Training: A Bridge to Knowledge and Growth

Published on 27 October 2023

Written by Martin Hinshelwood

5 minute read

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In any organization, the skills and knowledge of a team can determine its success or failure. But what happens when a team is identified as deficient? How do you as a leader address the issue before resorting to drastic measures like firing? The answer lies in training and fostering a continuous learning environment.

The Power of Training 💡

Before rushing to conclusions about a team’s competence, training offers a powerful solution. It provides a broad foundation of knowledge that can enhance the skills of the entire group. However, it’s important to recognize that not everything taught in training will be remembered. In fact, we might only retain 20-25% of what we learn in a class. But that 25% is spread across all the capabilities taught.

Key Benefits of Training:

Exposure to multiple topics: Even if a team only remembers a small percentage, they are at least introduced to key concepts.
Starting point for further research: The knowledge gained in training enables team members to know where to find more information when they need it.
Demonstrates organizational commitment: Investing in training shows employees that the organization is committed to their growth and success.

Personal Example: In my experience working with various teams, I’ve found that training acts as a catalyst for curiosity. Teams may not master every skill during the session, but they are more equipped to continue learning afterward.

Rebuilding a Dejected Team 🛠️

However, there are cases where training alone won’t solve the problem. What if your team has already become dejected or feels stuck in their roles? I’ve encountered situations where employees felt “unemployable” because they hadn’t learned anything new in years. When individuals stop learning, it’s often because the organization has made them feel like their efforts won’t make a difference.

In such cases, the solution is not just training—it’s about rebuilding confidence and encouraging continuous learning.

How to Rebuild a Dejected Team:

Slowly introduce new learning opportunities: Don’t overwhelm the team. Start with one new capability at a time and allow them to see the value of what they’ve learned by applying it immediately.
Create a feedback loop: Ensure that for every new thing they learn, they have the opportunity to apply it. This reinforces the connection between learning and its practical benefits.
Encourage small wins: Success breeds confidence. Celebrate even the small victories to help rebuild morale.

Personal Story: I once worked alongside someone who had stopped learning because they believed they wouldn’t be allowed to use what they learned. Over time, we slowly reintroduced new capabilities to the team. By allowing them to immediately apply their newfound knowledge, we started seeing a shift in mindset and performance.

Adapting to Technological Evolution 🔄

As technology continues to evolve, staying stagnant is not an option. Early in my career, I worked as a .NET developer, constantly moving between companies that were adopting the latest technologies. When I realized that my current organization wasn’t willing to evolve with the latest version of .NET, I’d move on to a new company that was embracing change.

Why Continuous Learning Matters:

Keeps you employable: In a fast-paced industry, continuous learning is key to staying relevant. I maintained my employability by consistently learning and adapting to new technologies.
Leads to organizational growth: When an organization fosters a culture of learning, it grows along with its employees.

If your team or organization is not adapting to new technologies, it may be time to reassess the situation. Encourage your team to embrace change, and if your organization won’t evolve, it may be time to look for one that will.

Fostering a Rewarding Environment 🌱

Learning should be rewarding, but that doesn’t always mean financial compensation. There are plenty of ways to reward your team for learning and growing without monetary incentives.

Ways to Foster a Rewarding Learning Culture:

Freedom to try new things: Allow your team the flexibility to experiment with new ideas and technologies. Even if they fail, the process of experimentation can lead to innovative solutions.
Freedom to fail: Failure is an inevitable part of learning. What’s important is that your team feels safe to fail and learn from those experiences.
Celebrate successes: When a team learns something new and successfully applies it, celebrate that achievement—whether it’s a small or significant victory.

Example: In my own career, I’ve seen how allowing teams the freedom to fail often results in unexpected breakthroughs. Sure, there may be some dead ends, but the lessons learned along the way far outweigh the temporary setbacks.

Fix the System, Not the People 🔧

If you find that your team is disengaged or unwilling to learn, the issue may lie in the system, not the individuals. People naturally want to learn and grow. It’s when they feel stifled or believe their efforts won’t be valued that they lose motivation.

Steps to Fix the System:

Assess the organizational culture: Is there room for innovation and learning, or is the organization stuck in its ways?
Encourage continuous improvement: Make learning a priority and ensure that your team feels supported in their journey.
Lead by example: As a leader, demonstrate your own commitment to learning. Show your team that you’re also willing to evolve and grow with them.

Advice: As a leader, you have the power to fix the system that is holding your team back. Create an environment where learning is valued, and you’ll see a shift in team morale and productivity.

Conclusion: A Learning Culture for the Future 📚

Building a learning culture within your organization isn’t just a “nice-to-have” feature—it’s essential for long-term success. Training is a great starting point, but it’s the continuous opportunities for growth, the freedom to experiment, and the safety to fail that will truly transform your team.

