LEADERSHIP – By Charles Kirk
Shifting from individual-focused training makes an impact
How important is building highly effective teams in your organization? Is this on your company’s priority list? If it is, how is your learning curriculum designed to fully develop teams vs. individuals?
For this article, a team is defined as a group of diverse roles working together to solve business problems, deliver exceptional customer value and create a compelling customer experience, thus achieving organizational goals.
Workplace learning is generally rolled out at an individual level. It’s straightforward, without much focus to engage learners to work with team members in any form of
collaboration. While this kind of learning is certainly helpful to some degree, it doesn’t encourage collaboration or create engaging learning experiences.
When it comes to diverse team members relying upon one another, a more effective leadership approach to learning and development may be collaborative learning – team-based learning.
Diverse team development can be a complex process that is crucial for growth and success in any company. In today’s continuously changing business landscape, highly effective teams are essential for navigating challenges, fostering innovation and achieving short- and long-term organizational goals.
Team training offers unique opportunities for employees. Team training provides all the advantages of upskilling individual employees but optimizes them with team
dynamics to accelerate positive outcomes.
Let’s look at the benefits of team training.
Promotes Development as a Team
In a training setting, diverse teams learning together encourages problem-solving and discussion around the learning content. This plays a big role in learners retaining, understanding and applying the knowledge.
Instead of relying on self-motivation, the learner is motivated by the group’s success. The team shares a collective experience and expertise that can be tapped into for mutual growth and success.
Learning from and with one another broadens our perspectives, creates new insights and appreciation, and overcomes challenges that may have seemed insurmountable on our own. Learning from teammates also has a profound effect on our motivation and engagement. A supportive and collaborative team learning environment fosters a sense of belonging and camaraderie, which in turn boosts morale and overall job satisfaction.
By bringing together individuals with diverse roles, behaviors and skill sets, leaders can ensure a beneficial approach to problem-solving and decision-making while fostering a culture of continuous improvement. This builds a sense of accountability for one another’s growth and encourages continuous learning.
Builds Stronger Relationships
Team training automatically places individuals in a group. They interact during training, as opposed to completing coursework alone. This approach to learning, allowing teams to progress through a curriculum at a unified pace, allows team members to motivate and encourage one another, and increases engagement, inclusion (opportunities for every voice to be heard), learning retention and understanding.
When leaders foster these social benefits within a team unit, it brings the value of team-based learning directly into the workplace and impacts team dynamics in a powerful way. In addition, training a team offers a venue for professionals to interact differently with their teammates. It allows for meaningful workplace dialogue and enhances relationships, increasing social cohesion within the team.
Strengthens Collaboration and Partnerships
No matter what the subject area of training you are focused on, team members will practice applying soft skills such as critical thinking, teamwork, communication, problem-solving, conflict resolution and adaptability.
Having employees go through the experience together, discuss topics with one another, and impart frameworks for evaluating and applying techniques to their initiatives will expand their ability to work well together effectively.
Teams learn and adapt more quickly than individuals. When team members learn in an environment together, they can apply the skills, behaviors and knowledge they gain to the group’s real business work. Collectively learning new ideas and methods gives the team a common language and understanding to help them envision success and meaningful goals for their business unit.
Improves Culture
As companies adopt continuous team-based learning approaches, the way learning is delivered becomes a big part of overall company culture.
Team-based learning encourages communication across different groups at work and creates a feeling of camaraderie among teams. It can be used to group together individuals who may not necessarily interact day-to-day and create feelings of team spirit and pride.
Grouping together learners in teams makes for a far more engaging learning experience. By training the team unit vs. the individual, leaders are embedding the importance of the team.
Purposeful Networking
Expanding networks within the organization by engaging with colleagues in different roles gains exposure to diverse perspectives. It also impacts their future professional development by establishing strong social ties within professional networks.
Collaborative learning can take the form of group projects, team simulations, workshops or team based online learning applications, creating a rich learning ecosystem that benefits all participants. Gamification and friendly team competitions accelerates cohesion, inclusion and team pride.
The key to achieve the benefits of team-based learning is for learning leaders to design a curriculum fully aligned with team development needs, not individual needs.
Conclusion
Team-based learning is a powerful yet often underestimated aspect of professional development. Many organizations consider the team the fundamental component to their success. Learning leaders can gain a competitive learning advantage by making the team, not the individual, the fundamental learning unit in their organizations.
If you haven’t designed team-based learning opportunities in your workplace, you will see the incredible learning and business value when you do.
Charlie Kirk is senior director, field force effectiveness, for Argenx and a member of the LTEN Board of Directors. Email Charlie at ckirk@argenx.com or connect through linkedin.com/in/charleshkirk.
