Encourage a learning Culture!
In our ever changing surroundings, with increasing advancements, evolving technologies and knowledge…lifelong learning should be much needed personal and professional development goal.
Since we are always moving forward, in order to make that developmental growth, constant learning is essential.
There are strategies to make learning a habit. It must be thoughtful and deliberate every day:
- Read an article everyday: Sign up for blog updates and newsletters from experts you want to learn from. Set a time each day for learning.
- Sign up for classes regularly: A fun thing to do is to make learning a social activity. Try taking classes with friends or you will meet new friends in a session. Another way to make undertaking a course super easy is to sign up for an online program.
- Schedule your learning: If it’s not scheduled, it’s not going to happen. If it’s not happening regularly, then it’s not a habit. You can’t learn something new all at once, you’ll most likely get burned out.
Learning is one way to provide encouragement in the workplace. In the office it is important to inspire all staff and co-workers in all ways possible as it can create an enormous impression and powerful influence on everyone.
As the leader you should talk about the importance of learning, but not in such a way that smothers your staff. It might never become a part of the organization’s structure, but encouragement does need to be on a consistent basis. This could in effect make learning an aspiration of everyone in the organization.
How do we as managers find the inspiration, to encourage employees to make learning a part of their daily habit?
- Go mobile: To make learning opportunities easily available, the opportunities must be brought to where the students are…which in today’s environment means anyplace and anytime. Mobile devices is the one everyone carries with them during the day.
- Subject matter: People will instinctively tune out when the content no longer matches their needs or interests.
- Make content interesting: Providing some diversity makes learning less monotonous and more interesting for the learner. You could use videos, podcasts, quizzes, images, gifs, animations, flashcards, articles etc.
- Small doses: An average day can be very busy and most of us can’t really afford to spare much time for a study session, we can probably find at least 3 minutes of free time. Keep the learning experience short (3-7 minutes), and streamlined to make it easy for people to absorb information.
- Make it a contest: You could provide short quizzes for people to complete to improve their knowledge in a certain topic…small wins that they can celebrate on a regular basis. This could provide the confidence boost that could motivate your employees to explore even more topics or learn a topic deeper, which serves to strengthen this cycle of learning.
With employers needing people who have current skills and knowledge, and are willing to proactively update their expertise to meet the ever-changing needs of the organization. Learning is relevant more than ever in our workforce.
Lifetime learning entails a change in attitude and goes hand in hand with accountability. It is a mindset and a habit for people to acquire.
Being independent and taking the initiative to learn with or without assistance is the goal.
Taking it slowly little by little will make anyone an expert, in any subject before they know it.
One day someone will ask you a question about one of your passions and you’ll amaze them and yourself with how much you know with such little effort!
Would you like to see your workforce make a habit of learning?
[themecolor]Dave Baney is the founder and CEO of 55 Questions, LLC. We work with successful top executives with a driving ambition to crush their competition. We help CEOs and Entrepreneurs improve alignment, communication and accountability throughout their organization.[/themecolor] www.55Questions.com
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