Encourage learning, adapt to new technologies, and fix the system when it’s broken. By fostering a culture of growth and innovation, you’ll unlock the full potential of your team.

And remember, learning isn’t just about acquiring knowledge—it’s about applying it in new and exciting ways. If you enjoyed this blog and want to dive deeper into Agile, Scrum, or DevOps, feel free to reach out and book a coffee chat with me through Naked Agility ☕.

So the question is, what can a leader pragmatically do with a team that is identified as incompetent, right, but identified as deficient in some way? Before you resort to any kind of firing, there’s plenty of things to do. You may want to bring in training. Training is a good way to broad pace some knowledge across a group of people. They might not remember everything that they learned, but I do find, although we might remember 20 to 25% of what we learned in a class, we learn that 25% is spread across all of the capabilities that you maybe learned. Maybe there’s 30 topics, or let’s say there’s 25 topics, and you remember 1% of each of those topics. That 1% of the total course in each of those topics that you remember enables you to know where to go look, where to go find that additional information.

As long as the people that you’ve got have some kind of willingness to do things themselves, discover, right, then you can just broad paste some training. Perhaps applying professional Scrum for software developers, right? Get some broad paste of these modern engineering practices across the team. At least they’re understanding them and thinking about them, and they can go do additional research on those topics. It shows commitment from the organisation on updating.

But if they’re already in, I guess I would say, a dejected state, I worked at an organisation in the UK, another bank, and they had… I worked beside somebody who believed themselves to be unemployable because they hadn’t done anything new in four years. That kind of depressive, dejected, they’re already unhappy but don’t know what to do about it state. You might find that over time they learn not to learn, right? They stop learning, they stop figuring stuff out because they’re like, “Why bother if I’m not going to be allowed to do anything?”

So you need to build that back in slowly. You need to start encouraging them to learn new things. It might not be that you encourage them to learn; you might say, “You need to learn this new thing so we can do this new capability.” Have them learn the thing and then do the new capability. Have them learn the thing, do the new capability, suggest they learn the thing, drop in the new capability, right? So then they’re expected to… it has them have that feeling of, “If I learn it, I get value from it,” rather than, “If I learn it, I’ll not get value from it because nobody’s going to let me use it.”

So you have to start building back in that capability into the team, into the whole organisation, right? Because people don’t get that way out of the box. Most people that I have ever worked with, most teams, most people that I’ve ever worked with, are interested in learning more about their field unless the organisation has beaten it into them that they’re not going to be able to use anything they learned.

I spent my early career as a .NET developer, hopping between companies because I would go to a company because they were using .NET too, and then I would be working there for a couple of years. About halfway or three-quarters, you know, a year to 18 months in, .NET 3 would become available, and I’d be starting to learn that technology and then asking them, “So when are you going to use this new technology?” And they’d be like, “Maybe in 3 or 4 years.” And I’d be like, “Okay, I’m job hunting then for somewhere that’s pulling in .NET 3.”

Then I’m going to go work with that, not .NET 3. When .NET 4 comes out, I’m going to be learning that new technology, and then if my organisation isn’t willing to change, then I’m going to change, right? Change your org or change your org. I think that continuous move into technology maintained my ability to be employable, my ability to learn and grow my knowledge and career. I personally wasn’t afraid to switch between companies, but lots of people are, right?

So it can be beaten out of them very easily. That was through a number of organisations, investment banking as well as other stuff. But you need to create an environment within which people are rewarded. That doesn’t mean financially, but rewarded for learning new things and figuring out new ways to do things. Do you give people the freedom to try stuff out? Do you give them the freedom to fail?

Doing something about doing new stuff is… you might find things that don’t work, right? Well, yes, we can do it this way. No? Okay, well, this bit doesn’t work. We’re down a dead end; we need to backtrack a bunch and then go down a different route. There’s some waste in that, but the waste that you get from that is often overshadowed by the clever and interesting ways that you solve those problems and the capabilities that those ideas bring to the organisation.

You don’t open out new markets, new capabilities, get new users by just staying in your lane. You have to be continually switching lanes and figuring out what the best way to solve a problem is. So if you have a team that you take over as a product owner or as a development manager or any way you come into contact in leadership with a team, if it feels like they don’t feel they’re allowed to learn, that they’re allowed to use new things, that they’re allowed to do stuff, you need to fix that problem in your organisation. Fix the system, and then you’ll start seeing a difference in the teams. You’ll start seeing a different vibe, a different capability, a different interest in solving problems in clever and interesting ways.

Thanks for watching the video. If you enjoyed it, please like, follow, and subscribe. I always reply to comments, and if you want to have a chat about this or anything else, Agile, Scrum, or DevOps, then please book a coffee with me through Naked Agility.

People and Process Personal Resilience and Change Discovery and Learning Continuous Learning Team Performance Change Management Technical Leadership Organisational Change Agile Leadership

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