Growth Through Learning

Today, the myriad of changes in the professional landscape happen fast. This means that it’s more important than ever for organizations to be resilient and adaptable. So many organizations continue to prioritize short-term results over long-term, sustainable growth, but this approach often leads to employees disconnecting from their work, resulting in less effective, less engaged teams.  

In this inaugural episode, your host, Hannah Brown, speaks with three leaders about the need for employee support, connection, and learning, all of which must be championed by the leaders themselves. Only by engaging workers beyond formal training, can companies develop the kind of team culture that continues to benefit people and organizations alike.

Hannah is your host for this 6-part series on leadership, learning, and lasting organizational growth. She brings 25 years of experience in leadership development, helping leaders bridge the gap between formal training and learning to instill this vital thread into the DNA of teams. 

Featuring interviews with individuals who are experiencing first-hand the heavy bottom-line impacts of failing to invest in their people, Growth Through Learning explores Hannah’s book, Into the Hands of Leaders: Employee Growth through Learning.

Discover the importance of prioritizing employee learning and development

• Why leaders need to be the “heart” and build people-centred relationships with their teams;
• How cultures of fear directly derail cultures of growth;
• Why leaders need to stop “doing” and start “leading”;
• How to identify the pain points that highlight a flawed internal culture.

Important resources from the episode

• Right Kind of Wrong: The Science of Failing Well by Amy Edmondson

Connect with the leaders who share their stories on the show

• Robin Young, Director of Corporate Training Services at Durham College in Toronto
  
• Chantal McIntyre, Talent Strategist, Workplace Consultant, and Leadership Coach
  
• Len Switzer, Associate Director, Partnerships & External Relations at Michigan Technological University
  

Connect with Hannah

• Books and Articles to order her latest book, Into the Hands of Leaders: Employee Growth Through Learning
• Learn about the programs that help leaders and organizations develop a growth through learning orientation
• Learn more about Hannah’s work 

Follow and listen for free on your favourite podcast listening app!

Show Transcript

[OPENING THEME MUSIC IN]

HANNAH: When I look at where we are today, I see the need for organizations to be more resilient and adaptable as change continues to come at us from many fronts.

Leaders and their teams struggle to balance a desire for short-term results with the need to build cohesive, effective teams that will sustain growth into the future.

Employees are disconnecting from work and quietly looking for alternatives, as the impacts from the pandemic continue to reverberate.

Well-designed training courses only go so far in addressing the many challenges leaders and their teams face. Our ability to learn and adapt is what will see us through.

So what happens when leadership prioritizes short-term results at the expense of long-term growth and learning?

[MUSIC RISES]

This is Growth through Learning – a 6-part series that anchors employee learning and team development into the hands of leaders. It bridges the gap between formal training and learning that’s embedded in the DNA of teams.

I’m Hannah Brown.

In this first episode, we’ll address what’s happening on the ground when organizations focus on getting things done at the expense of other priorities, leading to short-term gains and compromising long-term growth.

[MUSIC OUT]

So why does learning and development need to be prioritized anyway?

To survive and grow, organizations need to build their organizational capability, which requires learning and development at an employee level and team level. Leaders and employees need a learning mindset and teams need learning as part of their DNA.

Organizations need the ability to adapt to changing environments, which requires creativity and innovation, and the resilience to deliver long-term value and sustained growth.

When organizations fail to build capability through a learning mindset, team culture, and with organization support, they become one of the many companies that don’t survive and don’t exist past 15 years.

Let’s hear from various leaders and HR professionals to get a sense of the state of things.

ROBIN YOUNG: So the culture around us is top and bottom-line focused.

HANNAH: That’s Robin Young, Director of Corporate Training Services at Durham College in Toronto. Reflecting on his past roles and experience, Robin has seen how businesses function without a culture of learning.

ROBIN YOUNG: The goal is always to make more money. And so that’s the goal. And it’s push, push, push for this to the detriment of our people. Whereby we’re tasked with taking on so much work without hiring more people that most of our team is at risk of burnout.

Long hours of we say yes to everything and we’re going to take it on. Even if people are already working 12, 15 hours, days and are exhausted. And then mistakes happen. But it’s never really looked at, well, why are these mistakes happening? Maybe we need to hire more people, or maybe we need to stagger the work a little bit. Yet it’s well, this person fucked up. Now. I don’t trust them anymore. We don’t really look at the why. That’s been a big problem. You could hire more people, but again, top and bottom-line focus.

