How Leaders Drive the Cultivation & Curation of A Learning Culture

AKA - Why you need leaders as champions if you want your people to become lifelong learners

“This training program and strategy looks excellent, David. Nice job.”

It was one of my first learning projects, not long after my colleagues prevented a Y2K-powered disaster, I was young, and so my manager’s praise felt really good. Especially since I had worked really hard on this project!

“So, tell me all the ways this program could fail.”

Excuse me? Did my learning leader just ask me if my program was a failure?? Did I do something wrong?!

Realizing the impact of his words, he explained, “David, you have to realize that the success or failure of all learning and development initiatives does not sit solely within the quality of the program. Rather, it takes a confluence of factors to help manage the behavior change we want to see in our people. For example, who are your change sponsors, and how many are from the leadership team?”

Change management. Leaders as change sponsors. I wasn’t prepared to answer that question like I can now, as someone certified and experienced in change management. With the benefit of hindsight and that experience, I would have agreed because I have learned that leaders are a keystone in building a culture of continuous learning and behavior change.?

Why Leaders Matter

For my colleagues in L&D, tell me if you’ve ever heard one of these statements from a training participant:

“Sorry, I know I registered for the class, but my manager needs me to finish this high-priority assignment.”

“Oops! Was that training scheduled for this Thursday? I have a teammate who is out that day and my director said I need to cover for them.”

“I wish I could come, but my supervisor said we don’t have time for training right now.”

“My boss changed my priorities this week so I now have a meeting during your class, sorry.”

“Can I get a copy of the PPT deck? My department head said that at my level I should be able to learn this on my own time.”

I could give you several dozen more similarly stated ideas, but notice the common thread that binds each statement together: my leader is prioritizing something over and above my development.

Let that last statement sit with you a moment and deeply consider its import and impact. The leader in question for each of these very real people has de-emphasized and de-prioritized the development of their person, people, or team. That’s not how (most) leaders view the situation. They tend to frame the situation as having to prioritize the good of the business, their customers, their ongoing operations, their corporate metrics/goals, or similar. And to be clear, there is nothing wrong with having a customer-first attitude or having a goal-driven department or team - unless it comes at the expense of your people. Remember from earlier in our series when we learned from LinkedIn Learning that “employees who feel their leaders are committed to their learning are 94% more likely to stay with their company.” Yes, prioritizing the development of your people is that important.

These statements aren’t anomalies. I’ve had L&D colleagues report over 95% attrition for training at their companies - literally, they would have over 100 users register for training and only have 4 people show up! I’ve personally experienced attrition north of 60% in my past. The #1 reason from my colleagues and my personal experience consistently comes down to a lack of leadership sponsorship.

The researchers at Prosci (the developers of the ADKAR change management model) say that projects with “strong leadership sponsorship” have over twice the success rate of projects without it. Imagine if the well-meaning managers mentioned in those statements I shared were learning sponsors?

Engaging Your Learning Hero Leaders

Please note that this article isn’t a bash-fest on leaders (I’m a leader, too)! Instead, it is a sober and clarion call to all of us to ensure you work closely with your business leaders - at all levels - if you want to drive a culture of continuous learning and development. As I always like to do, let me share a few ideas and suggestions that have helped me in my career:

• Align your roadmap with the goals of the business: It sounds so simple, but it is incredibly effective; if you want leaders to sponsor learning, it absolutely helps to ensure your learning is focused on tackling skills, knowledge, and behaviors that directly help advance your business goals. Not only will this attract your leadership sponsors, this strategy has the added benefit that it reduces employee resistance as they can see the direct relevance of their development towards the achievement of their company’s success.
• Make big, bold bets: Don’t just say that your training will help achieve xyz goal, estimate how much it will help that goal. Have aggressive and auspicious goals - while remaining in the realm of reality - for your training. Announce those goals. Report on those goals. Be scrappy and adaptive to modify, iterate, and innovate to reach those goals. Remind leaders how past training has benefited their people and the company. A leader of a team of 10 people accurately views any time that their team spends away from the business as costly - show them what their investment will give them to win their sponsorship!
• Sharpen your instructional design skills: Be maniacal about quality, relevance, innovation, flexibility, and conciseness of messaging. Not every training must be live or in a classroom. Or an eLearning. Expand your thinking. Consider what experience you want your learners to have - the ideal experience! - and work backwards from that goal. Obsess over what tool has the best chance of helping your people meet their goals and the goals of the training. Quality breeds trust and sponsorship, so make it easy for your leaders to want to sponsor you!
• Develop a leader-first messaging strategy: Tell your leaders about training first, before everyone else. Give them the story; why the training is important, why it must happen now and not later, what the training will accomplish, and what you need from them (i.e., their active sponsorship). And why stop there? Consider training your leaders first, before everyone else, so they can witness its value first-hand, and so your leaders can act as sponsors by modeling the behavior you want and sharing their own insights when driving their people to take training. There is no better sponsor than someone who has experienced the benefits of training themselves and wants to share that experience with their team.
• Ask for what you need and be clear about the role of a sponsor: Last, but certainly not least, make it easy and obvious to your potential leader sponsors to be sponsors. It’s not enough for leaders to send an email, or to briefly mention, “Hey everybody, make sure you do this upcoming training.” Sponsors are visibly supportive of learning. They help their people manage task priorities so they can take training stress-free. They get support for their people in training so they don’t return to a crush of work that waited for their return. They help their people see the connection between training, company goals, and their professional development. They even remind their people to clear their calendars during training so they aren’t forced to multi-task or back-out of a training at the last minute. Telling your leaders how they can show up as effective learning sponsors will drastically improve your results.?

Notice that I haven’t included reward and recognition programs, leader sponsor videos, and similar ideas. If you’ve tried those ideas and they work for you, I’m happy to hear it. In my personal experience, however, those ideas don’t tend to consistently deliver the leadership sponsors you need to create a culture of lifelong and continuous learning. Thus, the list of suggestions I shared are those that I have consistently found beneficial.

Discussion

That’s enough from me - I'm more interested to hear your ideas, opinions, and suggestions! Please consider any of the following questions (and more) when you respond and share your feedback:

• What challenges have you had to overcome to earn leaders as sponsors of learning in your company?
• What strategies have you employed to earn leaders as learning sponsors? What have you found works more often than not? What tends not to work for you?
• What impact have you experienced when you’ve earned the sponsorship of your leaders? To your learning programs? To your learning culture?

As a reminder, you don’t have to be in L&D to participate. This is an inclusive space for all lovers of learning, regardless of your field, experience, background, or career level. Make sure to tag your friends and invite them to join the conversation. Let’s geek out together in the GrowZone, my fellow Learning Green Thumbs (i.e., those who are skilled at growing the careers of others through growing their capabilities)!

A Note of Clarity

Please note that the views I express are solely my own. They do not reflect the positions of my current or former employers. All examples I share are generalized or modified to protect confidentiality and the integrity of the experiences and organizations involved. Finally, I used ChatGPT to create images and edit, but I am the writer of all of my articles.