Locating Opportunities for Learning
When your employees reach the advanced learning state, they are keenly aware of what's going on around them. They are mindful of their progression in their jobs and what it means for both their immediate and long-term futures. They are on red alert for opportunities to better themselves. Indeed, when your employees are in this heightened state of awareness in the workplace, they are open to any and all learning situations. They are not only delighted when learning opportunities come their way, but they make things happen by creating their own opportunities.
Looking Outside the Work Environment
As a coach, encourage your staff to look outside the immediate work environs for materials to advance their skills and enhance their performances. Learning opportunities abound in so many places beyond you, your coaching efforts, and the immediate workplace. You should point your employees to good books and magazines on subjects pertinent to their jobs and special skills. Depending on what you and your team need and want, the reading materials could concentrate on subject matter ranging from highly technical skills to professional and leadership skills.
Colleges and universities offer relevant courses on technological advances, leadership tools and techniques, and just about everything else related to the workings of business. Keep your eyes open for these learning opportunities and match them up with your hungry employees in the advanced learning state. Also consider taking advantage of the many seminars and workshops available which offer a vast array of business-related subjects pertinent to managing and working in the corporate environment.
Again, finding the right employee for the right learning moment is part of your job. And if this means sending an employee from the New York office to a seminar on cutting-edge computer skills in Los Angeles, you might consider committing to it. That is, if you truly believe that attending will make a positive difference for you and for your employee — one that justifies the expense and time away from the office and the job.
Remember show and tell in grammar school? Well, so much of coaching is a variation of show and tell. That is, you seize on any and all opportunities to impart business and life lessons, on the spot and in real time. These are the most powerful kinds of lessons.
Looking Inside the Work Environment
There are learning moments less costly than expensive seminars and the like. It doesn't cost any company dollars for you to instruct your employees to talk to the people whom they encounter in their daily grind on and around the job. Tell them to listen to customers, to coworkers, and to peers in other departments of the company. Convince them of the benefits of hearing what others have to say on business matters ranging far and wide.
Many men and women are successful businesspersons because, they say, an important and influential person or persons gave them some advice or showed them some technique that was instrumental in advancing their careers. Of course, these influential persons are often mentors within the organization, or good coaches like you, but sometimes they're outsiders. That is, they're persons who just happened by that made substantial and positive differences in their lives.
When you grow your employees' skills to the point where they are self-confident and accomplished at navigating around workplace hurdles, you've got candidates for advanced learning. Seek to broaden their learning opportunities with books, seminars, mentoring, and more.
There are many people out there with much to offer. But they're not going to come to you; you've got to go to them. They need to be drawn out. So, when you tell your employees not to be shy about asking questions of you (a basic tenet of a coach's communication), you should also extend this advice further. Tell your employees to network. Encourage them to talk to people within the organization and on the outside, too. Talk, question, understand, and learn.
