Learning Agility

SoL #4 What my Mother Taught Me About Resiliency and Perseverance

Pamela Meyer

and 6 Ways to Build Your Learning Agility

 

This is the 4th installment of Pamela’s Summer of Learning Series.

Witnessing my mother’s resilience shortly after my father left was one of the biggest influences in my life.

Note My Mother Wrote to Inspire Herself

My brother and I were both teenagers and my mother, knowing she had many productive years ahead of her made a radical choice for the time. 

Her prospects were limited because she had been out of the workforce for most of her adult life.

Rather than react out of fear and take the first job she could get, she chose to do something for which she had no role model. 

At a time of incredible financial stress, and in an era when it was rare for adults to return to college, my mom dove into the uncharted waters of graduate school. 

I watched as she carried her books back and forth to the library, pre-internet, and set up shop each night on the kitchen table with her Underwood manual typewriter. 

On the home stretch, as she researched and wrote her graduate thesis, she posted a note on the bulletin board above the kitchen table to cheer her on, “Three pages a day!” it read.

The number was substantial and yet manageable. 

I watched each night as she set herself up and clack clack clacked out those three pages. 

And, when she finished, I cheered the loudest as she crossed the stage to accept her diploma and continue to a thriving professional career, that demanded two major geographic moves in midlife.

My Mom, Thriving After Grad School, and Me

Years later, after she passed, I came across the “Three Pages a Day!” note again when packing up her house. 

 

I’m sure she never imagined that it and her example would cheer me on to be resilient and persevere in my own learning and writing, three advanced degrees and five books later.

Perhaps not by coincidence, I have spent many years working with clients across industries, and mentoring adult graduate students as they chart their course through scary and rewarding new beginnings.

Whether or not you were lucky enough to have someone model learning agility, you can learn to make it a habit today.

Whether it is committing to your own “Three Pages a Day!” or any other seemingly small steps toward building your agility capability, trust they will add up to a big impact for yourself and those who share a stake in your success.

6 Ways to Build Your Learning Agility Habit

Learning and adapting in unfamiliar circumstances is the very definition of learning agility. It may seem counterintuitive to make a habit of learning agility, a capability we tap in the midst of the unexpected. However, as learning becomes a habit, your confidence in your ability to continue learning as conditions change will grow, too.

The manual Underwood typewriter model my mother used

Whether or not you were lucky enough to have someone model disciplined learning, you can be that person for yourself today. Here are a few lessons I learned:

 

1. Name and Claim Your “Why?” 

Our ability to name and claim our purpose as humans guides us through our most challenging times and can keep us motivated through disruptions large and small. 

When your commitment to your learning flags, pause to reengage with your reason for doing it in the first place. Your initial reason could be pure survival (as it was for my mother when she returned to graduate school). And it may also evolve, as I have seen happen for countless agile learners as they continue their educational and professional journey, who discover that the intrinsic joy of learning motivates them to keep going. 

 2. Make it a Priority

It’s as simple as that. I interviewed masters athletes to find out how they stayed healthy and fit enough to continue to compete long past the time their peers had retreated to the couch. The answer was simple and consistent: “I make it a priority.”

 3. Focus on Manageable Chunks

For example, Three Pages a Day was a small enough number to be manageable for my mom while writing her thesis, and yet they quickly added up. Determine what is manageable for you. Is it a set amount of time, a specific skill or topic you want to cover, a set of exercises you want to practice, or other experience you want to incorporate into your life?

4. Block Learning Time on Your Calendar 

Treat your learning time as important as your other commitments. I set a reminder that ensures I am available for my blocked time. It also gives me time to reschedule my learning block if something urgent needs my attention. The point is not so much when you keep you keep your commitment, but THAT you keep it.

5. Visualize Success

Your rewards may be extrinsic or intrinsic, or some combination. They could be as spectacular as walking across the stage to receive your diploma to the cheers of your family and friends, or as humble as being able to find your way while traveling abroad. They could be measured in the bottom line or in the positive energy in the lunch line. Visualizing the value of your learning and growth can keep you going when your commitment falters.

