Author: Pamela Meyer

Spotlight on Leading and Learning with Agility: Abbie More, Product Group Manager, Friesland Campina Ingredients

Pamela Meyer
Spotlight on Leading and Learning with Agility: Abbie More, Product Group Manager, Friesland Campina Ingredients

Abbie More, Product Group Manager, Friesland Campina and Level 3 PSIA Ski Instructor

In Staying in the Game: Leading and Learning with Agility for a Dynamic Future, I share the lessons I learned from some of the world’s most agile leaders across sectors. Based on this work, I introduced a new type of leadership: Embodied Agile Leadership. Embodied Agile Leaders (EALs) embody the values and practices of agile leadership and are attuned to their bodies and environment as a source of agile learning feedback, energy, and resiliency.

In this month’s spotlight, I shine a light on Abbie More, a leader in another dynamic industry that depends on Embodied Agile Leaders at all levels to adapt and innovate in response to constant change. I also draw from a few brief excerpts from Staying in the Game while sharing some of Abbie’s inspiring, actionable insights. I’ve been lucky to learn from Abbie’s wisdom on and off the mountain over the last several years. Through countless conversations on chairlifts and après ski beverages, training camp meetings, and Zoom calls, we have explored how the mountain is sometimes more than just a metaphor for the unpredictable terrain in business.

To be effective in an ever-changing landscape and ready for a dynamic future, EALs have learned to shift from planning to preparing.

As Product Group Manager at Netherlands-based FrieslandCampina Ingredients, Abbie More has made this shift throughout her career. In addition to leading a cross-functional team of scientists and product specialists in an ever-evolving arena, Abbie taps her experience moving through to the highest ranks of professional ski instructing and race coaching. The goal in both, she discovered, is not to ignore or be without fear when the stakes are high. She shared, “I have had several instances in my ski life when I’ve been terrified.”

The key is to realistically assess the barrier and transform it into an opportunity. Abbie had a breakthrough at the top of a particularly challenging run that has guided her success ever since. While trying out for the Development Team of the Professional Ski Instructors of America, the next level for advanced instructors, she shared: “I saw a catwalk, and I thought,

“I could just bail. This is too scary. This is too hard for me. What if I can’t ski? What if I can’t turn my feet? Let me just do that. Let me just take the easy way down, and we’ll forget this ever happened.” Then I said, “Yeah, right, and you look at yourself in the mirror tomorrow morning, and you’ll be really disappointed. Just stop it and do it.” I did, and nothing bad happened to me. I had an awesome run. I felt great about it. I got really good feedback, so I try and remind myself of challenging points like that when something was scary to me. It was a risk. Yeah, I had to put myself out there that day. Seven or eight examiners had their little cards in their hands, and they were watching me and taking notes. They were watching my every move, and I had to challenge myself to make a shift. Your head wants to say, “They’re going to watch for mistakes.” But I was able to turn that around and say, “They’re going to watch for your good movements.”

Assessing the situation through embodied reflection and shifting her mindset has translated into Abbie’s leadership role. For example, when she delivers her quarterly report to the global organization, Abbie reminds herself, “You got this. You know what you’re doing. They’re not looking to you for mistakes. They’re looking to you for information to help the organization. Just drawing from those experiences, turning my mindset around has really, really helped me get through some hard things, some challenging things.”

Abbie More Practices Continuous Improvement on and Off the Mountain

Embodied Awareness and Reflection

For EALs like Abbie, embodied reflection means going beyond cognitive awareness and understanding. It is rooted in attunement to what is happening in the body and discerning the messages found there. For this reason, embodied reflection starts with embodied awareness. With awareness, we can learn and adapt to our current reality, often in the present moment. For example, if you have ever presented in front of a group and become aware of your mouth getting dry, your face flushing, and perhaps speaking so quickly you are running out of breath, you have experienced embodied awareness. With embodied reflection, you might have chosen to pause, catch your breath, and take a sip of water to regroup and reconnect with yourself and your audience. Without embodied awareness or reflection, you might have found yourself ignoring these signals and motoring on, missing the opportunity to make intentional shifts.

Embodied reflection can be especially helpful for EALs who are leading with learning and have an intention or outcome in mind. Intentionality provides a focus so they can translate their embodied reflection into specific action, whether it be going faster, engaging an audience, or improving business results.

Agility and Action Through Embodied Awareness

Abbie’s experience on the mountain and leading her team demonstrates that we don’t need to be hijacked by our nervous system’s well-meaning but clumsy attempts to preserve our safety. With self-awareness, we can recognize the signs of negativity bias and intentionally shift to overcome it. The first step is being mindful of and understanding our embodied experience in high-stress situations or even as we anticipate venturing from the safety of our familiar surroundings for a new challenge or opportunity. Persevering also means not waiting for someone else to inspire or motivate you. Abbie More shared, “In business, you have to take responsibility. If you have a challenge in business, if there’s an account you just can’t get into, take ownership of it. Don’t sit back and say, ‘Well, they won’t take my calls.’ Figure out how to make it happen.”

Embodying an Agile Mindset

Mindset plays a critical role in fostering and inspiring strength and resiliency. Abbie shared how she carries her agile mindset and mental toughness from her regular morning workouts into her workplace for strength and resiliency.

Two of my workouts are circuit classes with ten stations set up, and we do five rounds. It’s 30 seconds of work at each station and 30 seconds of rest. I have a friend who comes to these who’s a retired state trooper. He will typically be at the station right next to me, so either I follow him or he follows me. Besides all the banter back and forth, it’s funny because we’ll get to a station, and maybe there’s a burpee station or another tough station. Whatever the station is, he approaches it like, “Ugh, I gotta go do this one.” I’m like, “Really? That’s my favorite!” I remember one the first times we did this. He’d get to each station and say, “Oh, I have to go to this station.” I was like, “That’s my favorite!” All the way around. Suddenly he looked at me, and says, “I know what you’re doing.” I said, “You have to make each of them your favorite. You have to look at them as, ‘I’m going to have fun here. I have to have fun for only 30 seconds, and I’m going to make the best of it.’” Let’s face it, do you really think burpees are fun? Nobody does, but if you tell yourself, “This is my favorite. I am going to have fun with it,” then you can find something positive about it. It’s the same with work. “Hey, I have a challenging issue ahead of me. It’s stuff I really don’t like dealing with. It’s not sexy. It’s not fun. But it’s necessary. I’m going to make it my favorite, too.

Abbie describes the kind of intentional mindset shifting as the hallmark of EALs who can stay strong and resilient. Rather than give in to the first impulse to resist tough challenges or simply “get through them,” EALs actively choose a positive mindset and find the opportunity within them. By doing so, they find and create energy rather than become unnecessarily depleted. This is why people love working with (and working out next to) EALs! And who knows, maybe you will learn to love the burpees in your day, too.

The Value of Holding Your Goals Lightly

I recently caught up with Abbie on the slopes of Colorado to hear her latest insights. In our first conversation, she shared lessons she has learned about holding your goals lightly — on and off the mountain:

With an agile mindset and a readiness to adapt to improve results and generate more value, leaders like Abbie More inspire us to lead and learn with agility when conditions change.

READ MORE ways Abbie More and other Embodied Agile Leaders from across industries lead and learn with agility for a dynamic future in Staying in the Game: Leading and Learning with Agility for a Dynamic Future. Now Available on Audible!

Staying in the Game wins 2023 BIBA award!

FOLLOW Pamela on LinkedIn and read the original post here.

Agile Leadership Development in an AI World: Why You Still Need Living, Breathing Learning Professionals

Pamela Meyer

Or Eight Ways GenAI Can (and Cannot) Enhance Your Leadership Development Strategies 

Generative AI (GenAI) has revolutionized everything from customer service to software development. Referring to platforms, apps, and other new tech that can generate images, text, and even write code, GenAI enables businesses to be nimbler, more responsive, and offer greater customized solutions than ever.

