Does your organisational culture facilitate learning in your business?
12 minute read
As a trainer, I have the privilege of peeking behind the curtain of a cross-section of businesses. I get exposed to how they operate, their values and behaviours. There are 100 little hints about a business’s culture that show themselves in any training session with an external facilitator. They range from the short retorts people make, to how the team approaches training, how they respond to prompted questions, even what time they arrive, and where people sit in the room.
If you give any trainer 20 minutes in a room with a sales team, they can probably tell you a fair bit about the business in general. (On a similar note, I wrote an article a while back on what your staff meetings say about your business).
Across most businesses I’ve worked with, there are some consistent patterns. The primary takeaway for me has been that your culture largely dictates the success level of your training – not the other way around, as some might have thought.
Yes, the training itself contributes to a culture of learning – of course, because you’re making knowledge a priority into the business and investing in the team. Leadership training can nurture some elements of culture. The sales team working with an external facilitator can help boost motivation, get people focused on learning, and upskill the organisation in various areas. However, if the foundational culture is resistant to growth, and training is more ‘tick the box’ than a serious priority for development... What do you think a sales module will really achieve?
Most likely, a few training sessions will do little more than offer a quick boost of motivation before being thrown into the sea of “things we did that one time, and now we’re back to normal”.
Training is essentially facilitating growth. Growth is, by definition, change. And if you don’t have a culture amenable to change, then this is a problem far more significant than not having done an objection handling session in a while.
Don’t get me wrong, training is never a “bad” idea. But it is only one piece in the puzzle of successful business, and it plays best with others. Several values contribute to a holistic culture of learning in an organisation. When these values are in place and lived every day, external training sessions have much more of an impact. If they aren’t in place or could use some work, then building on them simultaneously while engaging a trainer is the best way to create a culture of learning.
Like most things relating to organisational culture, a culture of learning is not simple. It requires an intricate web of elements to balance harmoniously. We have different levels - the individual, team, departments, leadership and organisation as a whole – all with an impact. Were I to define culture itself in this context, I would go along the lines of consistent, shared and reinforced behaviours, expectations, priorities and beliefs. Accordingly, when we say there is a ‘good’ culture somewhere we are really talking about a conglomerate of hundreds or even thousands of things.
I won’t go into a hundred or thousand things here. In my experience, though, businesses that have a great culture of learning - and consequently, see the best results from training - have the following:
1. A culture of accountability
I would define this as a workplace where people are expected to take responsibility for their actions, acknowledge their vulnerabilities and mistakes, and maintain an honest approach to problems rather than sweeping them under the rug, avoiding them or finding someone else to blame.
A culture of accountability contributes to a culture of learning because we do away with fake pretences where some people are “untouchable” – on the contrary, it is understood that everyone, including leaders in the business, will make mistakes. This is necessary for the consequent idea that if you are accountable for your actions and you make a mistake, you can move forward and solve the problem.
2. A culture of “imperfectionism”
Did I just make that word up? I don’t know.
I want to capture the concept here that there is always room for improvement, period. Some might call it a culture of growth, or progress, or movement. The critical point is that we disregard absolutism – no one is a “perfect” salesperson, no one can say “I know objection handling already” or “I always close all my customers” (yes, really). And on the flip side, no one can say “I’m not a good phone salesperson” or “I’m just not good with X type of customer”.
A culture of imperfectionism dictates that no one has ever, nor will ever, reach perfection. But, as the saying goes, if you strive for perfection you might catch some excellence. A culture of imperfectionism presumes that those who aren’t performing can perform better, if they work on it; and those who are performing really well can maintain or exceed their current performance, so they shouldn’t get complacent either.
Here, there is no “golden goose” salesperson exempt from the rules because they have reached a level of perfection.
There is no salesperson who has given up on being beyond average because they "just don’t have it”.
There is no such thing as a “perfect salesperson” – but if people bring their work ethic, openness, positive attitude and self-belief to work, they can incrementally improve each day.
This really stems from the culture of accountability – first, I accept that my behaviours and outcomes are my own, and I separate those things which I can control from those which I can’t (thank you, Epictetus).
Then, I recognise that whatever hand I’ve been dealt, wherever my results sit, I can build on that. I can always work myself out of a slump; I can still improve even if I’m already doing well, or having a bad day, or whatever the circumstances may be.
This idea is congruent with Carol Dweck’s concept of the Fixed vs. Growth mindset, popularised by her research, writing and speaking. A growth mindset presumes that if I work hard, I can get better. It fosters resilience, learning and the idea that as long as you continue to try, you will improve.
A fixed mindset, on the other hand, presumes that each person has a certain capacity for success: Based on fixed qualities, like their natural talent or IQ or athleticism, they will reach a certain level and then that’s it.
With a fixed mindset culture, we lose the chance for learning, because people are often convinced that, unless they’re a trainee, they’ve learned everything required to do as well as they can in their role.
This person would see the process as:
Get job
Learn how to do job
Do job
When really, a growth mindset could add onto that:
Learn how to improve skills in job while doing job
Maintain an open mind in doing job
Always seek to do better than I did yesterday
A culture of imperfectionism strives for excellence with the understanding that we are all competing only with our former selves. You are never “done” with learning – knowledge and development are lifelong endeavours and this reflects across the business.
