Using the lessons from the applied learning cycle to increase agility

One of the biggest challenges that I am currently experiencing is that companies are stuck with leaders who are so used to one way of doing things that they cannot cope with the current demands of a disrupted market.

How do you challenge thoughts and business habits that are not part of your DNA? Any person doing their National Service will tell you that they are taught to react in a specific way whether the situation is calm or disrupted. Whether they have time to think something through or whether they have to act in the moment. While this is good for a soldier or a policeman where the law is clear on how you should act, business leaders have a wider ambit to govern their thoughts and they have a lot more leeway to challenge their pre-conceived ideas and thought patterns. Yet, many are struggling with this. The importance to embrace agility cannot be understated.

So what is the solution? I recently read an article on the Forbes website which points out that you can use the model of the applied learning cycle to increase agility.

Goal

The article points out that a goal is any desired behaviour change, perspective, or approach that wouldn’t otherwise happen without direct focus, commitment, and plan. Leaders set goals when they need to do something that hasn’t happened yet and isn’t likely to happen on its own. Establishing an effective development goal provides the benefits of clarity, focus, and accountability. A meaningful goal is a magnet for maximizing one’s effort to achieve an intended behaviour change.

Below are some guidelines to help leaders move from learning from their experiences to establishing new habits and behaviours that enable them to grow and evolve.

Define One Achievable Goal At A Time: The article adds that too many goals will ensure you will lose focus and not succeed at accomplishing the desired behaviour change.

Plan For Obstacles: You should define what obstacles will get in the way of your success in achieving your new development goal and what actions you will take to mitigate those obstacles.

Accountability Appointment: the article points out that the American Society of Training and Development studied accountability and found that you have a 95% chance of completing a goal; if you set up an accountability appointment with someone.

Practice

Setting goals is easy; achieving them is hard. Practice is required!

The Forbes article points out that you should think of a time in your professional life when you learned an important lesson that positively impacted you to become a more successful leader. Now consider where and how you discovered this valuable lesson. As adults, our most important lessons are not acquired through participation in a training program; our most impactful lessons, growth, and learning come to us through experience.

The popular 70/20/10 model many organizations use to develop talent demonstrates this concept. This model is a general framework stating that leaders obtain 70% of their knowledge from job-related experiences, 20% from interactions with others, and 10% from formal educational events. Practice is a critical component of learning new habits and behaviours.

Feedback

When leaders actively seek honest feedback, they create a vulnerability and authenticity that demonstrates that everyone is a work in progress. This example helps to establish a culture where continuous improvement is encouraged and expected from all employees (Growth Mindset).

The Forbes article adds that honest feedback helps leaders address blind spots and evolve their leadership behaviours to achieve their goals. Sharing feedback with a leader is often risky. The practices below will help leaders minimize potential threats while encouraging others to provide honest feedback.

Be Specific with Feedback Requests: If a leader asks general questions like “What can I do better?” it makes it difficult for the employee to understand what type of feedback is “okay” to provide. A more specific feedback request would be, “I am working on improving how I lead our team meetings. What am I doing that is getting in the way of our meetings being more collaborative?”.

Ask for Feedback Often: As this becomes part of a leader’s routine, people begin to feel safe about providing upward feedback.

Avoid Defensiveness:  If a leader is perceived as being defensive, they are making a statement to others that it isn’t safe to provide, nor do they value constructive feedback.

Reflect

The article points out that we do not learn from experience, we learn from reflection on experience. – John Dewey, Educational Reformer

Reflection is a humbling yet powerful tool that helps leaders improve their performance. But it is not easy, as it makes leaders look honestly at themselves, their strengths, weaknesses, and areas that require improvement. When reflecting, a leader considers an experience and tries to understand it. This reflection often leads to insights, learning, and ideas to test with future experiences.

Research shows that a regular practice of reflection increases a leader’s capacity to demonstrate emotional intelligence, social skills, and learning agility. Rolfe et al.’s (2001) reflective model is probably one of the simplest reflective models because it centres around asking three simple questions: What? So what? Now what? This practical approach provides a framework to assess experience, make meaning of the experience, and decide what the experience means for future action.

In conclusion

The article adds that leaders must recognize that they are often the last person to know when their behaviours and actions are causing issues that negatively impact their team’s motivation and performance.

The Applied Learning Cycle provides a roadmap for how leaders can continually adapt, grow, and evolve. It captures the power of setting goals, practice, feedback, and reflection to accelerate a leader’s learning agility.

Robin Nicholson is the Director of Corporate-911 and is a Senior Business Rescue Practitioner.