Slowing Down to Go Fast in the World of AI

Before you start downsizing your learning and development team or abandoning your mentoring and coaching programs, this article will help you slow down and assess the value and limitations of GenAI strategies for learning and leadership development.

One of my favorite questions to ask the leaders I have worked with over the last twenty-plus years is, “Think of an experience that changed you in a significant way.”

In response to this prompt, I have heard stories that include a leader who received the challenging feedback they needed to hear from a mentor at just the right time, a leader who gave a stagnating team member a new stretch assignment, a former professor who helped a CEO sort through a complex ethical dilemma, and a friend who was a sounding board in a way that helped her decide in a high-stakes situation with competing priorities.

Other emerging leaders have described being thrown into new situations where they discovered or developed a talent or capability they didn’t know they had or a breakthrough that emerged in a safe yet challenging learning environment. I have also witnessed leaders who were able to rise to the occasion and effectively respond to the unexpected and unplanned by connecting with a critical resource via a trusted partner who generously engaged their network.

These stories of impactful and transformative experiences share a common thread: they were relational, not transactional, just like leadership. Transformation and growth do not happen in a vacuum; they occur over time, through iterations of experimentation and feedback, and in relationship with colleagues, trusted advisors, and within the context and culture of their organizations and wider business ecosystem.

Technology cannot replace the relational interactions at the heart of leadership development and effectiveness.

If you work in learning and leadership development, I don’t have to remind you that:

  • Leadership is Relational, Not Transactional
  • Leadership Development is Iterative and Happens Over Time
  • Leadership Development is Contextual and Cultural

For example, in my work with leaders, we start from the premise that learning about Embodied Agile Leadership (EAL) is not the same as embodying agile leadership. Leadership development requires active engagement in what I call the Three C’s: Competence development, Confidence-building, and the Capacity to perform effectively in a wide range of unexpected and unplanned situations.

In the excitement over GenAI’s capabilities and benefits for learning and leadership development, we mustn’t lose sight of the role and value of human interactions at the heart of leadership growth and development. These same interactions and the trust and understanding they foster are also at the heart of how we make sense of complex situations, get things done, and ultimately generate and deliver value for customers and stakeholders.

Be Responsive, Not Reactive

It’s good news that technology will continue to evolve and become even better at recognizing patterns, analyzing data, and generating content. As learning leaders, we are responsible for evolving with the technology and guiding our colleagues and clients on GenAI’s value and limitations in supporting leadership impact and success.

Rather than react out of our initial excitement or existential fear, we can respond in a way that engages and partners with all available resources to support leaders’ success. With this in mind, here is my high-level overview of some ways learning leaders can tap generative AI and along with insights into ways your role as a living, breathing, relational human being is more important than ever. I began this reflection by asking ChatGPT: How Can Generative AI Enhance Agile Leadership Development?

What follows are eight headlines inspired by the AI-generated list, along with my human-generated response, inspired by several conversations with learning colleagues and clients about the role that learning leaders, including peers, mentors, coaches, and learning and development professionals, can and must play to ensure leadership success, particularly in a fast-paced, uncertain present and for a dynamic future:

Eight Ways Gen AI Can (and Cannot) Enhance Your Leadership Development Strategies

  1. Creation of Personalized Learning Plans
  • GenAI can analyze individual leadership styles, strengths, and areas for improvement based on performance data.
  • It can also generate personalized learning plans that cater to each leader’s specific needs and preferences, ensuring a more targeted and effective development journey.

Living Learning Professionals and Partners: can understand the nuance and complexity of each leader’s role and current context in a way that data analytics simply cannot. Ideally, leaders partner with a coach or mentor who can serve as a sounding board and guide to interpret assessment results and collaborate to refine AI-generated learning plans. This way, the leader has a learning and action plan relevant to their current context and business goals. Additionally, they have a human being with whom they can interact to brainstorm, troubleshoot, and reflect on their progress with accountability. Leaders seeking to develop leadership agility need a trusted partner to help them stretch and adapt as conditions change.

  1. Simulation and Scenario Training
  • Through generative AI, realistic leadership scenarios can be simulated, providing leaders with a safe environment to practice decision-making and problem-solving.
  • Leaders can engage in virtual scenarios that mimic real-world challenges, helping them develop agile thinking and decision-making skills.

Living Learning Professionals and Partners can help refine and maximize the value of scenario-based training, which can be highly effective in assisting leaders in building their confidence in VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous) situations. To make the most of these experiences, leaders can partner with a coach, mentor, or peer to refine their agile leadership development goals before the learning experience. After participating in the scenario, leaders can partner again to reflect on their experience, including what they did well and areas for improvement. Leaving this to AI removes an important aspect of leadership development critical to building competence and confidence. Learning professionals and trusted peers can also help leaders make connections between their scenario-based learning and the high stakes of their current reality, resulting in actionable insights.

  1. Continuous Feedback and Coaching
  • GenAI can offer real-time feedback on leadership behaviors, communication styles, and decision-making processes.
  • Automated coaching systems can provide constructive insights and suggestions for improvement, enabling leaders to iterate and adapt their approach in real time.

Living Learning Professionals and Partners are critical in understanding the complexity of the leaders’ current context and adapting any AI-generated suggestions. A learning partner can also be a sounding board to help leaders prioritize actions that will make the best use of available resources and deliver the greatest value to their stakeholders. Learning leaders can grasp the subtleties of organizational culture, industry-specific challenges, and individual nuances that are challenging for AI to comprehend fully. They can also suggest more learning and development resources based on their in-depth knowledge of the organization and industry. Trust is crucial in leadership development, and the human element plays a significant role in establishing and maintaining it.

Coaches can build this trust with leaders, creating a supportive and confidential space for discussions.

  1. Data-Driven Decision Making
  • GenAI can identify trends, patterns, and correlations related to leadership effectiveness by analyzing large datasets.
  • Leaders can leverage these insights for data-driven decision-making, enhancing their ability to adapt to changing circumstances.

Living Learning Professionals and Partners help leaders make sense of data analytics within the organizational context and culture and can support ethical decision-making. In a fast-paced environment, starting with AI-generated suggestions based on large-scale industry trends or other benchmarks can be helpful. These suggestions, however, are only a starting point. As leaders engage with these suggestions, they must prioritize growth strategies based on their current capacity, available resources, and most pressing goals and accountabilities. In partnership with a peer, mentor, or coach, this process is an opportunity to increase self-awareness and identify biases and blind spots in the decision-making process. Relational decision-making also fosters accountability, the formation of trusting relationships to draw on to make sense of complex situations and competing priorities, and the reduction of uncertainty.

  1. Adaptive Leadership Development Programs
  • GenAI can continuously assess leaders’ progress and adapt the development program based on their evolving needs and the changing business environment.
  • This adaptability ensures that leadership development remains relevant and aligned with the organization’s goals and challenges.

Living Learning Professionals and Partners can help foster the learning agility at the core of sustained leadership agility. GenAI platforms can learn your leaders’ priorities and refine and adapt their suggestions and guidance. However, trusted learning partners with a deep understanding and relational ties across your organization and business ecosystem are best positioned to help leaders identify and engage their networks to identify the stretch opportunities best suited to develop learning agility.

  1. Natural Language Processing for Communication Enhancement
  • GenAI, particularly using natural language processing, can assist leaders in improving their communication skills.
  • It can analyze written and spoken communication, offering suggestions for clearer and more effective messaging and fostering better collaboration within agile teams.

