Are you growing together as a team?
When I was a child, I spent a lot of time reading, learning loads of different things, trying to know everything. Needless to say, I was quite introverted and in my own world which was not a bad place to be to be honest 🙂. And then, as part of growing up and as part of being exposed to socialising more and more, the following realisation hit me one day as I was passing by my school when I was probably around 14 years old: “Well, I can certainly learn a lot but it is impossible to learn absolutely everything. I learn so much from people as well and they can learn so much from me!”
I guess this is one of the things I really love about working with/in a team: that we can all learn and grow together. We will be great in different things and we can really leverage on each other to contribute to our common team goal.
How often do we do it in the workplace though? Is it something that is part of the organisational culture?
If you are lucky to work in a company who looks after their employees, you may have some programs that develop particular skills and/or a nice L&D department who has developed different learning journeys for their employees: e.g. depending on their role.
What if deadlines are tight at work though and learning is not a habit in the organisation? Of course, you always learn on the job but if you would like to learn a new skill or if your team needs to become better at something in particular, what then? Do you just give up?
Of course, not. I am a true believer that if you wish to keep growing and keep learning, the first step is to model that behaviour and inspire others to learn with you.
Traditionally, people look at learning by going into a training program or a course, ideally get a beautiful certificate and then, what? Without a doubt this was useful to you and your team and by all means, keep going on training but was your learning embodied? Did you actually develop a new skill?
There are so many alternatives for learning apart from going on training: reading books, participating in a mentorship program, visiting other teams and exchanging practices, having a community of practice on a particular set of topics, coaching, doing an online research, shadowing someone, pairing with someone, going to free webinars, adding people to your professional network and reading what their posts and articles, you name it. Think about this next time you think about learning a new skill. Most of them are pretty low cost.
What is particularly motivating is having learning buddies just because when you learn a new skill, it is so much easier and supportive if someone is also going through the same thing. It is fun and also, you can give each other feedback and celebrate the learnings together.
For me the ideal way is that all the team is learning buddies for each other. After all, they are already naturally bonded by their common team goal. Maybe that goal will require particular skills. So, here is what I will advise you to do as a team to grow together on regular basis:
Pick up one critical skill for your team and discuss openly where the different team members are at
Set yourself individual and team goal on where you would like to be as a team in 3 months from now
Discuss what will you need to do to get there
Plan it in a realistic way
Follow it
Celebrate the team's growth!
Yes, it is that simple! The cherry on the cake is that this strengthens the team collaboration as well so much. Try it out and if you need a hang, you know where to find me.
Wishing you a week full of learning and growth!
