We live in an uncertain world. There are two things in this world that we are ‘sure’ of: one is that nothing is sure and the other is that change is both the norm and is accelerating. The future is not an extension of the past – the old linear model of change does not hold (as if it ever did). The future is not predictable – even though many still live in the illusion that it is (ask any weather person who is the butt of many ‘predictable’ jokes). We can almost be sure that what worked for us in the past will not work for us in the future – an anxiety producing thought indeed. In order to survive and have an opportunity to thrive we must learn together. One illusion we still hold onto is that learning involves the individual. The world is too complicated and complex for the individual to remain the primary learner. We must learn to learn together. Organized groups of two or more must learn to learn together (organizations that do this are called ‘learning organizations’). There are many ingredients that need to interact in order for this type of team learning to move from potential to actual. Today I invite us to consider five of these ingredients.
The first ingredient is an assumption of competence. A learning team is rooted in this assumption – each member is competent and each member can develop overt and latent capacities that will enable and support the team in its quest to learn together. Traditionally, learning has been rooted in an assumption of incompetence. Competence is supported by an encouragement-based learning model (appreciative inquiry is one such model). Incompetence is supported by a discouragement-based learning model (a competition vs. a high achievement model is a discouragement-based model). However, an assumption of competence is not enough.
An assumption of competence needs to be accompanied by curiosity. Watch any young child learn and you will see curiosity in the flesh. Curiosity is rooted in inquiry. Questions inspire searching and seeking. Some questions beg answers, others beget more questions. Because teams don’t know, they are more likely to be moved to experimenting – just as the child does.
Some experiments are not successful and thus the third ingredient forgiveness is necessary. The question is: What have we learned? The question is not: Why have we failed? When we name what we have learned we can then celebrate. I am thinking of the team that experimented and ended up costing the company millions of dollars. The president of the company met with the team. The members just knew they were going to be fired. The president told them, no, he was not going to fire them – he just spent millions educating them. The question he had was ‘What did you learn?’ He also told them that they would be fired if they ever repeated that failure AND if they ever stopped experimenting.
Perhaps the major tap root that sustains a learning team is trust. Trust, as we know, is not easy to give. Each person interprets/defines it differently and each person offers trust or withholds trust based upon the many seeds that were planted in his/her life – seeds that took root and seeds that were nurtured into living plants that make up the garden that is their life. We do seem to offer more trust to people we know; so learning teams need to spend time ‘getting to know’ one another; it does seem that telling our story and honoring the stories told increases a person’s willingness to trust another.
How do we get to know one another? This leads us to the fifth ingredient: community. A community of learners implies that ‘we are in this together’ and that when we come together we honor and celebrate differences. As a community of learners we strive to enhance one another’s gifts-talents-abilities-potentials so that each person’s ‘weaknesses’ become irrelevant. Communities are supported by a powerful vision, mission, core values, and guiding principles. Communities are supported by clear agreements and by commitments to serve so that each person grows and so that the team, as a community, grows.
Consider that these ingredients enable the learning team to not only learn together but to evolve together and co-create together.
Searcher-Seeker 