6. Celebrate Your Progress—Grow Your Learning Agility: Learning agility, or the ability to learn and adapt in changing circumstances naturally grows as you build your confidence in your ability to learn and adapt. Confidence grows over time, through incremental successes. It is important to recognize and celebrate that progress. This might mean mastering a new skill, building a new relationship, successfully navigating a challenging project, or overcoming a setback.

What ways work for you to make learning a habit and to build your learning agility confidence?

Bonus Resources

Here are a few resources to help you build your learning agility habits:
  • What is Learning Agility (and how can you develop yours)? Click the button to read my short intro to learning agility.
  • How to Develop New Habits: A recent Washington Post article on how readers develop a wide range of new habits.
  • How to Make Learning as Addictive as Social Media (Short, interesting, and funny, TED Talk by Luis von Ahn, co-founder and CEO of Duolingo)
  • If you want to leverage the power of streaks to develop your learning habit (or any other), the app Streaks allows you to set your goals and track your progress, with helpful reminders to keep you on track.
  • If your colleagues, and team members could use a boost of inspiration, please share the #SummerOfLearning “Learning Letter” sign-up link: Share SOL Newsletter!

 

SoL #3 Elevate Your Learning Agility Game: Unleash the Untapped Potential of This Powerful Strategy

Pamela Meyer

This is the 3rd installment of Pamela’s Summer of Learning Series.

For many years, I taught a business creativity course to adult undergraduate students at DePaul University. In addition to learning various creativity theories, I devoted half the class time to improvisation games and eventually fully improvised scenes. The class allowed students to develop a pre-defined competence of “Can apply the theory and practice of improvisation to enhance workplace creativity.”

These sessions first taught me the importance of naming and sharing your learning goals and, more importantly, the value of holding your goals lightly and leaving some room for surprises.

The Value to Naming and Sharing Your Learning Goals

Research shows that committing to specific goals AND sharing them with others greatly enhances your likelihood of achieving them. Your chances of success are even greater if you share those results with someone whose status or authority you respect (e.g., a manager, mentor, or colleague you admire). This is particularly valuable when venturing into new territory demanding learning agility. For workplace learning, it can be especially effective to:

  • • Draft and share your learning goals.
  • • Keep a learning journal or other record of your experiences and lessons learned throughout your endeavor.
  • • Share your progress and learning outcomes with a trusted friend, colleague, or mentor and, ideally, with a broader community, such as your team, or at your next Lunch & Learn session.

To get started, draft a short competence statement before you embark on your new learning adventure. You can download a competence statement template and example in the Summer of Learning Framework.

Distinguish Between Process and Performance Goals

As important as drafting learning goals is recognizing the learning that happens along the way to developing competence. These include expanding your network, becoming more comfortable learning in a new way, and even discovering talents you didn’t know you had.

In contrast, performance goals are the projected outcomes and impact of your learning. For example, will your new skills and knowledge help you increase sales, improve teamwork, or reduce time to market? In other words, “How will your new competence generate value for you and your stakeholders?”

Leave Room for Surprises

The growth that happens on our way to developing new competency is sometimes hard to predict, and these surprises can be the best part! Over the years teaching my creativity course, I witnessed and heard so many stories of transformation that I centered my doctoral research on the question, “What happens for people as they learn to improvise?” The findings inspired my book,  From Workplace to Playspace: Innovating, Learning and Changing Through Dynamic Engagement.

Success Story: How Starshine Got Her Groove Back

One woman’s journey stood out as especially surprising. In her first learning journal (which she permitted me to quote from using her nickname “Starshine”), she wondered why she had even registered for a class that included improvisation in the description. She described herself as “shy” and someone “who gets nervous in front of people” and “rarely speaks in class.” She lived into this identity for the first few weeks of class while still dutifully participating in all the class exercises, however uncomfortable they were. Then, one day, about halfway into the quarter, she was in a scene with two classmates, one well over a foot taller than she was. The improvisation scenario was a robbery taking place within a shoe store. Starshine, astonishing herself and her classmates, leaped into the scene with an imaginary gun and pulled the much taller male “shoe salesperson” into a playful headlock. The short scene quickly unfolded to peels of laughter as the formerly retiring Starshine took total control of the scene and “robbed” the improvised store of all of the latest styles in footwear.