Living Learning Professionals and Partners know that only humans who have lived the experiences and have gained their wisdom through mileage can inspire through authentic personal stories. They are also adept at weaving their unique narratives into one-on-ones and coaching sessions to create genuine connections and foster trust. Situationally, they can also understand and respond to the complexity of human interaction and nuances in tone, body language, and emotion that are essential for effective communication. By incorporating authenticity and personal stories, learning professionals and partners create a safe space for individuals to explore their communication styles, address challenges, and develop strategies for more impactful interactions. This human touch adds another layer of empathy and understanding to foster meaningful communication and build strong, collaborative relationships.

  1. Predictive Analytics for Leadership Success
  • Generative AI can use predictive analytics to identify potential leadership success factors and areas of improvement.
  • AI can analyze historical leadership data and success metrics to provide insights into the traits and behaviors contributing to effective leadership in an agile environment.

Living Learning Professionals and Partners can ensure that AI-generated prescriptive approaches and assessment results are held lightly. The best AI metrics can do is describe various behaviors that correlate with a range of outcomes. It is important to remember that these benchmarks do not necessarily prescribe one-size-fits-all solutions for any single leader or the complexities and competing priorities of their context and accountabilities. For this, leaders need a trusted thinking partner, coach, or mentor who can serve as a sounding board.

  1. Customized Content Creation
  • GenAI can automate and customize the creation of learning materials, generating content such as quizzes, case studies, and simulations.
  • This accelerates the content creation, ensuring a constant supply of fresh and relevant materials.

Living Learning Professionals and Partners understand the difference between providing content that helps leaders learn about something and developing the Competence, Confidence, and Capacity to draw on new learning in high-stakes and complex business environments. To develop these Three C’s, leaders need humans adept at facilitating group discussions, fostering collaboration, and managing group dynamics. Live experts can create a safe and interactive learning environment, encouraging open communication and collaboration among leaders. In addition, agile leadership development often requires real-time adjustments to learning strategies and interventions. Learning professionals can quickly adapt their real-time guidance in response to team dynamics, emerging situations, or learning opportunities. Live facilitators can also key into individual needs to inspire and motivate leaders, fostering a positive mindset and a commitment to continuous improvement. These interactions provide meaningful encouragement through shared stories, personal experiences, and role modeling, which even the most sophisticated AI platform is challenged to replicate authentically.

While AI can enhance many aspects of leadership development, combining AI resources and live learning experts creates a more holistic and effective approach. As you continue to evolve your leadership development strategies, the key is to engage technology for data-driven insights and efficiency while preserving the human touch for the complex interpersonal dynamics and individualized and critical context-specific elements of agile leadership development.

Link to the Original Article on LinkedIn

Spotlight on Leading and Learning with Agility: Chris Mikulski, Head of HR for H&M Americas

Pamela Meyer
Chris Mikulski

Chris Mikulski, Head of HR for H&M Americas

In Staying in the Game: Leading and Learning with Agility for a Dynamic Future, I share the lessons I learned from some of the world’s most agile leaders across sectors. Based on this work, I introduced a new type of leadership, Embodied Agile Leadership. Embodied Agile Leaders (EALs) embody the values and practices of agile leadership and are attuned to their body as a source of agile learning feedback, energy, and resiliency.

In this spotlight, I shine a light on Chris Mikulski, a leader in an industry that depends on Embodied Agile Leaders at all levels to adapt and innovate in response to constant change. I also draw from a few brief excerpts from Staying in the Game while sharing some inspiring, actionable insights.

A key role EALs play in fostering engagement and agility is to create a workplace environment where everyone feels they can bring their whole self to work and are part of something meaningful and bigger than themselves. Belonging is the foundation of high performance.

Creating Space for Belonging

Few people understand the value of creating environments of acceptance and belonging in business more than Chris Mikulski, the Head of H.R. Americas for H&M Clothing. He has spent his entire work life in retail and shared that “some of the best times in my career were working in a store because of the diverse community you

“It’s really about the culture of a great workplace” —Chris Mikulski

become a part of.” When I asked Chris to tell me more about the value of creating such spaces in the rapidly changing and highly competitive fashion business, he shared,

[Community] gets you through the challenges and the hard times. And it impacts our ability to be competitive because we inspire each other to do better. We inspire each other to show up. If there’s a connection at the other end of your decision, I think you’re more likely to make that decision with that connection in mind. So whether it’s your favorite person who is closing the store tonight or somebody who you’ve built a bond with is working…you will be more inclined to make a decision that supports their success and to persevere past doubts or obstacles that we sometimes set for ourselves.

At times when companies have scrambled to fill jobs with talented, engaged people at all levels of the organization, H&M has leaned into its “Be Yourself & More”[1] recruiting and career development initiatives, which are more relevant than ever. Seventy-six percent of job seekers and employees reported that a diverse workforce is an important factor when evaluating companies and job offers.[2] Companies that truly value diversity don’t just stop at the head count; they ensure the heads count. Chris described how important this is to him personally and what it means well beyond “words on paper.”

I think naturally, as humans, we seek a sense of belonging in everything we do, even if it’s subconsciously. And I think [H&M] works really hard to build that for people. And even myself, being a proud gay man, being so accepted for that here is never questioned. I never have to have two different versions of myself. Even as a leader, that has unlocked my potential to a magnitude I could not have imagined. So that’s also why I believe so much in this sense of community, sense of belonging, and safety in those things. Because I’ve experienced it, and now I can use my platform to create that experience for others, whatever their unique self is.

EALs, such as Chris, understand that fostering Community requires consistent attention and participation. The business impact is significant because when people experience a true sense of belonging in which their Meaningful Identities are seen and valued, they tend to want to stick around. However, the dynamic of Community doesn’t happen by chance, as Chris emphasized.

It takes work and an ongoing commitment to that ideal because I think it’s easy to look at the world around you and sometimes feel out of lockstep with it. We feel very proud to be these pioneers. I think that’s why people want to stay. I’ve met many people who have been with H&M 10, 15, 20, even 30 years, and then go outside the United States, and it’s 30 or 40 years with H&M. It’s because they’re celebrated as themselves and they feel like they can really contribute authentically. And that’s an amazing feeling.

Commitment to creating space for belonging by EALs like Chris at companies like H&M is critical as the workforce continues to diversify. Chris shared more about what this looks like in action:

If you have blue hair, we want to know what color blue because we love it. If you choose to express yourself through artistic creations and tattoos on your skin, we love that. Whatever brings you joy, I think we seek to intersect with that, not to challenge it or go against it. We want to learn from each person. And I think that’s really the celebration of the multidimensional beings that we all are.

Actively valuing each other’s presence and participation in Community directly inspires everyone to stay in the game. The promise of engagement aligned with purpose starts during the recruiting process. At H&M, the long-time commitment to sustainable fashion is an essential differentiator for customers and prospective employees alike. Chris shared, “If we can get you on the phone for your first interview, then you usually want to join our company because we are values-driven, taking our responsibilities and commitment to people and planet very seriously, pioneering the future of the fashion industry. These are great things that people want to be a part of.”

Embodying an Agile Mindset

The theme of agility and relevancy echoes across sectors led by EALs. For example, in the fashion industry, success depends on staying relevant to customers’ ever-changing tastes. In practice, this means leading with an agile mindset that, once again, values listening, learning, and adapting over planning and control. Chris shared how he and his team embody an agile mindset, “We never get too comfortable with our strategies. We’re agile and changing all the time, minute to minute. We set off on an idea, we test things, we measure outcomes, and when we see a big opportunity, we shift. We constantly shift.”

Staying relevant to constantly changing conditions and to customer and stakeholder needs is the specialty of EALs. They know that to stay in the game they must keep up with the changing rules, players, and emerging technology and trends.

“It’s really about the culture of a great workplace” —Chris Mikulski

When Chris and I caught up more than a year and a half after our original interview, I was curious to hear what had changed. Since we first spoke, the pandemic was largely in the rearview mirror, the economy was rebounding, and jobs reports were healthy. At the same time, some companies and other institutions that have invested heavily in programs and initiatives that promote a diverse workforce and foster cultures of belonging were experiencing a backlash.

