#31 The Good, Bad & Ugly of Growing & Learning At Work

THAT MOMENT WHEN YOU HEAR

• “After working for 20 years, you would think he’d know better….”

• “I’ve been working here for close to a year - I don’t know whether I have grown or learnt much.”

• “I like thinking about what I am learning from the project - but nobody seems interested to listen. Now I just make my own notes.”

• “I started work here almost clueless but wow after just my first 3 months, I feel like I’ve done so much and learnt so much! Everybody asks me great questions here - it pushes me to think hard.”

…you’re in the Good, Bad & Ugly of Growing & Learning At Work

THINK // 3 insights from the field

😇 THE GOOD THING about most people at work is that they DO want to grow and learn - most people do not want to do dull work that leaves them stagnating and bored.

When our work contracts end, we don’t want to leave only having grown older - but not any better or wiser.

Growing in skill and mastery is part of well-being and flourishing. Growing in our relationships at work is a joy - so is growing in your ability to get results. It is a great feeling to be able to look back at our time at work and see how we have grown more skillful, efficient and effective at doing the work that we care to do well at.

If you look at Seligman’s PERMA Model of Well-being, what I described above is a sweet spot that brings together Engagement + Achievement + Meaning + Positive Emotion.

If I can be given protected time and space to concentrate and get in my flow of accomplishing a meaningful goal at work, I would feel happy and optimistic about how I spent my workday.

If I can do all that with the support of a few like-minded team members, it is a slam dunk in the Relationships bucket as well.

If you want to grow and learn regardless of what’s your current work(place) situation, a great way to kickstart things is to start finding your own intention to grow and learn as a person.

This can look like a daily or weekly reflective practice. It can be as short as 3 min or a relaxing 30 min.

Think of it as a personal check-in with yourself about how you are growing and learning as a professional. Writing it out helps you see the rhythm or pattern you are in that is working - and not working for you.

You can try whatever style or number of prompts you think work for your season. Here are some daily prompts I’ve used before:

• What events happened today? How did it make me feel emotionally?

• What am I grateful for? Who am I grateful for?

• Who have I helped today? And who helped me?

• What have I learnt today? What else might I want to learn?

• What did I enjoy doing/learning today?

• What do I want to ask for or get from tomorrow?

• What’s working? What’s not working?

Remember - everyone grows older but not everybody grows up.
Growing better, sharper, wiser, kinder - all that is a choice.

Start choosing to reflect on how you are learning and growing from work.

Do it consistently and it will make you an interesting force to be reckoned with as a professional.

🤬 THE BAD THING is we can unintentionally stifle each others’ growth & learning at work. Two types of team/organisational cultures would stifle growth and learning: the overly structured culture and its more under-the-radar cousin, the overly nice culture.

The Over-Structured culture

What it looks like:
Everyone feels highly structured, systematic, performance-focused, efficient and respectful of hierarchy in a meeting. But it can feel like everyone’s opinions might have already been predicted and pre-empted in multiple “meetings before the meeting” where people and situations have already been worked on, worked around, worked through. What gets served up in the meetings feels like a pasteurised, homogenised, well-managed set of opinons.

Why its problematic:
“Structured” can be the frosting we use to coat an over-baked cake of control. We may over-control a conversation because we are fearful of what could happen if people ask questions we cannot answer, share ideas we don’t know how to contend with or talk about mistakes we rather brush aside. We may over-control when we want to guard against any display of real emotions and thoughts about tough issues, explaining “let’s not open that can of worms” - a phrase that betrays we may see real dialogue about real issues as something unappealing and unwelcome.

At their best, the over-structured are really just people trying to keep chaos at bay, keep things in line, manage time, manage energy, manage agenda creep etc. Sometimes organisations who work in layered bureaucracies like parts of the civil service etc. might fall into this trap of over-prizing structure and over-policing anything “off-track”

At their worst, the over-structured, over-managed conversation is a form of active censorship and active clamping down of dissenting voices.

The Over-Nice culture

What it looks like: 
Everyone feels polite, agreeable with no dissenting or strong opinions in a meeting but they have multiple “meetings after the meeting” where they discuss how to “work around” people and situations.

Why its problematic:
Niceness can be the sugar-coating of polite smiles that hide a half-baked cake of unasked questions, unsaid ideas, unconfirmed assumptions, unseen tensions and unknown mistakes. All that information about what is not working/what can work better is what can make everyone in the team and the rest of the organisation much wiser - and if shared, can help us learn and grow.

At their best, they really are just trying to please each other and make each other happy. Sometimes organisations with noble aspirations like education, healthcare, charity work etc. might fall into this trap of over-prizing harmony and chastising truth-tellers for not being more tolerant, understanding, forgiving etc.

At their worst, their polite niceness is really just a veneer of civility that they wear while they can gossip (nicely out of concern, of course) about others in their private back channels and pass their own verdicts about what to do next in their private kangaroo courts. This is less of an Over-Nice culture and more of a Secretly Not-That-Nice culture.

