ROLE MODELING

Primarily, a commitment to and belief in learning is essential. Grounded by this belief, there are a few enablers to cultivate a learning climate: 

Curiosity and reflection 

Curiosity and reflection help you to continuously inquire and learn. Learning is life-long and life-wide. Learning happens at all life stages of development. Learning happens everywhere. 

Pause for a while and think back on success or failures. What have you done that made it a success? What could you have done differently to prevent from failure? What will you do again or do differently next time? 

Take on a challenge 

“Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new” – Albert Einstein 

A fast way to learn is to take on a challenge and learn from it — it will help you to find effective ways to improve, to be resilient and to make progress. 

Tolerance for failure and vulnerability 

Perceiving errors, mistakes and failures as learning opportunities is essential to learn. It is for a reason that there are so many quotes about learning from failure. 

Here is just a selection: 

• Failure is success if we learn from it.
  – Malcolm Forbes 
• Failure is not a crime. Failure to learn from failure is.
  – Walter Wriston 
• I can accept failure; everyone fails at something. But I cannot accept not trying.
  – Michael Jordan 
• The one who fails and gets up is stronger than the one who never tried. Do not fear failure but fear not trying.
  – Paulo Coelho 

And still, in many work environments, people try to avoid making mistakes by being risk averse. And when mistakes are made, there is often a search for the one who has caused the mistake instead of a search for the root cause and the learn. In these types of organizations, people will indeed learn less and realize less. 

In other organizations, the fear of making mistakes is fed by the assumption that failure is not tolerated. People fear making mistakes based on the assumption, but the assumption itself is not always based on reality. There is a lot of “hearsay” but when you ask for concrete examples there are no or little cases where people were indeed impacted in their job or career for making a mistake. 

We call this assumption a limiting belief. If this assumption is alive in your organization, we challenge you to find the examples of people who were impacted in their job or career for making a mistake. 

Successfully creating a positive learning climate is dependent upon the willingness to take risks and the attitude of perceiving failures as learns. This is as much true for your own failures as for your response to other people’s failures.  

Use of feedback 

Giving and receiving feedback is crucial for learning. Feedback can make you aware of your blind spots or might push you to no longer ignore a development opportunity. Feedback helps you to better reflect on past experiences and to learn from them. 

Determination 

A key aspect to learning is to understand that abilities can be developed through effort and practice, even when it is hard. But be aware it is not just about effort. You also need to learn skills that let you use your brain in a smarter way to get better at something. 

Encouragement 

Encouragement comes after role modeling. In fact, it is encouraging the team on the same enablers. Encourage the team to be curious and reflect, take on a challenge, be tolerant for failure and vulnerability, provide and ask for feedback and be determined.