I shared with Chris that as an educator and consultant who moves through many of these organizations and is also LGBTQ, I have felt disheartened and even scared that we may be heading backward after so much progress. I was interested to hear how or if this outside pressure was affecting H&M’s approach to diversity and inclusion. Chris’s response gave me hope and lights a path for other organizations grappling with these issues. He began by telling me that he and his colleagues were paying close attention to what was happening in the external environment and at the same time, that it had not shaken H&M’s commitment to their work because:

The strategic steps we’ve taken these past couple of years specifically have been foundational moves. Our commitment goes beyond a celebration for a holiday or a particular event. It’s been in our culture. So now, when there are things like this happening, there are places for our people to go to discuss them and forums for us to utilize as a company to have discussions around these topics. In addition, we’ve been very overt about proactively sharing messages with our colleagues about what they may be seeing in the market and the media about this. Because we want them to know we’re in it forever, we’re really in it forever.

Chris’s response and the work being done by leaders at all levels of organizations like H&M remind us that, while trends may come and go, investing in an inclusive Community and the agility and resiliency it fosters will always stay in style.

[1] “Explore Careers in Fashion at H&M | H&M Careers United States.” H&M Careers United States, Accessed August 13, 2022, https://career. hm.com/us-en.

[2] “Glassdoor’s Diversity and Inclusion Workplace Survey.” Glassdoor Blog, last modified September 29, 2020, https://www.glassdoor.com/blog/glassdoors-diversity-and-inclusion-workplace-survey/.

Link to the original article on LinkedIn

Staying in the Game book coverREAD MORE ways Chris Mikulski and other Embodied Agile Leaders from across industries lead and learn with agility for a dynamic future in Staying in the Game.

AUTHOR PAMELA MEYER, Ph.D. works with leaders and teams who need to be agile and resilient and want to increase their impact for success.

 

 

 

 

 

Leading and Learning with Agility: Spotlight on Dr. Tiffany Dotson

Pamela Meyer

Headshot of Dr. Tiffany Dotson

In Staying in the Game: Leading and Learning with Agility for a Dynamic Future, I share the lessons I learned from some of the world’s most agile leaders across sectors. Based on this work, I introduced a new type of leadership, Embodied Agile Leadership. Embodied Agile Leaders (EALs) embody the values and practices of agile leadership and are attuned to their body as a source of agile learning feedback, energy, and resiliency.

Dr. Tiffany Dotson is one of the EALs who has inspired me for over a decade. I have seen her up close as she sparked engagement in a small group of learning colleagues at a university-hosted professional development event and ignited innovative strategic approaches to global leadership in Fortune 500 companies.

In this spotlight, I draw from a few brief excerpts from Staying in the Game and share her latest insights to help you prepare to lead and learn with agility in 2024.

I first met the now Dr. Dotson at an event I facilitated for area learning professionals at DePaul University. She somehow made time for new learning and relationship-building while working at a major corporation in Chicago and finishing her doctorate at Columbia University, each more than a full-time endeavor.

Over the next few years, I stayed in touch with Dr. Dotson as she moved into leadership roles at Pfizer, JP Morgan Chase, and Liberty Mutual Insurance, where she is currently the Global Learning Officer. Dr. Dotson was aggressively recruited because of her reputation for developing innovative learning programs that deliver business results. In this role, she oversees learning and development for commercial insurance business acumen, culture transformation, and executive development. Dr. Dotson leads by embodying a relentless commitment to continuous learning.

Leading with Learning Agility

Leading in a large, complex, growing organization requires more than learning; it requires learning agility, or the ability to continuously learn, adapt, and perform effectively in unfamiliar situations. Studying the career arcs of executives across domains, researchers Robert W. Eichinger and Michael M. Lombardo found that learning agility was a better predictor of promotability and success after a promotion than other indicators, including IQ.[1] They found that those without learning agility, up to 70% of even those identified as having high potential, can be successful within their comfort zone but soon derail when thrown into new situations for which they have no prior experience. In contrast, learning agile leaders like Dr. Dotson have developed a Meaningful Identity, a purpose, and values that give their life and work meaning. They are intrinsically motivated to lead with ongoing curiosity, intentional learning, and adaptation.

During her formative years in Chicago, Dr. Dotson shared that she quickly discovered her values and value through experiences and contexts that validated her Meaningful Identity:

I experienced my power in front of a group as early as kindergarten, giving a speech in front of the room and later on in the debate team and cheerleading squad. I loved performing and the positive feedback I received. It felt good. And I had good grades, too. So, I had early evidence of my value.

Many leaders who generously shared their stories and insights with me for Staying in the Game trace their passion and purpose to their formative years. Whether or not they were aware of the impact at the time, as adults, they all embrace their early experiences as an essential part of their leadership narrative. Dr. Dotson’s purpose has been crystal clear ever since she can remember:

It’s been my mission in life: helping people think better to design their own lives as opposed to living by default. When I show up at a meeting and say to my staff, ‘Here’s what I’m learning,’ it puts them at ease and helps them get in the same mindset. Our goal isn’t perfection; it’s continuous learning and growth.

Image of Dr. Tiffany Dotson sitting on a couch wearing a pink jacket

“I’m not done; I’m not done learning. I want to keep getting better!”

Ask “What Are You Learning?”

When I checked in with Dr. Dotson toward the end of 2023, I asked her one of her favorite questions to ask her team, “What are you learning?” I wasn’t surprised that her response once again demonstrated her commitment to continuous learning and growth:

I’ve become fascinated with Adam Grant’s work—especially his idea of re-thinking. For me, it means, “I know what I know, but I’m not married to it.” In practice, I’m becoming much more intentional in my own learning. I’ll gather a team together who I can trust to poke holes in my work. For example, I no longer ask people for their “feedback” because it has such negative associations. I ask them for their insights. I’ve coached my team to the point where this is now the language of our world. My team asks for insights from me and each other and trusts each other to be honest, to hold up the mirror.

Developing a growth culture doesn’t happen overnight. Dr. Dotson shared how she embodies the learning values she espouses:

I have also found that I need to give people permission to tell me the truth. It does mean setting aside the ego. It’s wonderful to hear “you were awesome,” but I need news I can use. Tell me what I can do more of or less of. Give me direct, observable behavior. Even if it’s all positive, make it specific.

Dr. Dotson knows she is having an impact when she sees others sharing her commitment to growth through their behavior, “My boss emailed me recently after I gave a high-profile talk and said, “You were awesome! Call me at 3:30 pm and I’ll tell you specifically what was awesome.”

In increasingly dynamic environments, many leaders at all levels of organizations are developing or demonstrating their ability to lead and learn with agility. They are discovering what Dr. Dotson and other Embodied Agile Leaders have—that modeling continuous learning and improvement instills in their colleagues the confidence to perform at their best in all conditions.

[1] Robert W. Eichinger and Michael V. Lombardo, “Learning Agility as a Prime Indicator of Potential.” Human Resource Planning 27, no. 4 (December 1, 2004): 12, https://www.questia.com/library/journal/1G1-126653494/learning-agility-as-a-prime-indicator-of-potential.

READ MORE ways Dr. Tiffany Dotson and other Embodied Agile Leaders from across industries lead and learn with agility for a dynamic future in Staying in the Game.

Image of book cover for Staying in the Game

Ten ways to Lead and Learn with Agility in 2024

Pamela Meyer

2024 image with fireworks

While 2024 still has that “new car” smell, it’s a great time to get energized for success in a fast-paced and dynamic business landscape. While there is no one-size-fits-all approach for any organization or leadership team, here are ten ideas worth exploring or leaning into to help you and your team members lead and learn with agility throughout the new year:

1. Embrace Continuous Learning

– Foster a culture of continuous learning within your team and organization.

