team, every organisation, is a community – and every decision your leadership make should have that community in mind. If yours is one where people feel connected to their colleagues, where that connection is nurtured and important, and where each person within it feels safe and supported by their peers and leaders, you will always see better outcomes, better performance, and greater success.
Our Leadership Development programmes don’t focus on how to make the people you lead do more work or hit higher targets. We focus on helping the people you lead – to achieve their individual potential, and the personal or professional goals that drive them.
It might seem like pernickety semantics – but that’s the part that matters most...
Leading well is for your people, not at them!
Nurture your community
‘Leadership’ is a very wide category to define, leadership development even more so. Not only in the scale of who and what you’re leading – the size of the team, of the organisation, of the workload and client base – but also in the infinite scope of how and why we lead.
Every job, whether you’re at the top of the ladder or taking your first career step, comes with learning or training. It might be a CRM system, a till or point of sale, the how and where of specific tasks. It could be specific, ordered processes, or general advice on how to interact with your colleagues. Some of this learning is formal – every organisation should have some kind of induction process, and the administrative processes that go with it. Some of the learning is more organic or informal – experienced team members passing on advice, letting you know which managers are easy to get along with and which to avoid, how to work the coffee machine, why the lift on the left should be avoided…either way, every aspect of our working life comes with learning, and most of us will be working for decades, so it should be important to get that learning right.
When you accept that all jobs come with learning you also have to consider that how we engage with learning matters too; people all learn in different ways, so the way formal training has been designed and presented in your organisation isn’t always going to work for every new employee. Some will read the induction paperwork and understand it right away, others do better when they’re shown by another person – and we’ve all known at least one colleague who seemed only to learn by doing something wrong first, getting to ‘how to do it’ via a few ‘how not to do it’ diversions!
Leaders and managers –the good ones, anyway – should support the people they lead, and support their learning, if they want everybody to perform at their best. Encouraging, celebrating and guiding their development gives your people the confidence to try new things, in a safe environment that will see any ‘failures’ as a learning opportunity, rather than putting a target on their back.
Embedding this kind of culture in your organisation’s community means your people feel safe – and that safety allows everyone to stretch their capabilities. To explore opportunities that not only take them further in their own career, but also benefit the team they are part of, the way that team functions with other parts of the organisation, and – as a result – the whole business.
Learning at Work Week has seen a huge number of businesses – and business leaders – share content, discuss the importance of L&D, or to give their people access to some training, but once all that noise settles down a lot of those businesses will move on, satisfied that they’ve done their bit. This article isn’t coming at the end of the week because we missed the boat, or are trying to catch up on a trending topic – we consciously wanted to close the week with a reminder that you should always focus on development, on the people in your team, and what they might need from you. This campaign meant a lot of businesses wanted to look like they cared about training and developing their people – but once the hashtag stops trending they’ll move on, and all that enthusiasm for L&D will drift…and their people will lose momentum too!
L&D – or any kind of growth or development – isn’t something you do once a year, to tick a box or show your face in a trend. It’s constant – professionally and in our personal lives. Professional development should be available to all your people, at any point in their career, and with the full support of your Leadership team. Every business leader should want to help their people grow, and to expand their skills in whatever way suits not only what they learn, but how they learn.
It’s only by accepting that we can all benefit from learning and improving that we do learn and improve.
We’ll also see content from all kinds of sources this week about mental health awareness, and a lot of organisations will have some kind of event or activity at work that show their people’s wellbeing matters to them – but just as with learning at work week, a lot will go ‘back to normal’ afterwards, satisfied that they’ve ticked that box. Wellbeing at work – and the psychological safety of people in your workplace community – is something that can’t be put aside after an awareness day (or week) is over.
Your people deserve to work in a culture that always considers their needs. Where they are safe, supported and understood. Where their ambitions, goals, achievements and development are always important. Where successes are celebrated, and mistakes are handled with compassion, so they can learn how to avoid repeating them, rather than hide them. Where their future, and the tools, training and development that help them to get there, are a fundamental part of the organisation.
If you want to explore new ways to learn, and give your people the very best opportunities to thrive in an organisation that’s always improving, we can help.
Get in touch to speak to one of the ASK team about your learning needs, or click the image to browse our brochures.