And so that creates, uh, a lot of stress for people. But I think the other thing is, is because there’s so many people who don’t get the opportunity to build proper people relationships with their managers. There’s a lot of people that I know feel stuck in their roles. They’re not growing. They do what they do. For the most part, they do it very well. And so that’s what we have them do.

So what I’ve tried to do with members of my team, if I find that they’re interested in something else, you know, we have coordinators who are interested in instructional design. So if I can get them to be the QA person on an e-learning module or something, to kind of give them some sort of taste for this other space, I’m going to do that…

HANNAH: Right.

ROBIN YOUNG: …because it interests them, it’s value for the organization. But I’ve actually been told to stop that because it’s taking away from the work that they should be doing.

HANNAH: Hmm.

ROBIN YOUNG: And I think that’s a miss because people are just going to see this as a job with no place to grow. And if we’re not investing in their growth, they’re going to leave. And that’s happened.

I think that’s kind of the environment that we’re in. And why I butt heads so much with my counterparts is because I try to kind of see that, well, you know, we’ve got to invest in these people more than just buying them lunch once a month.

[MUSIC FADES IN]

HANNAH: Robin sees the value of learning and development for his team, but when the priority from the top doesn’t focus on learning, there’s a disconnect.

When I think of people working in organizations, I think of head, heart and hand. The ‘top of the house’ executives, who set the strategy and make the decisions, are the Heads. The frontline employees doing the work are the hands. And leaders who manage teams hold the organization together. They translate what the head decides so the hands can implement it. In this way, they’re kind of like the heart.

[SOUND EFFECT OF HEART PUMPING IN BACKGROUND]

You could say as the heart, a manager pumps the blood through the body – they maintain the flow of information.

In a more abstract way, as the heart, managers hold the feelings for the body – for the organization. [SOUND EFFECTS OF SMALL/MED GROUP CHATTER] Organizations are institutions – things. As the heart, leaders are the human side of the organization, bringing it to life for their employees. Leaders are the lynchpin and translate the high-level strategy of the organization [SOUND EFFECTS OF CHEER/APPLAUSE] into a lived experience for employees. [SOUND EFFECTS FADE AND STOP]

Being this heart in an organization that’s focused on output – getting results – can be challenging.

[MUSIC STARTS]

CHANTAL MCINTYRE: The pressure on leaders to meet those immediate organizational goals will overshadow the long term benefit of employee development.

HANNAH: Chantal McIntyre knows this all too well. As a Talent Strategist, Workplace Consultant, and Leadership Coach, she’s worked with many organizations that are focused on results and long-term sustained growth. This requires resiliency in the short-term and adaptability in the long term. But that’s not what’s happening in the real world.

CHANTAL MCINTYRE: And my bonus, my compensation plan is not to develop other leaders, it’s to meet these immediate organizational short term goals. So unless the organization is long term in terms of their reward, very, very few leaders will make the time because that’s not how they’re rewarded.

ROBIN YOUNG: ​​I have seen those leaders, and I have worked with those leaders. For them, the metric of success, I would assume, is not based on people. It’s around performance and business results. They want to see that business, measurable business change, but you can’t get that measurable business change without people.

[MUSIC FADES OUT]

HANNAH: Robin and Chantel both draw attention to the lack of focus that leadership has on employee learning and growth. Without creating space and prioritizing learning alongside getting results, the real problems are not being addressed.

Leaders and organizations address surface issues and provide surface solutions – like thinking more training will increase employee capability and lead to higher performance. In reality, formal training only goes so far.

Even well-designed and implemented programs often fall short of changing behaviour and improving performance. This is because courses occur outside of the team environment. After taking a course, employees return to their work and are plunked right back into their team environment, which may or may not support them in applying what they’ve learned. 

As Robin pointed out earlier in the episode, employees are prone to making mistakes when they’re overworked. They’re told to meet goals and objectives, and focus on the task at hand. This is a workplace with an output-focus and there is little room to learn new skills and grow. It’s ‘sink or swim’.

There is no room for error, it feels too risky for leaders to coach and develop their employees. Instead, leaders double down on what they know and have been successful with in the past – focusing on getting the work done to meet the demands right in front of them. They, and their employees, focus on output.