– Encourage employees to seek new knowledge, stay updated on industry trends, and regularly engage in professional development opportunities. Create regular forums and spaces for colleagues to share their lessons learned, new insights, and resources.

2. Cultivate a Growth Mindset

– Foster an agile growth mindset among team members by modeling and reinforcing the value of reflecting on and learning from experience.

– Demonstrate a positive attitude toward experimentation and improvement.

3. Promote Cross-Functional Collaboration

– Encourage collaboration and knowledge-sharing between leaders and across different departments, functional areas, and teams.

– Foster a multidisciplinary approach to issue and opportunity-framing, leveraging diverse skills and perspectives.

4. Adopt or Learn the Best Practices of Agile Frameworks

– You don’t have to formally adopt agile methodologies to benefit from some of their best practices in your leadership approach and organizational processes.

– Learn how to use iterative and flexible methods to adapt to changing circumstances and priorities quickly.

5. Build Adaptive Leadership Skills

– Develop leadership skills adaptable to various situations, challenges, and opportunities.

– Focus on honing skills like emotional intelligence, critical thinking, and effective communication and collaboration in dynamic environments.

6. Leverage Technology for Learning

– Discover how emerging technologies like AI, VR, and AR can enhance learning experiences.

– Utilize online platforms and other tech-driven resources for efficient and interactive learning.

7. Encourage Experimentation

– Create a safe environment for experimentation and innovation.

– Support and celebrate initiatives that involve trying new approaches, even with the risk of failure.

8. Enable Flexible Work

– Align your team’s way of working with the value they deliver to your stakeholders rather than a ridged time and place for how work gets done. This may mean establishing parameters for remote work, flexible schedules, and leveraging technology to support effective communication and collaboration.

– Recognize the importance of work-life balance and integration in fostering agility.

9. Prioritize Well-being

– Recognize and prioritize the well-being of your team members. Check-in regularly to gauge engagement, satisfaction, and workload manageability.

– Provide resources and support for mental health and create a work environment that promotes a healthy work-life balance.

10. Use Data and Other Success Indicators for Informed Decision-Making

– Embrace data-driven decision-making processes. Be sure to include qualitative indicators when relevant.

– Leverage analytics and insights to inform your leadership decisions and adapt strategies based on real-time data.

 to tell us about your 2024 agile leadership development goals and learn how we can help you reach them.

Or get started on developing your leadership agility today and:

We look forward to supporting your agile leadership and team success in the coming year!

 

Finding Our Stories and Rediscovering our Meaningful Identity

Pamela Meyer

This is Mostly a Personal Reflection on Recent Travels

However, in my new book, Staying in the Game: Leading and Learning with Agility for a Dynamic Future, I wrote about several themes that contribute to successful leaders’ ability to continue to learn and adapt. A key aspect of this capability is a clear sense of their Meaningful Identity, or what values and experiences give meaning to their lives and work. I wasn’t expecting to discover more about my own Meaningful Identity on a recent trip to Norway. Read on if you are interested to learn more!

Our time in the Laerdal area of Norway this fall has opened up a new dimension of Meaningful Identity that I wasn’t expecting. While I was excited to spend time in the land of “my people,” I had no big agenda about tracking down relatives, searching local records, or walking graveyards. I’m no genealogist, and while I find it interesting, I don’t have the patience for doing a lot of roll up your sleeves kind of research. That all changed when I mentioned to the owner, Knut Lindstrom, of the Lindstrom Hotel where we stayed in Laerdal, that my great-grandfather was from the area.

Me and Knut Lindstrom with the Laerdal Bygdebok

He said I might be interested in a book he had that could be helpful, the “Bygdebok.” I learned that in Norway, family names are the names of the farm(s) the family is from; every area has one of these books (more on this here). They are records of who lived at which farm in locations across Norway. He brought out the book and said I was welcome to borrow it, so I spent half the night pouring over it and identifying the farms where both my great and great-great grandparents (on my dad’s side) lived.

Interestingly, because my great-great-grandfather began on the Trave farm but later moved the family to the Voldum farm, the name they came to America in 1885 (settling in Decorah, Iowa, where I was born) with was Woldum (how it was pronounced and written down by the immigration folks, and became the family name for evermore in the US).

My Family’s Norwegian Ancestors

My great-great grandparents Halvor Olsson Woldum Huso (1806-1864) and Rannveig Monsdatter Voldum (Gram) brought their one daughter and five sons, including my great-grandfather Ole Halvardson Woldum over in 1885. According to the records in the Laerdal Bygdebok, Hallvard and Rannvieg had “1 horse, 3 cows, and 16 small animals.” The Google translation may be wanting here, but it also says, “There was little pasture, and the farm was used for rustling [what is that?!]. On the other hand, there was enough forest for domestic use. The garden was well cultivated and lightly used by the standards of the time. In  1875, the tally was: 1 horse, 4 cows, 3 young cattle, 20 sheep, and 20 goats. Then, you could harvest 4 barrels of barley and 5 barrels of potatoes. In 1876 Hallvard sold the farm and moved the family to Voldo.”

They don’t look so dangerous now, but get them backed into a corner stomping at you . . .

We located two of the family farms (Trave (Trao)/Atti-Trave and Voldum) thanks to Knut Lindstrom. We hiked up to them with guidance from the church visitor center, crossing a few active farms and their resident sheep.

We had a comical run-in with four of the sheep, whom we accidentally cornered between fences and in front of the gate we needed to pass through. These sheep had big horns and were clearly agitated at our presence. One came to the front of their little pack and stomped (trying to scare us off?). I was a little worried that they might try to rush us, so we backed off and hung out down the road, hoping they would find their way past us. Instead, they just lay down on the path. After about 20 minutes of this, I called the church visitor center and described our embarrassing standoff. He laughed and said the sheep were probably more afraid of us than we were of them, and it would be fine to walk through them. As we started moving, they got up and began hurrying past with terror in their eyes. I felt so bad for all of them and hope they quickly got back to enjoying their quiet lives munching on the mountainside. This is what happens when two “tough” city girls head into the mountains of Norway!

The family farms of Trave and Atti-Trave are just above the Borgund Stave Church. When my family lived there, apparently, the vicar of the church also lived on the property.

Borgund Stave Church

 

 

 

 

 

 

Trao/Trave Farm

Pamela at Atti-Trave Farm

 

Adding even more delight to this discovery process, when we came upon the Atti-Trao/Trave farm and the inviting note to enjoy the picnic table (see photo) and view, we saw a couple already taking up the invitation. This is where my great-great-great grandfather, Ola Hallvardson Trave lived in the early to mid 1800s, and where my great-great-grandfather lived before moving to the Voldum farm. We were hesitant to interrupt their quiet conversation, but they were both so warm and welcoming when we did. We learned that they were from Holland and had recently sold their home, quit their jobs, bought a camper van, and were traveling around Europe, taking advantage of the time to explore and discover their “what’s next.” They were really interested to hear about my family’s connection to the farm, too. We talked a bit longer,

Pamela, Bart, and Carol

shared our travel plans and tips for the next few days, including taking the scenic Flamsbana train out of Flam. We kicked ourselves that we did not exchange more information, as it was such a lovely connection. The universe took care of us a few days later when, after settling into our hotel in Bergen, we were walking through the Fish Market, deciding where to eat dinner, when a tall blonde man jumped in front of us and said, “Hello!” It was one of the men we met at the Atti-Trao farm! It turned out he took us up on our suggestion to ride the train (and had even seen us through the window passing the other direction back to Flam the day before) and had continued on his own for a few days to explore Bergen while his partner stayed back at the camper van. He had just sat down for dinner and happened to look up as we were passing by. We didn’t delay introducing ourselves this time and invited ourselves to join him. As we sat together, we were all in awe of the mystery of the universe putting us in each other’s paths during such important times in our lives. How I was searching for family roots, thinking about my family’s story of transition, while Bart and his partner were on an adventure and embracing this time of transition in their lives—discovering how their story is unfolding (you can follow their adventures on Insta here).

