#596 3 ways teams can learn when they are not together

0:00Hi, my name's Sarah and in this squiggly shortcut I'm going to be talking about how do you borrow brilliance from the people that you work with. In particular, I'm going to talk about three ways that you can learn and grow from the people in your team and in your organisation, in particular when you are not in the same place. So there is lots of discussion at the moment about maybe what younger people might be missing out on when they're not in the office. So people talk about this idea of learning by osmosis. You know, you're just you're sitting next to someone, you're in the same conversations, those overheard conversations and how helpful they are for learning, like learning how things get done, learning maybe what not to do.

0:49and you know that was definitely my experience like when I started working more than 20 years ago that was definitely a big way of learning for me but one of the things that I feel that we are getting wrong is feeling like we have to go back to old ways sort of revert back to old ways for that learning by osmosis to happen rather than thinking about okay well in a world where hybrid working is much more possible and has lots of advantages where you've got global organizations organizations that are like ours that work where everyone pretty much works remotely we still want that learning by osmosis to happen across the team we want everyone to borrow brilliance from each other but I don't think we need to rely on is everybody physically being in the same room or the same place for that to happen so we need some new ideas we need some alternatives we want the outcome to be the same but perhaps the process to be different so here are three ideas that I've come up with and I'd love to know other examples that you might have other ideas that you might have based on your experiences so my first one is watching someone work now initially that does sound a little bit creepy but really what I'm talking about here is I want people to show their workings.

2:08I don't know about you, but when I was at school, particularly in things like maths, you know, we were often told like, show how you've worked something out. Because then even if you get the number wrong, at least you've shown your workings. And I think when you see people's process, that's often where you do a lot of that learning by osmosis. So that could be things like joining calls, where you're just there to shadow, or you can be there silently to sort of just watch and like listen to the conversation. Even things like, and we start doing this much more in our team now, going online, so joining a virtual call at the same time.

2:47And if you're, let's say I'm amending a document, a proposal for some learning that we're going to do, and actually somebody in our team watching me make those changes. Now, initially that does feel admittedly a bit uncomfortable and awkward. And I'm probably thinking, I don't know if I really want to show my workings because it always feels a bit messy and you might get something wrong the first time. But I think once you get used to doing it, you can just see how everyone learns much faster because of it. And then the next time that person in a team is doing one of those learning proposals, they've sort of seen how I've done it.

3:22It doesn't mean they have to do it in exactly the same way,

3:25Helen:but perhaps they picked up some hints and some tips or some things that they kind of hadn't thought of. So I think we've all got to get better across a team at sort of showing our workings, being unapologetic as well about the fact that that will feel a bit messy will probably take a little while for us all to get used to but actually ultimately is really helpful and giving each other the permission to say to each other oh can I just can I see you do that can I watch while you write that can I see how you might phrase that email or how you would approach that meeting can I join that meeting. So that's the first action, show your workings.

4:04Helen:The second action is I think it is even better if you want to borrow brilliance from someone in your team is if you can work with them to support them on something that matters to them. So this might be a priority, a project, or actually it could be something loads smaller like a niggle or something that's annoying that needs to get fixed. If you can volunteer to work with someone that perhaps you wouldn't normally work with or who you just think they're great I feel like I could learn a lot more from them is there a way of you know you making that happen? You taking the initiative and you creating that opportunity sort of volunteering kind of putting your hand up for something that just means you'll get to spend more time with them you'll get to see that person in action more frequently than you do today.

4:54Helen:And that's definitely something I've done like during my career. It's almost sort of spotted those people and just thought I'm now going to really kind of keep my eye out for things that I could get involved in that perhaps are not part of my core day job. Maybe there's something more for a team, maybe they're more for a function or for something the organisation cares about. It doesn't have to be loads of time, doesn't need to be a big deal. And then the third one, which I think is probably the most useful and something that we can all do, which is some next level noticing. If you want to borrow brilliance from other people across your team, doesn't have to be your team, just across your organisation, get really good at this skill.

5:35Helen:I think it's a bit of a career super skill. So if you're working with someone and you're thinking like, wow, how do they manage to get a yes every time in that meeting? Or how do they manage to get stuff done? start noticing what questions do they ask how do they solve problems who do they ask for help so they've start to like really kind of have that noticing antennae really turned up to just be like well what is it that they are doing sort of be quite forensic about it it's sort of being like a anthropologist you're studying these people who you think you can learn a lot from and obviously as part of this next level noticing some of it will just be noticing as part of your working week sort of adding this noticing into how you already work but obviously you can also just ask somebody people do generally really like having curious conversations a 15-minute mentoring meeting this doesn't need to be very long and you can be really specific I think here when you want to borrow brilliance you can say I've noticed that you are so good at updates in our team meetings they're short they're simple and they're specific I wondered if we could just have a quick chat about how do you prepare for those or like what's helped you what helps you get the data that you need to make those so compelling whatever it might be so it's very specific a very specific ask which then makes it really easy for people to say yes and it's not a big time commitment and again easy to do virtually but it doesn't even have to be a meeting you could just send someone some questions they could do you a voice note back they could just answer in a quick chat message we don't need to make this formal if anything I think with all of these things the more we can just borrow brilliance sort of informally as part of the flow of work the more natural it will feel but perhaps we just need to in this moment like work a bit harder to make this happen because previously it happened you know with us all sitting next to each other now we don't need or even necessarily want that to be the reality.

7:38Helen:So what does a new version of that look like? It's a good question for us all to ask each other. If you'd like to spend a bit more time thinking about noticing, episode 480, we talk about nine ways to start noticing at work. One of my favourite episodes, it's really made me sort of stop and think a bit about how I work in my week. So hopefully that will be helpful for you too. But that's everything for this shortcut. Thank you for watching these. We hope you're finding them useful, a little bit of extra squiggly inspiration in your week. And we're back with you again soon.