Growth Through Learning

Episode 3

Creating a Safe Space for Growth 

How can a culture of learning engage employees and lead to lasting growth?

In the fast-paced and ever-changing modern workplace, it can be difficult for leaders to relinquish control – risking the satisfaction of upper management – and allow employee happiness to share the stage with immediate results.

However, employees who don’t feel supported or connected to their leadership and workplace become disengaged. Today, employees are reclaiming their power. They do just enough to get by while searching for new opportunities with better-aligned values. As a result, that laser focus on how much gets done ends up delivering short-term wins but fails in the long run.

In this episode, host Hannah Brown explores why fostering a positive culture of learning is just as important as ensuring immediate results. As the insights and experiences of these people-focused leaders highlight, stronger teams lead to lasting growth, and that strength is achieved through attention to six vital factors, the Growth Equation.

Learn how proven leadership practices and strategies can lead to both employee satisfaction and bottom-line benefits:

  • What leaders can do to influence the motivation and performance of their employees;
  • How fixed and growth mindsets impact both leader and employee success;
  • The need for curiosity and vulnerability in the creation of great team culture;
  • How to strike a leadership balance that upholds both organizational and individual goals.

Important resources from the episode:

Connect with the leaders who share their stories on the show

  • Robin Young, Director of Corporate Training Services at Durham College in Toronto
  • Julianna Morris, People Excellence and Academy Leader, Porche Cars Canada
  • Christy Billan, Director of Small Business Lending Products, Farm Credit Canada
  • Adam Stephens, Director of Marketing and Community Engagement, The Humane Society of Kitchener Waterloo & Stratford Perth

Connect with Hannah

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

Show Transcript

[OPENING THEME MUSIC IN]

HANNAH: In today’s fast-paced, ever-changing work environment, many leaders are holding on tightly to control, trying to keep upper management happy, and equating their own success with how much they can get done. The focus on immediate results often means that bigger, longer-term goals get sidelined.

In the last episode, we dove into how this output-focused mindset impacts leaders, but what does it mean for employees? Many are quietly disengaging, doing just enough to get by, while searching for new opportunities where their values align with their company. They’re no longer willing to stick around in places where they don’t feel supported or connected.

Employees are reclaiming their power, and today we’ll take a closer look at their perspective—how a culture of learning can re-engage them, build stronger teams, and lead to lasting growth.

[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. This is episode 3.

[MUSIC FADES/OUT]

Employees are looking for meaningful work in organizations that have values and missions that align with their own. Employees want passionate leaders who trust them and have confidence in them to learn and grow as they contribute to achieving the team’s objectives and long-term goals.

Employees don’t want to just do assigned tasks and feel like another cog in the wheel. It lowers their morale, motivation, and performance. This all leads to turnover in teams and in organizations, which we discussed in episode 2.

So how do leaders assess the current situation they’re in, to understand what each employee needs to do their best, so they can contribute to the team’s goals?

Leaders can use what I call the Growth Equation.

[MUSIC IN]

The Growth Equation assesses what employees need to be successful in their roles. I’ve used the framework for many years in learning and development to determine if a training course is the best solution to address a performance need. It’s also a great resource for leaders to understand how they can support their employees’ growth and development.

There’s a visual reference for the Growth Equation on my website at hannahbrown.co/resources/podcasts. Look for the episode 3 page.

[PAUSE]

There are six factors employees need to be successful in their job. Picture the six factors with an ‘X’ or multiplication sign in between them. As a mathematical equation, if one factor is missing, performance and growth will be zero.

Growth is a function of: Direction and Feedback, Tools and Resources, Environment, Knowledge and Skills, Motivators, and Innate Ability.

The Growth Equation highlights that leaders and employees have different levels of influence over each factor. Leaders have the most direct influence on the first three factors – Direction & Feedback, Tools and Resources, and Environment. While employees have the most influence on the last three factors – Knowledge and Skills, Motivators, and Innate Ability.

The Growth Equation is also helpful as a lens to understand an employee’s experience in an output-focused workplace. 

[MUSIC FADES/OUT]

When leaders give their employees feedback and direction, ensure they have the resources they need, and create an environment of caring, employees have what they need to do their best work.

ROBIN YOUNG: I see the benefits of being someone who knows and feels like my manager cares about me and my growth, that I have trust and autonomy to do my best work. And I think if you give that to people and you understand them, they’re going to do their best work. And inevitably, that’s what you want from your team.

HANNAH: You might remember that voice. It’s Robin Young, Director of Corporate Training Services at Durham College in Toronto, who you heard on our previous episodes.