Pamela at Voldo Farm, home of Gunda, Ole, and their children before migrating to the US

What a wonderful new connection as I continue to digest what it means to spend time here in Norway. I am so grateful to immerse myself in the natural beauty of the area and the culture. I feel enlivened in a way I don’t fully understand and can’t yet describe. On one level, this exploration and the hike to the family farms have connected me to my roots I didn’t even know I was missing and some ineffable essence of who I am. On another level, with only the facts and without the stories of the family members who lived here, I am left with so much more to wonder about.

For example, I find it interesting that Norwegians derived their family names (their identity, literally their identifiers) from a place, while other cultures derived them from their profession. Perhaps because, for Norwegians, they were one and the same—where you lived dictated what you did.

I may do more digging, and I don’t know that more facts are important to me. This experience and exploration have me thinking about what endures after all who knew our stories are gone. What endures after our personal artifacts have faded and only the facts are left (where we lived, what we did, who gave birth to us, how many chickens and sheep we owned or didn’t)? And what will those facts mean to anyone with enough curiosity and means to discover them? And what is finding home? Is it hiking up to the family farm that your great-great-grandparents worked? Is it discovering the place where you feel comfort, love, and meaning? Is it finding and constructing a story from the facts, relationships, and experiences of our lives?

I am wondering about what prompted the family’s big transitions—first from one farm to another and later to a new country altogether. One possibility is that the regular avalanches up in the higher elevations of the Trave/Atti-Trave farms prompted the first move. Or perhaps because Voldo farm had more arable land to grow crops, which was not possible on the steep rocky terrain of the other farms. Some of the locals I talked to said that the terrain simply could not sustain many of the larger families (reports vary that between 2 and 7% of the country is arable).

I also wonder about the stories they heard about coming to America and what promise the new life held for them. What did it take for an entire family to pack up and leave all they had known, their relationships, and their ties to the land—knowing they would likely never return? And this is prompting me to think about all of the immigrant stories we have in our lives. Anytime we ponder a transition from the known to the unknown, we risk losing comfort and stability; even if it is untenable in some way, it is known to us. What story do we construct about the possible new life that might await—in new learning, moving to a new town, job, relationship, or other significant life transitions—both planned and unplanned?

I am thinking anew, too, about the work of the Albany Park Theater Project  (the youth arts organization I have long championed) and the stories they collect, explore, and share, and the importance of not only the sharing but the process of remembering, reconstructing, and telling these stories. With all of the new immigrants crossing our borders, the focus for those of us who have been here for some time is often on the concern for our communities’ ability to accommodate so many newcomers, the potential strain on resources, or even a fear of “the other”  (and we have grappled with these issues in the US from our earliest days). As we continue to debate and respond to these issues, we must do it humanely and in a way that honors all of our stories and quest for Meaningful Identity. Whether our migrations happened generations ago or more recently, they were prompted by shared compelling forces, risks, fears, sacrifices, hopes, and dreams.

Best Practices for Celebrating Agile Success and Being More Agile

Pamela Meyer

Whether it is at a big project milestone, or end of the quarter or year, taking the time to acknowledge and recognize your wins and learn the lessons from experience will help you build on your successes and continue to innovate. Read on for some of my favorite Retrospective questions and best practices for success in the coming year!

1: Celebrate your wins, large and small.

Research and your own experience show how important it is to pause and acknowledge your progress. Such reflection improves employee engagement and retention, the ability and motivation to persevere, and the likelihood of long-term success.

Here are just a few of the successes our clients are celebrating this year, some of which can be overlooked if we focus exclusively on financial metrics:

  • Individual and team growth, competence, capacity and confidence development
  • Expansion and diversification of your Relational Web of skills, knowledge, talent and resources that enable you to be agile and innovate through the unexpected and unplanned

• Business results in key strategic areas:

  • Time to Market
  • Customer acquisition, satisfaction, and retention
  • The triple bottom line

2: Host a Retrospective.

In addition to celebrating your wins, consider hosting a year- or quarter-end Retrospective. As you may know, most agile methodologies include periodic retrospectives, in which the agile team reflects not just on WHAT it accomplished, but HOW it accomplished it and what lessons they learned that can guide them going forward.

Here are a few of my favorite retrospective questions to help you amplify your strengths and build on your areas of opportunity in the coming year:

  • When were you at your best?
  • How did you learn and adapt as you worked together?
  • Which of the Agility Shift dynamics did you actively demonstrate? Which do you need to develop and more consistently demonstrate? (Take the complimentary Agility Shift Inventory (ASI) to start this conversation, or contact us for a comprehensive Team ASI)
  • What lessons did you learn that could guide your success with your team?
  • Bonus Question inspired by Jeff Sutherland’s work: What one thing could you have done differently that would have made you happier?

3: Be More Agile in 2021.

Once you have celebrated and completed your reflections you will have a valuable list of successes to recognize and share across your organization. You will also have identified some exciting areas for new learning and talent development.

The next three questions can help you zero in on your areas of greatest opportunity by thinking about WHAT you want to get done, WHO would benefit most and HOW to realize those benefits:

  • Which of your key stakeholders and leaders have the necessary agility competence, capacity and confidence to execute your agile innovation initiatives and which could benefit from additional support?
  • How will your talent development strategy help your people at all levels develop their agility ability?
  • Who will champion these critical capabilities across the organization to help you achieve and sustain your commitment to agility?

You are not alone if you struggle to answer some of these questions. We regularly work with leaders and teams to help them discover the best agile learning and talent development strategies to meet their business goals.

Contact Us to Discover Your Best Approach to Agile Talent Development

Become An Agile Leader: Do What Scares You

Pamela Meyer

Do what scares you

After a busy fall helping leaders become more agile in organizations here and abroad, I am waxing my skis and getting ready to head to ski racing camp in Colorado later this week.

This will be my fifth year in a row. I blocked the dates and sent in my deposit as soon as camp was announced—not because it is comfortable or even fun, at times it is, but the real reason I started going and continue go is that it scares me.

Followers of my sporadic blog posts know that I returned to ski racing, a somewhat delusional passion from my Iowa youth (I seriously thought I could be a contender!), after a birthday that ended in “0”. I skied every chance I could as a teenager—park district bus trip to Wisconsin (I’m on it!), University of Iowa ski trip to Colorado that they foolishly opened up to area high school kids (I’m in!), weekend trips with my parents to Midwest resorts and the occasional Colorado ski vacation (I planned the rest of my life around them!).

The Racing Bug

Somewhere along the way, I got bit by the racing bug and also starting racing in as many USSA Central division races as I could get to, which included road trips to Minneapolis to race at Buck Hill, long before Lindsay Vonn, who got her start there, was born!

Coming back to skiing and ski racing when most of my friends have long since hung up their long underwear has taken a lot more commitment. When I was younger, it was easy to round up a group of adventurers willing to give it a go—many clad in their Iowa overalls.

Become an agile leader

The Author, Pamela Meyer

These days, it is much harder for me to find friends who want to head down the hill on two waxed planks, let alone into the cold. It was this challenge that led me to explore more organized ski activities, including racing clubs and camps.

With a great recommendation from a friend and former ski instructor, I found my way to Dave Gregory’s Peak Performance Ski Camp that he holds each November at Copper Mountain and summers at Mount Hood, Oregon.

