“Tom helped us work on the ‘deeper layers’ – reflecting on our own performance as individuals and as a team. I learned a lot about my team-members, the challenges we are facing and how to overcome them.”
– Anke Aidam, Global Learning Leader, Signify (Philips Lighting)
Like many L&D leaders, Signify’s Global Learning Leader Anke Aidam was struggling with how to move past an old view of learning that was holding her team back from creating more strategic value at Signify. Many of her team’s stakeholders were still attached to inflexible competency models and an emphasis on formal technical training. She had a sense of how the learning function needed to evolve in a changing environment, but it was also clear that a mindset shift was needed first and foremost–both within her team and beyond.
Through a series of team and 1-1 coaching sessions, we worked together to explore existing beliefs and assumptions about learning and development and where these views come from. We reflected on how they show up in our work and where they are limiting our potential for creating more strategic value. This included exploring the emerging regenerative paradigm in L&D, where our focus shifts from directing performance with best practices to building continuous learning capability and culture across stakeholder systems.
A key aspect of our approach was to help the team embody the integration of work and learning. Our sessions were not presented as trainings or team-building exercises. Rather, they were framed as working sessions where we came together to develop new value-adding strategies while consciously developing ourselves in the process. For example, we used frameworks to build strategic thinking capabilities as we worked through pressing challenges. We also created space to reflect on how we were working together as a team and how we were practicing critical skills and capabilities through our work.
An important outcome of our work together was a new strategic vision for L&D which the team presented to key stakeholders. Part of this vision included new ways of engaging with stakeholders, strategies for supporting experiential and social learning, as well as leveraging data and new technology to build the organization’s capacity for continuous learning and development.
