Successful organizations are learning organizations

Successful organisations are pre-eminently organisations with a positive learning culture. Forming high-performance teams and learning & development go hand in hand and reinforce each other. Trust is the common denominator—the reason to invest in L&D and trust.

Trust is not given naturally. Children develop trust in their relationships with their parents. That is called attachment, and it works throughout your life in establishing relationships with others. It offers you a sense of security and safety as an adult.

Challenge for management

Trust in teams is also not given naturally. The challenge for management is to cultivate and safeguard that trust. That is not optional. Successful organisations are characterised by teams that can work well together in a culture of trust. This also appears to be a condition for becoming a learning organisation; Mutual trust facilitates a positive learning culture.

Of strategic importance

Therefore, good leadership focuses on restoring, maintaining and strengthening trust; it is strategically vital. That’s not easy. Conflicts, skewed power relations, status differences, lack of openness and negative group thinking to cause mistrust and result in dysfunctional teams. So the question is, how do you get the engine of confidence going?

Eight steps

Eight steps should strengthen mutual trust within a team and contribute to a positive learning culture.

1. Invest in the informal system

A team needs to make time for informal contact so that people get to know each other better and mutual trust and respect are allowed to grow. Colleagues who have gotten to know each other better and have confidence in each other will be more inclined to ask work-related questions and offer tips, thus establishing an informal learning system.

2. Provide a safe environment

Team members should feel that they are working in a safe environment that respects their differences and where people feel supported by colleagues and protected by their supervisor. This includes the right to make mistakes (and learn from them) and a culture where colleagues help each other perform their tasks. This also leads to people with more self-confidence wanting to take on new challenges and learn skills.

3. Promote open dialogue and clear communication

An open dialogue between team members and the willingness to communicate and share emotions are also necessary conditions for trust. Criticism is never personal but always task-oriented and constructive, intended to improve each other.

4. Focus on a common goal

Effective teamwork is impossible without a jointly supported and articulated plan, which all team members are aware of and which the team pursues. Based on that goal, clear L&D choices can then be made about onboarding new team members.

5. Formulate and share the core values

High-performance teams have a highly articulated and shared vision and mission that reflect the organisation’s core values and on which new members are recruited and socialised through various channels, including L&D.

6. Put the common interest first

In a strong team where cooperation is paramount, the team members know how to separate their interests from the team’s interests and subordinate their own goals to those of the group. In such a setting, people are also more willing to share their (newly acquired) skills and use them for their work.

7. Promote systemic alertness

A strong team is aware that it is an open system that operates as a node in different networks, with permanent exchange and influence between ‘inside’ and ‘outside’. This alertness concerns threats and opportunities and acquiring new knowledge and skills, whether or not via a targeted package of L&D.

8. Encourage shared leadership

In a high-performance team, there is much room for individual initiative and individual responsibility without people being judged harshly for mistakes. Personal leadership development, among other things, also fits into this picture.

Teams or organisations designed in this way facilitate cooperation and engagement and a positive learning culture in which people are prepared to take on new challenges and use and share their acquired skills with others.

Success with #workwithtrust

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