Why do some organisations choose to be Over-Nice even if it hurts us and stops us from growing and learning?

• We want to avoid conflict: we have a mistaken belief that it is more important to “keep the peace” than talk about what is NOT giving us peace inside them.

• We want people’s approval: we think their disapproval or disagreement of us is a sign that we are “not good”.

• We rather “get along” superficially than actually be in real relationship with people: The idea of making our real feelings, thoughts and wants vulnerable to others is unnatural to us.

• We believe being nice keeps us safe from powerful or “scary” people. In fear-based places, niceness keeps the work going, the money flowing - and I will not sabotage my security.

• We rather motivate than hold people accountable. We can have a toxic nice culture where people can cry, hug, say the right warm things - and not follow through on commitments or continue behaving badly.

3 Downsides of having a culture that’s low on growth and learning:

• High potential talents leave when they feel unmotivated, unchallenged and uncultivated: The most talented people can be forces of nature who enjoy being tested and enjoy testing the status quo. They see challenge - even pushback - as a natural way to grow one’s abilities.

• New, creative ideas that can lead to significant changes are simply never shared: innovation happens in cultures that give safety and permission to each other to diverge from the norm - and to grow and learn from each others’ different perspectives, values and experiences.

• Slowness or refusal to discuss, learn from and act on problems eventually lead to crises: overly nice or overly structured cultures can take a long time to talk about, acknowledge, learn from mistakes and act on what’s not working. Organisations can enable low performers, bad actors and doomed projects for too long vs. just addressing the issues and quickly learning and growing from them.

😈 THE UGLY THING that kills cultures of growth and learning is really a combination of a lack of psychological safety and lack of performance standards.

If you look at Amy Edmonson’s famous 2×2 matrix (redrawn by Tanmay Vora below), you can see that for people to be in a growth and learning zone, they need to experience BOTH high psychological safety AND high performance standards.

The overly nice culture doesn’t navigate tough conversations around performance standards well and might even be surprised that it’s “niceness” can feel psychologically unsafe because people don’t know what you’re really thinking under the hesitant polite smiles. People cannot grow and learn if they feel they may be rejected or seen as “bad” for bringing up what is difficult, unpopular or uncomfortable.

The overly structured culture might have no issues talking about performance standards but they may “talk” about it behind a thick wall of bureaucracy, jargon, rules, policies and processes that make people feel emotionally disconnected - and thus unsafe. People cannot grow and learn if they do not experience the safety of authentic relationships, emotional resonance and permission for conversations/projects/people to be a “little bit messy” because that’s how people feel somewhat safer to connect as a fellow imperfect human being vs. a picture-perfect professional.

I know this is the UGLY portion of the typical GBU essay but let me end on a spot of achievable beauty and hope.

I totally appreciate that having a psychologically safe work culture that encourages your growth and learning may not be everyone’s current experience.

It is a privilege - and I didn’t always get to experience it for myself either even though I led my own organisations for years. I’ve had to do a lot of learning and growing - sometimes in an unnecessarily hard way.

What I have learnt though after all these years,
is that as long as you keep learning > growing > changing
yourself to find a better way,
you will eventually find that environment in others
- or forge that environment for yourself.

The Good thing I want to say to that is:
if you decide to seek, you will more likely find.

I get a lot of joy and satisfaction and plenty of growth and learning in my current team environment.

It is an outcome of things I had to forge and also people I had to find.

3 kinds of daily/weekly support we do in our team culture that help to build psychological safety & standards:

• emotional support x relational support: we practice the giving, receiving and experiencing of daily micro-bids of connection (e.g. daily lunches together, thanking, affirming, celebrating small & big wins, bonding over the office cat, sharing & parallel-processing personal memories, sharing simple acts of lightness that can look like silliness or joys)
  

• intellectual support: we practice being a safer sounding board for each other, learning to listen + ask + speak about what is true, meaningful, significant, purposeful or of value for us.

• practical support: we practice sharing, debating and improving processes that help us to focus, concentrate, do work more effectively so we can get better at accomplishing the most purposeful tasks and goals for the day/week.

You can’t fully grow and learn alone.

You grow and learn best with people.

And you can find your people - the ones who want to work joyfully and intentionally with you to create, curate and conserve healthier cultures of mutual growth and learning.

When you find it, take tender care of it - for it’s a very Good thing.

FEEL // 2 links to help you feel less alone

WATCH  Professor Amy Edmonson unpack how to create psychological safety at work

WATCH Timothy Clark unpack the 4 stages of Building Psychological Safety

DO // 1 strategy to try this week

Try doing a daily reflection to support your growth and learning. Pick any 1-3 prompts that work for you. Or design your own!

• What events happened today? How did it make me feel emotionally?

• What am I grateful for? Who am I grateful for?

• Who have I helped today? And who helped me?

• What have I learnt today? What else might I want to learn?

• What did I enjoy doing/learning today?

• What do I want to ask for or get from tomorrow?

• What’s working? What’s not working?