ROBIN YOUNG: They feel trusted and that you have confidence in them that they have the space to fail fast and learn. I think these are really important things that help retain people as well…

HANNAH: Yeah.

ROBIN YOUNG: …otherwise you’re gonna lose them to someone else. For me, it’s important because it’s for their growth, for my growth, for the connections you make with people. And inevitably that trust allows us to explore different things and do new things with learning that we would otherwise have not done. And if I had not had that experience working with you, then I wouldn’t be where I am now.

It’s years of seeing what has worked and seeing what has not worked has led me to know how I want to run my team in it is based off of trust and autonomy.”

HANNAH: The environment factor in the Growth Equation is key to building the trust and autonomy that Robin mentions. Employees need a safe place to work—where they aren’t spending their time and energy worrying about making mistakes or protecting themselves.

By truly caring for their people, leaders can build trust, which leads to psychological safety for employees and teams. And when employees feel safe, they know their leaders trust their judgment to get the job done in the best way they see fit. That’s autonomy in the workplace, and it’s directly tied to motivation—another crucial factor in the Growth Equation.

Research on motivation, like the work by Richard M. Ryan and Edward L. Deci of the University of Rochester, shows that internal motivation—the kind that comes from feeling competent, connected, and autonomous—is the most powerful. But leaders also have a role to play in fostering external motivation, like rewards or even team support. Whether it’s a bonus or a bit of peer pressure, external motivators can work—but only when employees feel capable and connected. If they don’t, they’ll end up just going through the motions, disengaged, and uninspired.

So, what can leaders actually do to influence an employee’s motivation and performance in a meaningful way?

[MUSIC FADE IN]

This brings us back to the bigger picture. Achieving results is always the priority for leaders, employees, and organizations. But as we’ve discussed, when you focus too much on output—getting results at the expense of other priorities—you might see short-term gains, but at the cost of long-term growth.

While leaders have various obstacles that may prevent them from prioritizing the development of their team, such as a need to control, a lack of time, or a lack of trust, research shows that such leadership significantly impacts a work environment both positively and negatively.

So what can be done?

[MUSIC CONTINUES]

There’s an alternative to an output-focused workplace. Learning is the key that unlocks this shift.

There are three areas to focus on, to achieve Growth through Learning. One, a Learning Mindset. Two, Team Culture. And three, Organization Support.

Let’s look at these three areas and consider how, when combined, they move leaders and organizations from short-term results to long-term sustained growth and prepare them for our complex and changing work landscape.

We’ll begin with nurturing a learning mindset, as the foundation for creating a Growth through Learning orientation. 

[MUSIC OUT]

In Carol Dweck’s book Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, she offers two mindsets – fixed and growth. People with a fixed mindset believe their talents and capabilities are inherently stable and unchangeable over time. They experience life as a series of tests that judge their innate abilities. Challenges are often avoided for fear of failure or feeling inadequate, leading to a tendency to stick with what they know and avoid risks that could lead to error, embarrassment, or criticism.

In contrast, people with a growth mindset believe their talents can be developed, and therefore, their capabilities are endless. They experience life as an ongoing journey of development, rich with opportunities for continuous learning.

As leaders, this growth and learning mindset requires curiosity. While curiosity comes naturally when we’re children, many of us lose our curiosity as we grow up and enter the workplace.

In the Harvard Business Review, research from Francesca Gino shows that at work, our curiosity declines the longer we’re in our job. When we’ve learned how to do our job, and without new experiences, we can stagnate.  

JULIANNA MORRIS: “The stagnation is exactly those individuals that are with time, they’re there, they’re producing, but are they evolving? Are they developing? Are they growing?”

HANNAH: That’s Julianna Morris, who heads up Porsche People Excellence in Training at Porsche Cars Canada. She’s been working in Learning and Development for the past 26 years in various leadership roles, and describes herself as a lifelong learner with lots of curiosity.

JULIANNA MORRIS: “Never stop learning. Like, it can’t harm anyone. So it’s about retooling, and I believe it’s taking what you have and refining it. And that is a skill set. And it’s a coachable skill set. Like, you know, I like what you do, would you do it just 1% differently or can you change this? And that to me is learning and growth, right, and developing.”

HANNAH: Curiosity is an important ingredient and while it’s something to foster in your team, having curiosity yourself can also make you a better leader.

Adam Stephens is the Director of Marketing and Community Engagement at the Humane Society of Kitchener Waterloo & Stratford Perth. He highlights why we need to nurture curiosity in ourselves as leaders and in our teams, to understand why things happen, and how they work.

