Experimenting with learning – thinking, doing and leading differently
Claire Hewitt looks at how experimenting in management education creates safe learning communities.
The turmoil of the last few years has provided a catalyst for thinking, doing, leading and learning differently. Business leaders and executive learners are still reeling from the pandemic and unpicking what it means for the way they work. Organisations across all sectors have experienced a seismic shift.
Added to this, the 4th industrial revolution has created endless data and noise, causing distraction and disconnection in workplaces. The psychological and physical spectrum has moved, and in many instances, people have gone from stretched to stressed. Workers have become intellectually and emotionally exhausted.
When people come to us for executive learning, this is the headspace we often find them in. As a result, the rules of learning have been broken.
One thing above all has emerged: the need for psychological safety. We’re all seeking a diversity of opinion, experience and ideas, but these can only be effectively heard and acted upon in a safe and trusting environment. As leaders cultivate this space for their staff, organisations need to cultivate that space for their learning.
To create these environments, at Henley, sacred cows went out of the window. We believe that learners need to be seen much more holistically, with their humanness at the fore. They need to be seen for their diverse portfolio of skills, values, experiences and attitudes, which demands a far more democratic and human-centric approach.
To build non-hierarchical learning communities, our learning cohorts no longer need to comprise people of similar status in the hierarchy. It is no longer a prerequisite to design the entire learning journey upfront so you know exactly what you are going to do. The learning must no longer rigidly revolve around a leadership competency framework.
It is less about diversity of profile – religious belief, sexual orientation, ethnicity and so on, but about diversity of thinking. Learning more than ever needs to engender the skills of asking better questions and listening with more open attention to what is being said. This feeds the ability to problem-solve, and to take different and more informed and creative approaches to decision-making.