Your personal development coach

Launch the Team on a Learning Trajectory

When a team you are leading or participating in is forming, make learning as well as performance an over-arching goal. The temptation in performance teams is to focus on the work, the results, the efficiencies. Of course, these are important goals at work and in other project teams.

But without a parallel learning orientation there are frequent negative effects of a performance-only focus (e.g., reluctance to admit problems and failure, win-lose competition on the team and unwillingness to share information or credit.) Add a mutual and team development focus to offset these negative effects and help grow the team and its members.

Here are steps to add to the normal performance and goal setting agenda in your first meeting. Taking these steps will contribute to a more trusting, engaging, and mutual learning environment than if you just focus on “what we will achieve” in performance.

Before your team formally launches, use the SMART Learning 4.0 Framework to help raise the team’s learning awareness – and to set the stage for better team learning as you proceed with your work.

  • Introduce the idea that this team is both a performance and learning team
  • Ask everyone to complete the SMART Learning Team Assessment (in Tools)
  • Share and discuss the assessments and identify insights and the implications for this team

Why is the team’s project important? What is driving the need for it?

  • Ask: Why is this team forming?
  • Ask: Where are the calls to action coming from (inside, outside, the future, the past, an opportunity or curiosity)

A collective Future Card (in Tools) will help create a shared sense of what the team wants to create – a “high performance, high learning” vision.

  • What will success look and feel like – for the organization, the team, individuals?
  • Where are we today
  • What will it look like if each member is openly learning while the team performs?
  • Draw what your ideal team looks like on a flip chart or smartboard. This will engage more of the energy and brainpower of the team. It will help set a conscious agenda for a high performing and learning team. AND, it will program your unconscious to be alert to learning opportunities and priorities.

Ask team members to describe:

  • The motivated capabilities they bring to the team – the capabilities they have and want to use
  • What is calling them to the project?
  • What they hope to learn and help others learn: knowledge and skills, attitudes and beliefs, areas for creative insights
  • What support they want from team members

Take actions in meetings and other peer interactions that evoke learning.

  • Take time to explore alternatives, opinions, “what ifs,” what am I/are we learning? That is, more deeply mine the expertise in the group. Don’t let meetings just be “report outs.”
  • Add a team and individual learning update to key status-check meetings.
  • Check in with the team and individual members regarding the progress toward the high performance/high learning future vision – and update it if necessary.