[MUSIC STARTS]

HANNAH: Organizations need to be resilient and adaptable to meet the demands of our economic, social, and political climate. Yet, organizational resilience and adaptability start with employee resilience and adaptability. When learning, we are open to new ideas, we’re curious to hear new perspectives and we look for creative solutions to problems.

Research has shown, and we probably intuitively know, that the most effective way to learn, even though it’s the hardest, is through making mistakes. 

Yet in a workplace that’s focused on getting results, meeting deadlines, and achieving short term objectives, there’s no time and no room for making mistakes. The stakes are too high. Leaders are so busy focusing on the objectives, they’re not focused on their team. They’re prioritizing tasks over people.

It’s an environment where employees don’t feel cared for, don’t feel listened to, and aren’t learning from mistakes. Of course they’re not learning – they’re afraid of even admitting mistakes happen! 

So what happens when leaders adjust their focus by listening to employees and caring for them as individuals alongside focusing on the tasks at hand?

[MUSIC FADES OUT]

LEN SWITZER: So it’s all of that whole continuum of how to interact with people to gain that trust so they kind of rally around you.  

HANNAH: Here’s Len Switzer, Associate Director, Partnerships & External Relations at Michigan Technological University.

When leaders don’t interact with their team members on a personal level and develop trust, employees don’t try new things and don’t learn, innovate, and grow in their role.

LEN SWITZER: Come back to this late last company I worked for. When I came in, you know, everyone was petrified to communicate about a mistake because they thought they were going to get fired immediately.

I remember being there maybe six months and somebody brought that up in a meeting. I’m like, look, if any of you ever even heard me raise my voice at any of you when you brought an error to me. And they all look around, go no. I’m like, guys, we know we’re going to screw up. You know, if we screw up the same darn thing 30 times, yeah, we got an issue, but what happened, let’s fix it, and let’s move on to the next thing.

So it took a while for that, because they were so used to hiding their mistakes and not, you know, afraid of retribution that they weren’t used to that. So it took time to convince them that I wasn’t going to come down with a hammer on them for making those mistakes.

And so again, you got to show that empathy, you got to listen, and then not necessarily let them make mistakes, like to hurt themselves or hurt the customer or anything like that, but you trust them. So you say, hey, I’m going to go do this, try to fix this.

And I saw my predecessor in another job micromanage that decision and say, well, I don’t think that’s right. You shouldn’t do it that way. And when I would look at a problem, I’d go, well, I probably would have done that different, but I think it’s safe. I don’t think it’s going to screw the customer up, go for it.

HANNAH: Like Len, Robin’s experience also shows the impact of leading with trust and empathy versus leading with a culture of fear. Failure in an output-focused environment leads to less trust, more fear, and more mistakes. Failure in a supportive environment focused on growth alongside getting results leads to openness, learning, and employees learning from those mistakes that they do make. 

ROBIN YOUNG: I’ve had six people tell me, if you leave, please take me with you. Or please…

HANNAH: Yeah.

ROBIN YOUNG: …don’t ever leave, or otherwise I’ll have to leave. But it’s not because I made necessarily friends with these people. It’s just that when they’ve messed up, for example, there’s one employee who is struggling right now. And she used to report to me, she now reports to someone else. If she messes up now, she lies about it. She hides it.

Where it used to be if she messed up something, she’d come to me and say, hey, I messed this up. Can you help me fix it? And then we’d fix it. Now she’s too afraid. The culture of fear with failing, I mean everybody fails. 

HANNAH: Mmm-hmm.

ROBIN YOUNG: We just have to make sure to not do it again. But that’s the difference that we find ourselves in right now that’s created a bit of a not great environment.

[MUSIC STARTS]

HANNAH: What Robin is speaking to is the importance of the relationship between the leader and the employee, and creating space for learning. When leaders prioritize output above all else, the mistakes employees make hinder efforts instead of being an opportunity to learn and innovate.

Ultimately, performance suffers. Employees can’t do their job effectively, and the one thing leaders want – results – becomes elusive.

Employees aren’t learning – they’re not gaining new skills and not increasing their capability. Leaders can’t delegate to their team because they don’t have the skills they need. So leaders step in to do the work themselves, and of course, there’s no time for them to take on the work of ‘doing’, when they need to be leading.

