FROM MY ARCHEOLOGICAL DIG THROUGH OLD HANDOUTS

I am moving into a new office and used that move as an opportunity to shed books and materials from my 25 years in Organizational and Leadership Development. I bumped into some good ones.

I helped create the systems and structure to create a "learning organization" as an EVP of The Delhaize Group. I designed many a leadership retreat and as well as a leadership college and a hi-potential annual event and many other systemic approaches to learning across the various companies of the group.  Here are the principles that seemed to work to  have  impact on leaders that lasted into their future roles:

—Experiencing something again that refreshed, rekindled, reaffirmed their excitement about leading

—Learning with a team and giving and receiving support for learning

—Experiencing a free-flowing learning climate that made creativity and risk- taking into a learning 
   experiment not a life or death career moment

—Having  satisfying personal achievement during the learning--trying something very different that worked

—Broadening horizons with new people, new culture, new location

—Learning from feedback from others during the learning event

—Overcoming a low point in the experience and how to come back from it

—Having an intense experience which is vivid and deeply stirring enough to have a direct and lasting effect 

—Learning to learn from an experiential process that improves individual ability to learn from that experienc

—New learning that has an "aha" feel to it by guiding the learner to recognize patterns, see connections and  systems and their  interrelationships for the first time 

Training is very very very important for skills.
Learning is very very very important for top leader development

Some of the peak moments in my formal career were  designing a  learning experience and seeing the design do its work. The design carries the work and the facilitators/ teachers should be invisible and not needed by the end of the learning time together. It was so darned fun

Learning is inherently exciting and it's your job to keep your leaders excited about the business and about leading,

PS--I will be on Sabbatical in Mexico and will be on a personal retreat for the first two weeks.
I'll see you again on March 27th!