3. A culture of positivity
Obvious, but relevant.
If you have management insisting that all the customers suck and this is going to be a terrible month and no one will hit their numbers, all the learning and development in the world with the team will struggle to combat this negative energy. (Although, some mindset training here for management...)
If management decides that someone is destined to fail, that person’s destiny has now been written for them.
If management is inconsistent and emotional, unloading their personal emotional baggage onto team members and leaving people wondering what kind of mood they’ll be in each day, you will struggle to create a culture that has consistency on any level.
And if management does not set the tone for positivity, optimism and belief in the team, the team will not be successful. You cannot cultivate a culture of learning this way.
4. A culture of gratitude and celebration
Aligned with accountability and positivity, a culture of learning requires recognition. We have to, as Ken Blanchard would say, “catch people doing things right”.
Gratitude and celebration are a skill like any other. If there is an engrained habit of identifying wins and taking a moment to celebrate the team and the self when we achieve something, not only are people more motivated to learn, but work becomes a lot more fulfilling and fun.
If people are learning new things and then implementing that learning in practice, gratitude and celebration are in order – from management and the individual. A culture of learning requires us to recognise the process and the progress as important as (and sometimes more important than) the outcome, so being able to identify moments where we have improved is integral.
5. A culture of respect
This one is so important. Sometimes, when a manager takes the “friend” approach (check out Are you a manager stuck in the Friend Zone?) they lose the ability to earn respect from their team. Instead, they’re seen as the friend who hesitates to delegate tasks, make decisions, or keep people accountable because they want everyone to feel comfortable (and perhaps seek some validation themselves). They may be liked and respected as a person, but often this person is not respected as a leader.
When there is no culture of mutual respect – between a manager and their team, and also teammates with each other – there’s a problem. This leads to a lack of respect for the broader processes and business values.
Sometimes a lack of respect also seeps into how teams work with customers. I hate that this is relevant enough to include, but if there is gender bias at play (e.g. if in a male-dominated team, there is less respect given to females in the team), then this will often play out with customers too. Besides this being obviously problematic both within a team and culture, it’s incredibly likely that a “boys club” style team will pay far more respect and professionalism to male customers than female customers. This is where you see, for example, a couple where the female may be ignored or spoken to in a patronising way, and all questions addressed to the male – because in the business, that’s the way the culture operates. I won’t press on this point much more, but it’s also something that I’ve experienced – not often at all, but it’s happened – as a female sales trainer when working with some male-dominated teams. In other words, the respect dynamic among teammates and managers operates like a sort of mimesis for broader interactions with customers and others outside the immediate team circle.
Keep in mind, I don’t mean respect as blind acquiescence – people should be able to challenge their managers when there is a valid reason for it (important for accountability culture). Rather, a culture of respect is about everyone having a voice, everyone having something of value, everyone deserving to be heard. Respect for management to me is about being open to constructive criticism and feedback, seeking out and accepting guidance and support, and having a level of appreciation for the processes and priorities of the business.
When respect is arbitrary and inconsistent (or based on something ridiculous like gender or race or age or footy team), then it is almost certain that the approach to learning will be arbitrary and inconsistent as well. There will rarely be respect for new training processes or systems in this kind of environment.
A culture of respect, however, breeds openness. It encourages people to learn from each other, encourages the team to think about problems in different ways, to listen to each other, and to work collaboratively towards goals. It’s a beautiful facilitator of learning and development.
Summing up
There is no doubt to me that the elements above play a critical role in how successful any training program - internal or external - will be in an organisation. In the giant jigsaw puzzle that is business, culture and learning are not a problem to be solved, but areas to continually work on. Certainly, many of the elements above can be developed in part through learning and development, and as they flourish they circle back to support more learning and development, and so on.
There aren’t any “quick fixes” for organisational culture.
If you have a culture founded on respect, positivity, accountability, "imperfectionism" or growth, and gratitude and celebration, you're far more likely to prioritise knowledge and learning in your team as well. (Even if you don’t, knowledge and learning are likely to cultivate in this kind of environment organically.) And when knowledge and learning are foundational values in a culture, training no longer sits in a vacuum. It's not an arbitrary day or two where people pretend to pay attention - instead, it's a process integrated into the business.
Ideally, knowledge is reinforced beyond a training session, and learning is facilitated with additional mentoring, day-to-day coaching, and collaboration.
I would encourage you to ask yourself: What does the culture in my business look like? Do we have a culture of respect and accountability and positivity? Is learning important or something we pretend to care about without taking seriously? Why?
I’m a firm believer that everything flows from the top. (See also: A fish rots from the head, cutting the head off the snake, etc. etc.) Culture is defined and reinforced by leadership, and the influential members of a business that others look up to. If there isn’t a culture of learning, or positivity, or any of the elements referenced above, then one should look to the style of leadership in an organisation and the kind of psychological contracts created between employees and managers. In this kind of scenario, it is the leaders who probably need training and coaching the most.
There are always actions that can be taken to work on a business’s culture, but a culture of learning and excellence doesn’t happen by accident. Through thoughtful processes, leadership development, long-term vision, and real engagement with the current state of the business, leaders can begin to nurture the kind of culture where learning and development thrive, and employees can become successful – not just for a day or a month, but over the course of their career.
What do you think?
Sonia
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