ADAM STEPHENS: “Don’t be judgmental, be curious. My favorite quote is Henry Ward Beecher’s, compassion cures more sins than condemnation. And I feel like those are very aligned. Where, you know, being that curious learner, being that individual who wants to dig into things. You know, if somebody is snarky or snappy in the workplace in a day, there’s a reason for that. You know, and usually, in the process of being curious about those things will reveal what the actual issues are.”

HANNAH: Through a learning mindset and having nurtured our own curiosity, we can extend it to others through the team culture we create. 

[MUSIC STARTS]

Team culture is the second area of focus, when developing a Growth through Learning orientation and moving from output to growth. This shift to growth, enables us to respond to changing demographics, skills shortages, and technological disruptions. 

Although team culture can feel a bit nebulous, vague, and difficult to define, in the context of teams and organizations, I like the simple definition offered by Gallup, a global analytics and advisory firm. They say culture is “how we do things around here.”

Beyond this definition though, what makes a great culture?

In the book the Culture Code: Secrets of Highly Successful Groups by Daniel Coyle, he identifies these characteristics or skills to develop a great team culture.

Build Safety – establish a deep sense of belonging to the group, connection between team members and psychological safety.

Share Vulnerability – practice being vulnerable as Brené Brown defines, to build trust and encourage open communication.

Establish Purpose – create a shared purpose and vision the team can rally behind and provide a common sense of what they are working towards.

Applied to a Growth through Learning orientation, the first two characteristics, Build Safety and Share Vulnerability, are both central to nurturing a Learning mindset.

The last element, Establishing Purpose is central to shifting from an output-focused to a growth-focused workplace, where learning and employee growth are prioritized alongside achieving results.  

To create a team culture focused on learning, leaders need to embrace three complementary practices.

First, they need to commit to developing their employees alongside getting results.

Second, they need to care for their employees as human beings.

And finally, leaders need to embrace a coach-like approach to leadership.

[MUSIC OUT]

Let’s break down these three approaches, starting with the commitment to change.

CHRISTY BILLAN: “You need to create capacity for your employees to dedicate time to learn, right? And I think you also as a leader need to demonstrate your commitment to doing that.”

HANNAH: That’s Christy Billan, the Director of Small Business Lending Products at Farm Credit Canada. Continuing her story from episode 2, she now explains the need to commit to developing employees alongside getting results.

CHRISTY BILLAN: “Show that, hey it’s okay to take some time away to dive into something or to be slower on delivering something because it’s a new skill that you’ve just started to practice, and maybe it’ll take you twice as long the first few times. So I think to your point, it is also a culture of, you can’t strive for perfection. It’s like progress. And I think as leaders we need to create space and set the tone for our teams to feel comfortable in trying new and different things and learn by doing and trying and being okay to fail and creating that capacity. Because I think a lot of times what I hear it comes down to time, right? I think it’s a lot about, which is just the simplest thing, creating space for people to step away from their role and step into something new or try something new.“

[MUSIC IN]

HANNAH: Committing to developing employees, naturally leads to the second practice in building team culture – the need to care for employees as human beings – beyond the work they do, but who they are as people.

Caring for employees is at the heart of creating a supportive environment. That setting is conducive to learning, developing, and growing. When leaders are caring and compassionate with their team, they get to know them as people and learn about who they are, what motivates them, the tasks they’re most naturally skilled at, what new skills they want to develop, and what they’re insecure about.  

Let’s hear Adam Stephens’ perspective on the importance of caring on a human level.

ADAM STEPHENS: “It’s funny because when I talk with, you know some of my friends and colleagues about my experiences in leading people, something, you know funny kind of comes up where, you know, people will more than once it’s been noticed, they’re like, you know, they’ll say like, huh you kind of sound like a proud dad moment. And I think that it’s, you know, it really comes down to like really, like actually give a damn about your people. They’re not just human capital. These are individuals who have values and goals of their own. And it is imperative for us as leaders to be able to listen to those things and be able to champion those kinds of things. Like, it’s not that difficult to do that and then align that with the goals of an organization or company that you work for.

HANNAH: Adam reflects that the pandemic has shifted our views about the workplace. People aren’t commodities that organizations can hire and fire as they need.

As we pointed out at the beginning of the episode, employees want to work for organizations where their values are aligned, and work for passionate, caring leaders who trust them. This is an environment with a team culture that values their employees as individuals. These employees are fully engaged, motivated, and are giving their best. They aren’t quietly looking for alternatives.

[MUSIC OUT]

The third complementary practice to building team culture, is the leader embracing a coaching identity. Let’s hear from Christy about her experience leading with a coaching focus.