As I referenced earlier in the episode leaders can’t be the hands when they need to be the heart.

Of course this isn’t sustainable. Leaders realize their employees need new skills and they see training as the answer. As opposed to looking internally – at the culture they’re creating.

[MUSIC FADES OUT]

ROBIN YOUNG: I can speak personally to this when I’ve worked more in house, but as a leader of a team in L and D, sometimes you don’t understand why the request for training has come in and…

HANNAH: Mmm.

ROBIN YOUNG: …it’s hard to champion that if you don’t believe in it yourself. And I’ve…

HANNAH: Right.

ROBIN YOUNG: …definitely found myself in that position to try and understand the why. Oftentimes learning is decided to be learning without a needs assessment being done.

HANNAH: Yes.

ROBIN YOUNG: We know there’s a problem and therefore we will just throw training at it as…

HANNAH: Yup.

ROBIN YOUNG: …the answer.

HANNAH: Yes.

ROBIN YOUNG: And I would say a lot of clients come to us for that too, having just decided that training is the answer and we know the danger of that. We can say yes. We can say sure, absolutely, we can make that training for you. It doesn’t matter if it’s the best training in the world. If it’s not the actual solution to the problem, then it falls back on us. The training must not have worked.

HANNAH: Well-designed courses only go so far in addressing the many challenges leaders and their teams face. So is training really the answer? It can be, but it’s only part of the solution.

When we do look to formal training, the HR and Learning and Development teams need to have the design skills and resources to effectively support leaders and their teams. 

Let’s go back to Chantel, who brings an HR perspective specific to small and medium-sized organizations.

CHANTAL MCINTYRE: The leadership, mentoring, coaching, development happens organically because they’re doing the work together more closely, more often…

HANNAH: Ahh. OK.

CHANTAL MCINTYRE: …organically. There’s that transfer of learning. And I do agree that in larger organizations, for sure, positively, and maybe even small to medium, I haven’t seen a lot of L and D, but I have seen for myself, my own lived experience, when I’m in an organization as an HR leader, leaders will look to me to train their team, help them get the coaching and training that they need. So they do depend on HR, if there’s no learning and development organization.

And I’ve been tasked with, oh, in the last company I was in, there were 250 employees or something. So, oh, yes, Chantal, so you’re responsible for training and development. You train the leaders so that they can grow leaders. And so HR often is in the position of the leaders will depend on them. But many HR people don’t have a learning and development background, so then they’re tasked with, oh my goodness, how do I outsource this? Or how do I supplement the leaders?

And for myself, I mean, that started 15 years ago where I had to be organizational development plus training and development plus HR plus, plus, plus, plus be a coach. So that’s what happens in terms of the leaders are like, this, they’ll throw it over the fence, in terms of this is yours to take care of and be responsible for. I’ll show up and I’ll do a little speak at the beginning and maybe show up, but you’re gonna do the rest. [LAUGH] But then you’re right, it’s not sustainable, because if the leader doesn’t own it, then nobody on the team is gonna own it.

[MUSIC FADES IN]

HANNAH: So why aren’t leaders “owning it” as Chantal points out?

In a workplace that’s focused on getting short-term results, leaders struggle to balance immediate demands with long-term growth.  

In part, this stems from the leader’s identity. We all start as individual contributors. Before leading teams, we were the experts in our field and praised for our work and a job well done. Our identity was as an expert.

When leading others, leaders need to stop doing the work and enable their team to do it. They need to lead, not do.

If leaders continue to do the work, they develop a ‘hero identity’. It can feel good to have the answers and ‘be in the middle of putting out fires’. They feel important and think, “I know how to do this. I’m the best person to do this work. I’ve done this hundreds of times and I know I’ll be successful.”

But the hero identity isn’t sustainable. These leaders work long hours, are highly stressed, and don’t feel like they can ‘unplug’. This stress extends to their employees who then also feel burnt out. They aren’t developing new skills, aren’t learning and growing, so start to question their role and future in the organization. 

Often leaders don’t realize how they’re contributing to the problem. 

[MUSIC FADES OUT]

ROBIN YOUNG: I’ve done needs assessments for organizations where in having these one on one interviews, I find out, well, actually, you know, there’s one or two people at the top that are causing a lot of this struggle to enhance performance. And they don’t even really realize it. It’s just their metrics of success don’t necessarily mesh with the rest of the team.