 

In her journal that night, she described feeling “physically and mentally open for anything to come my way” and leaving the class with “a feeling of sureness, freedom, and optimism about me.”

In the following weeks and months, Starshine’s confidence within and beyond the classroom only grew. She later reported that she was now speaking up and sharing ideas more freely at work. She had joined Toastmasters and was even standing up to speak to her large congregation on Sundays, something she couldn’t have previously imagined.

Why It’s Important to Hold Your Learning Goals Lightly

While Starshine demonstrated the pre-defined course competence, I share her story as a reminder of the value of setting learning goals; we should hold those goals lightly. By that, I mean that if we only focus on our pre-defined destination, we might miss all the additional ways we are learning and growing along the way.

In addition to “enhancing her workplace creativity,” Starshine deepened her relationships with her learning colleagues by becoming willing to share more of her playful self, encouraging them to do the same. She became a valuable faith community member by speaking up and inspiring others. And perhaps most importantly, she found her voice and developed confidence in her ability to think on her feet and contribute positively even in unfamiliar settings.

It wasn’t an explicit learning goal, yet the most valuable aspect of Starshine’s experience was the confidence she developed in her ability to learn and adapt to new and changing circumstances: her LEARNING AGILITY.

Pro Tip: This is an important reminder for my talent development colleagues as they measure the impact of their L&D strategies: Be sure your evaluations include open questions to discover the unexpected aspects of the learning experience. They may end up being even more impactful than your planned outcomes!

Bonus Resources

Here are a few resources to help you craft and refine your learning goals:

SoL #2 From Wonder to Wisdom—Ask the Right Questions to Accelerate Your Learning

Pamela Meyer
This is the 2nd installment of Pamela’s Summer of Learning Series.
When I returned to alpine ski racing after a few decades of hiatus, I was instore for a big surprise. For starters, I was nervous that I would be one of the oldest racers on the hill. It turned out I was one of the youngest! Many of the racers out there were still going strong well into their 60s, 70s, and even 80s. That’s me on the left in the photo with my friend, Karl Landl, still racing at age 87.

This discovery sparked my curiosity. I wondered what kept these hardy souls coming out weekend after weekend, year after year, in all conditions to compete on our tiny Wisconsin race hill and countless others around the country. As you likely know by now, this curiosity led me to a years-long inquiry, and the discoveries I made resulted in my latest book, Staying in the Game.

Leading with Curiosity

From interviewing masters ski racers and other business leaders who embody agility, I soon discovered that the starting point of any successful and sustainable learning endeavor is to Lead with Curiosity.

Whether they are curious about how to increase their edge angles on steep turns or how to better navigate the twists and turns of a volatile market, the motivation is the same: continuous improvement and expanded understanding.

If your fast-paced life has crowded out space in your brain for wonder, this might be an excellent opportunity to slow down enough to ponder what you are curious about. Give yourself room to consider what is truly meaningful to you rather than everything you think you “should” be learning.

Curiosity is the secret sauce that helps all Embodied Agile Leaders stay motivated and relevant throughout their careers.

One of my favorite examples of curiosity from Staying in the Game is the career of renowned theater and film director Peter Brook. The New York Times called him “the greatest innovator of his generation” who pursued his passion with “relentless curiosity” throughout his life.

Brook led with curiosity starting at age seven, staging a four-hour production of Hamlet in his toy theater. This quest continued to his final production, aptly titled, “Why?” which opened in the fall of 2019, just months before the COVID-19 shut-down and less than two years before his death at 97.

The secret to his success?

It’s simple, he shared, “Never stop asking questions.”

Here are a few questions to get your curiosity wheels turning
  • Think about recent conversations, articles, shows, or podcasts you’ve been engaged with. What has stood out to you? What piqued your curiosity?
  • What new trends are getting your attention?
  • What are you hearing or reading about that you want to learn more about?
  • What challenges and opportunities are your customers grappling with?
  • What other questions do you have?
Use your answers to refine your learning focus in the coming months, with the Summer of Learning Framework as your guide.