CHRISTY BILLAN: “I think the biggest, at least from my experience, struggle I’ve had and I would say, as my job of, has evolved over time, as being a leader of individual contributors now to being a leader of leaders, your learning investment as a leader shifts, right? And how you do that and. And the role matters too, right? Like when I think back to my experience on our national operations team, that job was very, it was a large team, I think it was 25 people but…

HANNAH: Oof.

CHRISTY BILLAN: …expect to do the same thing over and over again. And so for them, really like clarity consistency, policy procedure was, the doing was super important. And that’s where we started utilizing tools for, you know, in the moment support, and trying to, tofeed was really important for this team to like transact quickly. Whereas now in my role, I would say it shifted more to coaching, right? I’m working with…

HANNAH: Yes.

CHRISTY BILLAN: …a higher level professional. The expectation is that I’m coaching these people through situations and the place where I’ve had challenges in that coaching space is really when, when I’m working with a non-performing individual, someone who maybe doesn’t have the doing nailed down and isn’t quite getting the being, and so it actually has, you know caused me a great deal of, you spend, you know 80% of your time with the person that’s delivering 10% of the value and that’s…

HANNAH: Right.

CHRISTY BILLAN: …sort of a backwards way to approach that. And so I think there’s something there with like, you know coaching is, I think the best way to lead…

HANNAH: Yup.

CHRISTY BILLAN: …for professionals.”

HANNAH: Adopting a coach identity can often change a leader’s view of themselves. For this identity to change, leaders need to be uncomfortable with the status quo – how they interact with their people, how they’re leading, or their team’s performance. They also need a vision or a sense of how they can lead differently. Once they are uncomfortable enough with how things are, and see an alternative, leaders can take the first steps to lead differently. This can be working with a coach or completing a training course to develop their coaching ability.  

[MUSIC STARTS]

Once leaders understand how and want to lead differently, they need support.

None of us work in a vacuum. We work in organizations with cultures and standards, policies and procedures. Our ability to nurture our own learning mindset and foster it in others, depends on the organization in which we work. A leader’s efforts to lead with coaching and create a culture of growth and learning can be helped or hindered by their organization.

Here’s Christy again, on how leaders can be supported.

[MUSIC FADE OUT]

CHRISTY BILLAN: “What we saw in our most recent studies was that leaders’ capacity and optimism, engagement was waning compared to individual contributors, who maybe don’t bear the brunt of all of the changes…

HANNAH: Yes.

CHRISTY BILLAN: …coming from both ends. And so there’s something there about how do we support leaders in leading employees through change and maintain their resiliency through the tumultuous times because…

HANNAH: Mhmm.

CHRISTY BILLAN: …it is weighing a lot and I can sense that in the leadership of our organization.”

HANNAH: Adam has similar thoughts with his philosophy on supportive leadership.

ADAM STEPHENS: “I think that there’s an interesting challenge that exists in you know, many if not all levels of leadership right now where, how do you take an organization’s goals and values and then how do you take the individuals goals and values and you you’re able to create, effectively, you’re, you know, part of what you do is you become a conduit between those two things. And so being able to understand, what motivates those specific individuals that you’re entrusted with. You know, and being able to tie those back to those organizational goals and, how do we align that with the individual’s goals, while maintaining productivity at the same time?”

HANNAH: Adam touches on an important idea—one that ties directly into fostering a Growth through Learning orientation. As he points out, leaders are the conduit between the organization’s goals and the needs of the team. It’s about balancing both sides to ensure long-term, sustainable growth.

This ties back to episode one, where we talked about leaders being the heart of the organization. Just like the heart pumps blood through the body, leaders circulate energy and purpose from the ‘head’ of the organization—those that set the strategy—down to the ‘hands’—the employees doing the work. But they do more than just transmit information. They hold the feelings of the organization, bringing it to life for their team members.

When leaders understand the importance of this role, they can act with empathy, supporting their employees, not just in achieving results, but in their personal growth and development. And when organizations support leaders in this effort, they’re better able to champion their teams, creating a culture where learning and development aren’t just nice-to-haves—they’re central to how the organization operates.

[CLOSING THEME MUSIC STARTS]

HANNAH: Now that we’ve explored how trust, autonomy, and psychological safety drive employee engagement and performance, on the next episode we’ll look at how leaders can take these concepts even further by fostering a truly collaborative team culture.

We’ll hear from Christine Helgerman’s experience, who you first met in episode 2. How did shifting from a control-focused leadership style to a collaborative, team-driven approach, create success for her team?

CHRISTINE HELGERMAN CLIP: I always feel a sense of accomplishment, when we kind of have something that we really need to tackle and it can be some really difficult situations. I feel proud that I don’t have to own all of it on my own shoulders. Like I feel supported.

[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 developing a 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 Adam Stephens, Christy Billan, Julianna Morris, 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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