How to Cultivate a Learning Culture by Establishing a ‘Circle of Safety’

And minimize present-day danger within the organization

We often hear company executives talk about the kind of culture they offer their employees. Apple says it has a culture of innovation, Gamestop’s culture revolves around creativity and agility, and GE is known for its results-oriented culture. And, while the above descriptions are focused strictly on performance, there’s an alternative type of culture that’s getting a lot of buzz these days; the learning culture.

According to the Society for HR Management (SHRM), A learning culture “consists of a community of workers instilled with a ‘growth mindset.’ People not only want to learn and apply what they’ve learned to help their organization, they also feel compelled to share their knowledge with others.”

This sounds nice, but what kind of impact does a learning culture have on an organization’s performance? According to Josh Bersin, global HR industry analyst, a big one. His research has found that “the single biggest driver of business impact is the strength of an organization’s learning culture.”

But saying you have a learning culture and actually having one are two very different things.

For example, when your boss commits to sending you to training only to then suddenly change his mind the day before due to a last-minute deadline, you’re not part of a learning culture.

When executives say they support employee development only up until the point when doing so requires allocating precious budget dollars away from something else to support that cause, you’re not part of a learning culture.

Experiences like these are signs that, while your organization might aspire to be a learning organization, that designation is still just that — aspirational. And if this sounds like your company, you’re not alone.

Research from CEB recently found that only 10% of organizations have actually achieved true learning cultures, which they define as a culture that supports:

• An open mindset
• An independent quest for knowledge
• Shared learning directed toward the mission and goals of the organization

While there is inevitably learning happening at all organizations, an actual learning organization’s employees actively and independently learn all the time. In a true learning organization, attending the workshop you signed up for months ago is just as important as your deadline, perhaps even more so.

Edward Hess, author and University of Virginia business professor, says that the top two obstacles that get in the way of establishing a learning culture are ego and fear.

Ego. We all want to be liked and perceived favorably by others. As a result, we defend, deny and deflect what we think may cause us to lose face or to look uninformed or not particularly smart.

Fear. We seek to avoid the embarrassment of failure.

Before we can reap the benefits of a learning culture, we have to establish an environment that is conducive to fostering it. And, as leaders, that means collectively eliminating the obstacles of ego and fear from the learning experience.

While you and I can’t necessarily influence the entire organization’s culture, we can set the tone for our team’s culture, and we can do that by creating what Simon Sinek calls a “circle of safety.”

Sinek introduced this concept in his book, Leaders Eat Last, and popularized it during his TED Talk, which has since received over 14 million views.

Sinek opens his talk with a story that dates back to the Paleolithic era when the world was full of danger and things like weather, predators, or a lack of resources were continually threatening to kill us.

So, what did we do as humans? We evolved into social animals, began to live and work together as a tribe, and by doing so, we fostered the trust and cooperation necessary to create a sense of safety.

Sinek explains that not much has changed when it comes to the present day.

“The world is filled with danger, things that are trying to frustrate our lives or reduce our success, reduce our opportunity for success.”

And while these dangers may not be a matter of personal life and death, things like the competition, or the stock market, or the economy’s instability are present-day dangers threatening to put your company out of business.

Sinek says, “We have no control over these forces. These are a constant, and they’re not going away.” Sounds pretty bleak, right? Not so fast.

While we can’t control the dangers outside of the organization, we can control the conditions inside of it. “That’s where leadership matters,” he says, “because it’s the leader that sets the tone.”

The key to fostering a learning culture begins with the leader creating a learning environment free of fear and ego. Sinek explains that:

“The goal of leadership is to set a culture free of danger from each other. And the way to do that is by giving people a sense of belonging. By offering them a strong culture based on a clear set of human values and beliefs. By giving them the power to make decisions. By offering trust and empathy. By creating a Circle of Safety.”

Here is how you can create a circle of safety for your team.

I recently wrote this article about how to build a career development plan using experiential learning or learning by doing. We followed a fictitious employee named Alexa, who is currently a Financial Analyst but wants to be promoted to Finance Manager. You will play the role of her boss.

In short, building an experiential learning plan is all about comparing someone’s current job to their desired future job, identifying the gaps between the two, and selecting the most valuable on-the-job work experiences we can provide the employee to close those gaps.

In Alexa’s case, the most significant gap that we need to help her close is understanding the budget-planning process. As a Manager, she will own the strategic budget-planning process, including building the budget and getting buy-in from senior executives.

As leaders, we have two options in terms of how we approach this. Let’s explore both in the context of a circle of safety.

Option 1

We could decide to hand the budget-planning reigns over to Alexa and let her sink or swim. But, we know that she has never done this before and that she’s unconsciously incompetent.

So, what would be the implications of this?

Well, Alexa doesn’t know what she doesn’t know. As a result, she’d likely go into the process overly confident only to become quickly overwhelmed and consumed with self-doubt. Without the proper training, she probably wouldn’t do a great job building or presenting the budget to leadership, which means her reputation will be broken before it’s even built.

If you choose option 1, you will likely be setting her up to fail by asking her to do a highly visible stretch assignment before she’s ready to do it.

Does this sound like a circle of safety to you?

Sinek explains that “if the conditions are wrong, we are forced to expend our own time and energy to protect ourselves from each other, and that inherently weakens the organization.”

Luckily, there’s another way.

Option 2

What if we began by providing opportunities for Alexa to simply get exposure to the budget-planning process instead of jumping straight to a transfer of responsibility?

We might start by simply having her shadow you in your next budget-planning meeting. She won’t be expected to participate, but she will be expected to soak in as much learning as possible by observing and gaining exposure to the process. She’ll note the types of questions the executives ask, how you answer those questions, and what factors you consider in your recommendation.

Following the meeting, you’ll then spend time one-on-one with her to de-brief, answer further questions, and share your next steps to refine the budget further based on the takeaways from the meeting.

Eventually, once Alexa has gotten sufficient exposure to the overall process, she’ll be ready to take on some small degree of ownership which you can increase incrementally over time. Perhaps you start by giving her a small portion of the budget to own. You might have her walk you through her thought-process to build her portion of the budget while you play the role of an executive, asking her questions to challenge her assumptions further.

Only then, once she’s re-worked things and you feel she’s ready for the spotlight will you slowly layer on responsibility and, eventually, ownership by having her present her portion of the budget to the C-suite.

This is how the best leaders create a circle of safety. By remaining laser-focused on minimizing potential dangers within the organization, they create an environment that is safe to learn in.

Alexa can explore the boundaries of her abilities without fear of embarrassment. She can let go of her ego because the learning environment doesn’t present a threat to her professional reputation.

“When we feel safe inside the organization, we will naturally combine our talents and our strengths and work tirelessly to face the dangers outside and seize the opportunities,” Sinek says.

When we feel safe inside the organization, we can forget about proving ourselves and, instead, focus on improving ourselves.

Sinek closes this particular TED Talk by explaining that “leadership is a choice. It is not a rank.”

And he knows this because there are plenty of people in the C-Suite who are absolutely not demonstrating leadership abilities and plenty of entry-level employees who are.

This is because “they have chosen to look after the person to the left of them, and they have chosen to look after the person to the right of them. This is what a leader is.”

It is only when we have complete confidence that our leaders will look after us and do what they can to help us succeed that we will feel safe enough to learn.

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