Now, as I pack up for my fifth trip, I have a little better idea of what to expect, and yet, the apprehension has not completely lifted. Did I train well enough? You can never be too fit for racing. Will I crash? No question. Will I get hurt? It’s happened and is always a possibility. I still go because it still stretches me. It still scares me—not in a “why again am I jumping out of this airplane?” way—but in a way that pushes me out of my comfort zone, physically, socially, mentally.

Accepting the Challenge

Some years it takes, even more, commitment and intentionality. Two years ago, I had major surgery over the summer and had to make a concerted effort to recover, rebuild my strength and confidence. Last year, I fractured my shoulder on a training run. These experiences don’t deter me or my fellow masters racers. They do give me even greater respect for athletes such as Lindsay Vonn who had countless setbacks in their careers and yet came back, again and again. They make the effort and put in the work to return to peak performance, even when they have every invitation to use the latest injury to make a graceful exit from the competition (which Vonn, of course, did this past season).

My experience in life and especially these last few years, helping leaders, teams and organizations become more agile is that doing what scares you is where the learning is.

New learning, and especially the confidence to apply that learning under pressure, doesn’t happen by staying in our comfort zone. It doesn’t happen if are afraid of looking silly, incompetent and like we don’t know what we are doing. As uncomfortable as these experiences are, they are the hallmarks that learning (or at least the potential for learning) is happening. Agile leaders not only seek out new experiences that stretch their current skills and abilities, but they also model their learning and share the process of becoming more confident with others. This, admittedly, takes some courage and a certain amount of psychological safety. In fact, it took me some time to muster this courage the first year I registered for racing camp.

Becoming Comfortable Being Uncomfortable

agile leadership

The biggest lesson I have learned as I pack up for camp #5 is that being a little (and sometimes a lot) out of my comfort zone is where the growth and where new confidence is built. One of our race coaches says, “If you never crash, you aren’t trying something new. You aren’t learning!”

I realized I can’t very well travel the world talking about The Agility Shift and helping leaders be more effective in the midst of the unknown if I am not challenging myself to do the same. And leaders at all levels of the organization cannot very well ask others to take risks and continue stretching, growing and adapting to changes if they are not willing to do so themselves.

So, as we move into the holiday season, which is often associated with cocooning, being cozy with friends and family (which is a wonderful way to recharge our spirits), I invite you to also look for the opportunities that lie ahead that scare you. It doesn’t have to be ski racing or even a physical challenge. Maybe it is just accepting an unexpected invitation before you start over-thinking it, go ahead and say, “yes!” sign up, and jump in. Maybe I’ll see you there!

What are you doing/might you do that scares you?

•••••

NOTE: This post is a revision of a 2017 post, updated with gratitude to be healthy and able to get out there for another season.

 

Are You Training for Airmanship (AKA Learning Agility)?

Pamela Meyer

The ability to effectively frame and solve problems in the cockpit in a high stakes, rapidly unfolding situation is called “airmanship.” In leadership development, we call this learning agility.

Learning Agility in Action

With the first anniversary of the tragic Boeing 737 Max crash of Lion Air Flight 610 followed months later by Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 upon us, there is a new wave of coverage in the news. As families continue to demand answers and accountability and outside entities work to understand what went wrong, another line of inquiry is being explored that has implications for anyone who works in high-stakes environments.

While not the ultimate source of the disasters, some, such as journalist and former commercial airline pilot, William Langewiesche, question whether or not the pilots’ training prepared them to be effective in complex high stakes situations (2019).

I have written about another key aspect of Cockpit Resource Management (CRM), the ability to communicate, collaborate and coordinate in the heat of the moment in The Agility Shift.

Also key is the ability to effectively frame and solve problems in the cockpit in a rapidly unfolding situation or “airmanship” (applied equally to men and women).

What is “Airmanship”?

Its full meaning is difficult to convey. It includes a visceral sense of navigation, an operational understanding of weather and weather information, the ability to form mental maps of traffic flows, fluency in the nuance of radio communications and, especially, a deep appreciation for the interplay between energy, inertia and wings. Airplanes are living things. The best pilots do not sit in cockpits so much as strap them on (Langewiesche, 2019).

A recent analysis by the New York Times of available flight data and cockpit recordings of these doomed flights provide some evidence that the crews of both doomed flights may not have had, or were not able to access their capacity for “airmanship” when the stakes were highest. Langewiesche sounds an alarm for the flying public.

. . .  it is certain that thousands of similar crews are at work around the world, enduring as rote pilots and apparently safe, but only so long as conditions are routine (2019).

Many fields have variations on the term “airmanship.” For example, miners who have an intuitive connection to the state of a mine, and potential threats to their safety are said to have “pit sense.” (Kamouche, K. and Maguire, K., 2010) while Aboagye-Nimo, E and Raiden, A (2016) use the broader term “site-sense” to include any variety of settings in which the ability to access and apply tacit knowledge is essential to success.

For those of us working in or with organizations, the stakes may not always be life and death, but they are often urgent and high. To stay competitive leaders at all levels of the organization must be able to respond quickly and effectively to a wide range of unexpected events and information; they must be able to make decisions in the midst of uncertainty, and they must be able to rapidly make sense of complex and volatile situations. In short, they need to develop “airmanship.”

Airmanship Requires Learning Agility

At its most essential, airmanship and site-sense share the same underlying competence: the ability to learn and adapt in changing contexts. In leadership development, we refer to this competency as learning agility. In their study of more than 190 executives’ significant learning experiences, management researchers identified the key to success within a complex organization: the ability to manage something new without having to master it first (McCall, Lombardo and Morrison, 1988). Learning agility is not simply the ability to think on your feet, it is the ability to apply lessons learned in one context to another, often more complex, one situation.

The good news is that it is possible to develop learning agility, though it doesn’t happen without concerted and intentional effort.

How the United States Navy Uses Learning Agility to Instruct Fighter Pilots

The United States Navy manages to instill a sense of this in its fledgling fighter pilots by ramming them through rigorous classroom instruction and then requiring them to fly at bank angles without limits, including upside down. The same cannot be expected of airline pilots who never fly solo and whose entire experience consists of catering to passengers who flinch in mild turbulence, refer to “air pockets” in cocktail conversation and think they are near death if bank angles exceed 30 degrees. The problem exists for many American and European pilots, too. Unless they make extraordinary efforts — for instance, going out to fly aerobatics, fly sailplanes or wander among the airstrips of backcountry Idaho — they may never develop true airmanship no matter the length of their careers (Langewiesche, 2019).

Training to Develop Learning Agility

Over the past several years working with a wide range of organizations to help them make the agility shift and build more adaptable teams and organizations, we have found a number of effective strategies to help leaders across the enterprise develop their learning agility competence, capacity, and confidence.

Each of the following can be integrated into formal or informal learning programs, as well as be used in coaching and mentoring for learning agility:

  1. Seek and provide learning experiences that call for adaptation. Even if you are learning a new skill, it is important to build enough confidence that you can apply that skill in a variety of situations (high stakes, uncertainty, missing or changing information, etc.). In formal training, be sure to design into your program learning activities that have some complexity and not a single right answer. If you, yourself, are the learner or are mentoring others, be sure to seek out and encourage your mentees to look for these opportunities in their roles.
  2. Experiment with scenario-based learning that requires that you/your learners communicate, collaborate, and coordinate with their Relational Web of skills, knowledge, talent, and resources. We regularly design experiential learning opportunities like this for teams to develop these capacities. You can also use these learning strategies as ‘thought-experiments” for individual and team reflection and idea generation.
  3. Become a Cognitive Apprentice. Coaching and mentoring are excellent ways to learn a new role, build confidence and self-awareness, and progress toward a host of personal and professional goals. Sometimes overlooked in coaching and other informal learning strategies is the value of understanding an expert’s way of framing problems and opportunities and determining a course of action. This modeling process is sometimes called a cognitive apprenticeship (Woolley, Norman N.; Jarvis, Yvonne, 2007). Learn to ask and help your learners probe for the thinking process that led to key decisions. Sometimes it can be as simple as asking questions like: “How did you zero in on __________ as the key issue?” or “How did you come to that decision?” Listen to the responses and for how experts question their own assumptions and process complex or competing narratives.
  4. Do what scares you. Perhaps the best way for you to develop their competence, capacity, and confidence is to seek new opportunities outside of your comfort zone intentionally. The more comfortable you (and your learners) can become in uncomfortable, even scary, situations, the more likely you will be able to think and function clearly when the stakes are high.