Here’s where my curiosity has led me so far:

I promised to share my SoL process with you, hoping it keeps you engaged, but also to hold myself accountable.

Because I work with leaders and teams in various industries, from pharma to finance and beyond, I’m curious about how AI trends affect their businesses and how they work.

In addition to reading countless articles, participating in numerous webinars, and listening to more podcasts than is legally allowed, I am taking my inquiry to where it matters most: my clients.

In our conversations, I’m asking: “How is AI affecting your organization and team and your customers? How is it impacting you, personally? How are you using it? What are you learning? The answers I hear are as varied as the organization, specific team, and individual.

However, two themes are emerging:
  1. Almost every business is integrating AI into their products and services to improve efficiency and customization, particularly for their customers. Some are much further along than others.
  2. Employees are increasingly using AI to augment their work processes, but they must do so within strict company guidelines and follow necessary security protocols.

If you are interested in this topic, here are just two resources that I recommend:

  1. A recent Harvard Business Review panel, “Answering the Generative AI Skills Challenge”.
  2. Another great resource, especially if your work includes learning and development or coaching, is the Training Magazine Network. It has been offering several excellent webinars on AI learning trends and strategies.

In addition to learning about AI trends and resources, I have been experimenting with various AI features in the platforms and applications I already use. Here are two short insights from this past week and one lesson learned:

  • 1.  So far, my favorite feature is the Zoom Workplace AI Meeting Summary. Just turn it on, and it emails you a summary of your discussion, along with your agreed-upon action steps.
  • 2.  After several experiments with ChatGPT this past year, and more recently with Google Gemini I’ve concluded that, as a writer, I’m just not comfortable having someone or something else put words in my mouth. While sometimes more efficient, the results don’t sound like me and often bear little resemblance to what I was trying to say. At the same time, I am finding they help generating things like subject lines and headers and even to create summaries for longer pieces. You can also have some fun with it by doing things like playing the improv game, “One Word Story.” I’m also experimenting with Google Gemini’s image generator, which, so far, is less than impressive and doesn’t compete with Canva’s.
  • NOTE: Review the privacy statements on any AI app you use. With all AI products, it is wise to avoid entering any personal, proprietary, or confidential information. Many enterprise security systems have a firewall for GenAI sites.

Lessons Re-Learned: Progress, Not Perfection

I have been teaching and writing about this for years: Learning can be uncomfortable, messy, and sometimes even challenge our sense of ourselves as competent, capable people—especially in the workplace where the pressure to appear competent and in control can deter us from enthusiastically venturing into new territories.

Embodied Agile Leaders (EALs) model learning agility by courageously embodying the learning process. They don’t wait until they have attained a level of mastery to share their learning. Just because I know the discomfort of new learning in my bones doesn’t mean I’m immune to the temptation to defend myself against it.

One of the biggest challenges I am experiencing as I play with GenAI tools and new digital engagement strategies is not the actual technical learning or the “how-to” aspect. It’s that venturing into new territory in a more visible way feels a bit vulnerable and challenges my identity as someone who is fluent in all that is latest and greatest. This is an uncomfortable and wonderful experience to have as it is essentially what I ask the leaders I work with to do as they develop their agility capability. I’m learning to give myself some grace to become more comfortable with being uncomfortable in my own learning process, and I hope you do, too.

 

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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 reacting 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, 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
  • Realistic leadership scenarios can be simulated through generative AI, 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 essential aspect of leadership development that is critical to building competence and confidence. Learning professionals and trusted peers can also help leaders connect 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
  • By analyzing large datasets, GenAI can identify trends, patterns, and correlations related to leadership effectiveness.
  • 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 gained 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

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 - Ten ways to lead and learn with agility in 2024

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!

 

How to Become An Agile Leader? – Do What Scares You

Pamela Meyer

How to become an agile leader? - 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 started 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.

How to become an agile leader? - Do what scares you

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 you 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

How to become an agile leader? - Do what scares you

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?

