TeamLearning

A framework for an agile, team-internal, continuous process

TeamLearning is a workshop-based approach to improving learning in teams. The aim of the approach we have developed is to ensure continuous, independent learning in the team in accordance with the team-specific learning needs. TeamLarning anchors the continuous preoccupation with two questions in everyday life:

1. What do we need to be able to do / know in the team in order to be successful in the future?

2. How do we develop this ability / knowledge as a team?

TeamLearning thus makes a decisive contribution to:

• Value performance and achievement of business goals by building the necessary, team-specific skills,

• Further development of the learning culture by establishing continuous learning processes in everyday life, and

• Sustainable employability through targeted support of the further development of all employees.

TeamLearning also lets the manager actively shape the learning experience of the team. TeamLearning can hence be an answer to the up- and re-skilling challenges in the context of digital transformation.

Background

Our clients are becoming increasingly convinced that the traditional approaches to further training (including face-to-face training, assigned online courses) will not be able to master the necessary up- and re-skilling of a large part of the workforce. Specificity and dynamism become the core challenges: With formalised and centrally developed learning offers, it will not be possible:

• To map the ever-greater specific focus of roles, tasks and working methods and the associated specific learning needs,

• To keep pace with the dynamics of change, with which topics (e.g. technology), the company and the entire industry are evolving.

At the same time, new forms of working are inexorably found in all organisations, which - to a different extent - reflect the guiding principles of agility and increasing self responsibility. Last but not least, the massive increase in the importance of the home office leads to completely new challenges for employees to organise themselves. More autonomous forms of learning necessarily go hand in hand with more autonomous forms of working. This increasing self-control is not only limited to the individual, but teams also become autonomous learning communities that develop the specific skills that are crucial for the success of their own team.

Aspiration and Approach

With this in mind, we developed TeamLearning as a framework for an agile, team-internal, continuous learning process and tested it with various clients - among them was one of the largest public employers such as a highly innovative industrial group. TeamLearning aims to make contributions of great strategic importance to the organisation in three dimensions:

From Push to Pull

By transforming the team into an autonomous learning community, TeamLearning replaces the push-mode, with which HR departments continue to "push" their well-intentioned offers towards teams and often bother rather than support. Thanks to the increased freedom of the team to define which of their learning objectives are most important and how these can best be achieved (“pull”).

Manager

In order to take on this responsibility as a team and to be able to seize the opportunities that come with it, TeamLearning takes a simple approach to the self-directed further development of the team and supports the manager in fulfilling their three-fold role in relation to learning - namely to be a learning role model, learning creator and learning supporter. 

Reflection

TeamLearning is primarily a long-term reflection process that focuses on two questions:

1. What do we need to know / be able to do in the team in order to be successful in the future? Hence, what are our learning goals as a team?

2. How do we develop this knowledge / ability as a team? What are the learning routines that work best for our team?

By anchoring the common reflection of these simple and at the same time extremely challenging questions in everyday life, the approach takes up the guiding principles of meta-cognition and at the same time translates them into a pragmatic, everyday approach.

Learn-Cockpit as Element of Control

Dealing with these key questions of "what" and "how" is documented in the Learn-Cockpit, which becomes the central control instrument for the joint further development of the team. The individual entries on the Learn-Cockpit define individual learning projects and specify:

1. What do we want to learn? What are our learning goals?

2. Why do we want to learn this? Why is the topic relevant? What do we expect from it?

3. How do we learn this and how do we incorporate what we have learned into our work?

The Scrum Board-like structure that can be mapped both physically with post-its and virtually (e.g. with MS Planner, MS Tasks, Trello, Miro, Mural)

• Provides an overview of the learning objectives and the chosen approaches at any time.

• Makes success visible.

• Encourages reflection and discussion about learning in everyday life - individually, in pairs, in a team or across team boundaries.

• The fact that the learning cockpit shows how much learning actually takes place in everyday life was found by our pilots' participants to be both illuminating and extremely motivating. In this way, in particular, confidence in one's own ability to develop (self-efficacy conviction) grows as an elementary pre-requisite for successful learning processes.

Learning Hacks for the TeamLearning

With their own learning hacks for TeamLearning, the teams receive specific suggestions as to which learning methods can be used. The aim is for teams to discover, define and develop their specific approaches with which the respective team can best learn. The learning hacks are a starting point for this and are in particular an invitation to find your own team-specific learning routines and continuously optimise them ("our own learning hacks").

Introduction Process

TeamLearning is introduced through a series of workshops, for which there are developed workshop formats (handout for managers, presentations, videos) so that managers can introduce and control the process themselves. The focus is on two events that are based on the two key questions:

1. “WHAT”-Workshop: Clarification of the question: What do we have to know / be able to do in the team in order to be successful in the future? - So what are our learning goals as a team?

2. "HOW”-Workshop - Clarification of the question: How do we, as a team, develop this knowledge / ability? - What are the learning routines that work best for our team?

During these two workshops, the Team-Learn-Cockpit is filled for the first time. The learning cockpit is then reviewed and adjusted regularly, e.g. once a month, as part of regular team meetings, and the overall process is reflected upon and methodological improvement options are discussed. Central questions of this regular pragmatic review (time required approx. 30 minutes once a month) are:

1. Reflection on the learning plan: where are we currently? What learning goals have we already achieved? What may stand in our way? Should we adapt the learning goals (e.g. add new goals, add other goals to the "Current" column, move goals to the "Done" column, put less relevant goals on hold)? What concrete next steps should we take?

2. Reflection on team learning as a whole: What are our experiences with team learning? How do we want to adapt the process if necessary? Which ways to learn (learning hacks) work well for our team? What do we want to adjust if necessary?

Digital Implementation

The entire process can be implemented in a face-to-face, virtual or hybrid way. Microsoft 365 in particular offers excellent possibilities to support team learning with digital tools and thus to use the team's future digital work environment as a shared learning environment at the same time.

Results

TeamLearning is accepted by very different groups of employees, across hierarchical levels and traditional separations of “white vs. blue collar”. Aspects emphasised again and again are:

1. Building self-efficacy and confidence in one's own development ability, individually and as a team.

2. Visible anchoring of learning in everyday life through an explicit process.

3. Clarification of priorities with regard to the multitude of possible learning objectives.

4. Clarification of the most suitable learning routines for the respective team.

5. Strengthening the role of the manager as a learning role model, learn creator and learn supporter.

TeamLearning can thus create the essential prerequisites for mastering the challenges of profound up- and re-skilling for broad groups of employees and for anchoring future-oriented learning paradigms in everyday life.