Understanding How Learning Agility can Serve us in a Crisis

No one is suggesting that developing airmanship or learning agility vindicates what appears to have been serious flaws in oversight and design of the Boeing 737 Max. However, these and other high stakes incidents remind us that at the center of every operational crisis, are human beings who must quickly assess the situation and tap their available resources to respond as quickly and effectively as possible.

While we cannot control or train for every possible situation, we can be more intentional training for airmanship and developing our own and other’s learning agility.

What other strategies do you use to develop your own and others’ learning agility?  

Discover more approaches for learning agility, and other customizable talent development solutions to make your agility shift!

•••••••••••••

Aboagye-Nimo, E and Raiden, A (2016) Introducing Site Sense: Comparing Situated Knowledge in Construction to Coalmining. In: P W Chan and C J Neilson (Eds.) Proceedings of the 32nd Annual ARCOM Conference, 5-7 September 2016, Manchester, UK, Association of Researchers in Construction Management, Vol 1, 467-476.

Kamoche, K. and Maguire, K., 2011. Pit sense: Appropriation of practice-based knowledge in a UK coal mine. Human Relations, 64 (5), pp. 725-744.

Langewiesche, W. (2019, September 21, 2019). What really brought down the Boeing 737 Max? New York Times Sunday Magazine.

McCall, M. W., Lombardo, M. M., & Morrison, A. M. (1988). Lessons of experience: How successful executives develop on the job. Lexington, MA: Lexington Books.

Meyer, P. (2015). The Agility Shift: Creating agile and effective leaders, teams and organizations. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge.

Woolley, Norman N.; Jarvis, Yvonne (January 2007). “Situated cognition and cognitive apprenticeship: A model for teaching and learning clinical skills in a technologically rich and authentic learning environment”. Nurse Education Today. 27 (1): 73–79.

 

How to Help Your Team (and Yourself) Be More Agile

Pamela Meyer

Reposted with Permission From the October 10, 2016 IBM Social Business Spotlight Blog by Pamela Meyer

While major corporations such as AT&T are recognizing the need to create a more agile workforce1, most continue to rely on strategies designed for the mythical stable, knowable future. Whether you are leading or a member of a software development team, developing and executing your company’s sales and marketing strategy, or working in any number of high-stakes, rapidly changing contexts, you know that your success in the moment is likely not going to be based on the finer points of your strategic plan, or even the day’s to-do list. It is also nearly certain that when the unexpected hits, your success is not going to come from something you learned in business school or other formal training program.

Despite evidence that up to 90 percent of executive action is ad hoc2, most training programs and businesses are doing a dismal job preparing their workforce to be effective in an increasingly VUCA (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, Ambiguous) environment. Two outdated approaches are impeding organizations’ ability to create a more agile workforce, and in turn—your ability to help yourself and your team be more agile:

1) Most business school and workplace learning approaches disproportionately focus on aspects of the business that (in theory) can be controlled, which leads to an overemphasis on planning and analysis, and role-specific skill and knowledge development.

2) Most approaches to workplace learning, whether delivered at the university or at the workplace itself, are based on the assumption that information shared and skills developed in the classroom (on-ground or virtual) will be readily transferred to the complex and uncertain environment of the workplace and world of business.

The problem with these assumptions is borne out by the disheartening 10 percent of learning transfer from training room to the workplace3. Why the low transfer rates? Most learning approaches do not take into account the level of complexity required to access and translate prior learning and apply it in new and often unfamiliar contexts, let alone create opportunities for learners to develop their agility competence, capacity and confidence.

Developing the Agile Team

If you truly want to develop your and your team’s overall agility, rather than teaching new skills and knowledge with the assumption they will be applied in a known, stable context, you must seek and provide opportunities to experience situations that demand adaptive responses. This means experiences where you and your team not only need to find and frame the issue or opportunity, but also to then generate novel approaches using available resources. I am not talking about canned training activities where you work to solve a pre-defined problem (solve a puzzle, build a tower, etc.), but ill-defined, high-stakes scenarios and activities with real or almost-real-life consequences.

Such activities, whether experienced in the safety of formal training or encountered on the job, also help team members develop their capacity for learning agility. In recent years researchers have identified learning agility as the single most critical success factor for long-term career success, as well as for organizational results. Defined variously as the ability to “learn and adapt in changing contexts,”4 and “the willingness and ability to learn from experience, and subsequently apply that learning to perform successfully under new or first-time conditions,”5 learning agility is the key to success when things don’t go as planned and when new, unexpected opportunities arise. In other words, learning agility is the key to business success.

Learning-agile people and teams are better able to adapt when asked to switch roles, work in a new culture, expand the scope or complexity of their responsibilities, lead a new initiative, learn lessons from experience after a set-back and use them to guide their future success, and innovate with limited resources.

Critical Success Factors: Intentionality and Responsibility

When you make your own and your team’s agility your top priority, you must make opportunities to develop learning agility the core of your talent development and management strategies. This responsibility is not something to pass off to your HR department or Training and Development Team. In the agile organization, everyone is a learning leader. Those formally charged with people development in your organization, if you are lucky enough to have them, can be excellent partners for you, and ultimately, you are responsible for developing your own and your team’s agility capability.

In practice, this means being intentional in your agile practices and taking responsibility for your own learning, while encouraging your team members to do the same. Here are just a few best practices that companies I work with are adopting with excellent results:

  • Seek out and provide new and unfamiliar opportunities that require new learning, innovation and adaptation.
  • Practice high stakes “What, if . . .” scenarios that require your team to rapidly come up with alternative strategies and resources, in order to maintain business operations in the midst of a disruption or quickly capitalize on a new opportunity.
  • Intentionally expand, diversify and strengthen your Relational Web of skills, knowledge, talent and resources so that you have access to them when the unexpected happens.

Taking the time to be intentional and responsible for agility and to develop learning agility is well worth the investment. Studies show that adopting best practices such as these, as well as others borrowed from agile project teams, can increase your productivity as much as 38 percent.6 Even if you and your team realized a only fraction of these results, wouldn’t it be worth it?

1. Hardy, Q. (February 13, 2016) “Gearing Up for the Cloud, AT&T Tells Its Workers: Adapt, or Else.” New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/14/technology/gearing-up-for-the-cloud-att-tells-its-workers-adapt-or-else.html?_r=0
2. Mintzberg, H. (1973) The nature of managerial work. New York: Harper & Row.; Moorman, C., & Miner, A. S. (1998) The convergence of planning and execution: Improvisation in new product development. Journal of Marketing, 62(3), 1—20.
3. Brinkerhoff, R. O. (2005) The Success Case Method: A Strategic Evaluation Approach to Increasing the Value and Effect of Training. Advances in Developing Human Resources, 7(1), 86-101. doi:10.1177/1523422304272172
4. Mitchinson, A., & Morris, R. (2012) Learning about learning agility.
5. Lombardo, M. M., & Eichinger, R. W. (2000). High potentials as high learners. Human Resource Management, 39, 321-330.
6. Salesforce.com. (2010) White Paper: Transforming your organization to agile. Retrieved from https://developer.salesforce.com/page/Transforming_Your_Organization_to_Agile