But it’s created this environment where people are anxious, they don’t feel connected to the person at the top. And it’s had a lot more people come to me kind of figuring out, well, what does this mean for me? They feel unsafe in their roles. What does this mean for the future of things?

And it’s, you can say you have this amazing culture, which they believe that they do have. Amazing culture, everyone’s super happy, everyone loves coming to work. Actually no, because you haven’t taken the time to actually find out what people are thinking. And so, you know, we have turnover because of that.

HANNAH: Leaders often need a pain point to realize their role in perpetuating the problem. Robin’s example of turnover is a common pain point leaders have in an output-focused environment. Chantal highlights this further. 

CHANTAL MCINTYRE: Like usually it’s pain, some…

HANNAH: Yeah.

CHANTAL MCINTYRE: …kind of pain where they get an insight that, oh, I, you know, I could probably have retained more people or had less pain here. So for example, I’ve lost, you know, five people on my team. The exit interview says it’s because, you know, I’m the common denominator. What do I need to look at here? So usually…

HANNAH: Yeah.

CHANTAL MCINTYRE: …a pain point like that, or it’s through some kind of insight that they have through coaching. So what if they’re willing and open to be coached or get exposure to some kind of training themselves, where they start to learn about the data and how beneficial it might be for them to refocus on…

HANNAH: Yup.

CHANTAL MCINTYRE: …we or team building, then I see a shift.

[MUSIC STARTS]

HANNAH: When leaders embrace their role in employee learning and development and prioritize growth through learning alongside getting results, the culture shifts. In an environment where people are prioritized, things like high turnover and fear go down.

When leaders spend the time to make their team feel like the workplace is a good home for them, team members develop and grow. The leader and the team’s ability to learn and adapt is what will see organizations through.

[MUSIC FADES OUT]

ROBIN YOUNG: There’s a common gap where we don’t necessarily take the time to know the people on our teams. Who they are and what their personal goals are, professional goals are, and being able to link those back to strategic priorities.

So if we can make that connection and people see where they fit into the bigger picture and they see that the value, a, that they’re adding to the company, but b, how that also adds value to them and their own goals, we get a more engaged workforce. I think that’s something that is often missed, making that link.

[CLOSING THEME MUSIC STARTS]

HANNAH: In an output-focused environment, employees struggle to work effectively. There is little room to gain new knowledge or develop new skills. Leaders have a critical role to play in supporting formal training programs and importantly, in embedding learning into the fabric of their team culture.

This is a growth through learning leadership approach and it includes coaching and developing employees. This is not the responsibility of human resources, and employees can’t do it on their own.

Growth through learning requires a learning mindset, and a team culture of learning. It requires organization support for leaders so they can coach and develop their employees successfully. It is through a growth through learning leadership approach —at a team level—that organizations can engage employees, innovate, and develop organizational resiliency and adaptability. It’s through team cultures of learning that organizations can maintain sustainable growth and extend their lifespan beyond 15 years.

So how do leaders adopt growth through learning? On the next episode, we’ll look specifically at the leader’s role and how their behaviours can block a culture of learning, leading to short-term output instead of long-term growth.

CHRISTY BILLAN: There’s something around control, right? And that telling style, when it boils down to it, to me, comes back to control and feeling like you need to have your hands on everything. And the only way to do that I think is by telling and being really on top and almost like micromanaging the work of the team. And so when I started to reflect on how things were going, right, I felt very busy and overwhelmed. And the root of that was like because really, I was causing this issue myself.

[MUSIC CONTINUES]

HANNAH: For a more in depth analysis of why we need growth through learning instead of short-term results, check out my book, Into the Hands of Leaders: Employee Growth through Learning, published by Hambone Publishing in November 2024.

To learn more about how to nurture a learning mindset and fostering a team culture of learning, head to my website, hannahbrown.co.

Thanks to Mary Chan and Katie Pagacz of Organized Sound Productions, who produced, sound designed, and edited this podcast.

And special thanks to Chantal McIntyre, Christy Billan, Len Switzer, and Robin Young, the voices you heard on the show.

I’m Hannah Brown. And until next time, remember – organizations that grow, grow their people.

[MUSIC OUT]

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