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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!

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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.

 

how to help your team be more agile

 

 

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 an 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.
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.

Learning Agility: What? So What? And Now What?

Pamela Meyer

In the 21st century we find ourselves in the midst of VUCA (Volatility, Uncertainty Complexity and Ambiguity). The term was originally coined by the United States Army War College to describe changing conditions on the battlefield. It is now widely used as the acronym for the reality of everyday life and work.

To be effective in changing contexts, we need to develop new capacities and competencies. Perhaps the most important of these is Learning Agility. In this short blog post, I will introduce the concept (What?), comment on its importance (So What?) and share a few ideas for how you can begin to develop your own and others Learning Agility (Now What?).

What?

Learning agility is the ability to learn and adapt in changing contexts (Mitchinson & Morris, 2012). In their study of more than 190 executives’ significant learning experiences, Management researchers McCall, Lombardo and Morrison (1988)identified the key to success within a complex organization: the ability to manage something new without having to master it first (p. 34). Learning agility is not simply the ability to think on your feet, it is the ability to access and apply lessons learned in one context to another.

So What?

It turns out that being competent, even excellent, in your current role is a weak predictor of your potential for success in a new, more challenging role. In fact, according to research published by the Corporate Leadership Council (2005), only 30% of an organization’s current high performers have the potential to rise to and succeed in broader, senior level, critical positions. A 2010 study by the Korn/Ferry Institute identified learning agility as the top ranking predictor of leadership success, while estimating that only 15% of the workforce is “highly learning agile” (De Meuse, Dai, & Hallenbeck). Perhaps most important for organizational leaders, learning agility is an essential component of organizational agility, which is proving to return significant bottom line benefits for those who make it a strategic priority (Glenn, 2009).

Now What?

Realizing that learning agility is essential to organizational success, managers and learning and development professionals are starting to make it a key strategic priority. Learning agility is not something easily acquired in a classroom, though formal learning that is particularly timely is more likely to be transferred into practice. A few steps you can take to maximize the value of formal training (for yourself and others) for learning agility include:

  • Think about your current work/life challenges and identify skills, knowledge and capacities that would help you be more effective.
  • Prior to formal learning experiences, identify your personal learning goals (these may differ from those described in the course materials). Ideally, share these goals with a colleague or supervisor before you participate in the formal learning.
  • Keep a learning log to make note of key insights and particularly relevant lessons, as well as questions and topics for future exploration.
  • Within a few days of the learning experience meet with your colleague or supervisor and share your learning and what progress you made toward your learning goals and discuss how you can implement/experiment with your new learning. If possible, create an opportunity to share your learning more broadly with colleagues via a brown bag lunch, company newsletter or blog post.
  • Experiment with putting your new learning into practice and reflect on your results.
  • Repeat.

We can all take more responsibility for seeking out new formal and informal learning opportunities that expand our skills and knowledge and increase our effectiveness in new roles and contexts. Not all learning opportunities are created equal. Research shows that learning experiences that have the most significant impact on learning agility are those that are “emotional, require risk-taking and have real-life consequences” (De Meuse, Dai, & Hallenbeck, 2010, p. 121). These can include:

  • Stretch assignments that challenge people to work outside of their comfort zone
  • New Leadership Roles, especially those that expand on the scope of prior experience
  • Living/working in a new culture
  • Reflecting on Lessons Learned from both Good and Bad Bosses
  • Mentoring/Coaching, to help people seek out new learning opportunities and mine those experiences for lessons learned

These are just a few places to start developing your own and others’ capacity for learning agility. As you think about your own work setting, consider ways in which you can take responsibility for your own learning and development, and help others do the same.

De Meuse, K. P., Dai, G., & Hallenbeck, G. S. (2010). Learning agility: A construct whose time has come. Consulting Psychology Journal: Practice and Research, 62(2), 119-130.

Glenn, M. (2009). Organisational agility: How business can survive and thrive in turbulent times: Economist Intelligence Unit.

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

Realizing the full potential of rising talent. (2005). Washington, DC: Corporate Executive Board: Corporate Leadership Council.