Team Learning

Leading teams involves building shared beliefs and team-learning behaviors. Team-learning behaviors include three interrelated processes: coordinating, continuously improving, and adapting. To foster team learning, leaders must work to establish an environment that engenders appropriate levels of control and participation. Team-learning processes track the experiential learning cycle and include building a shared purpose, reflective integration, critical conversations, and taking action. Team learning emerges as teams develop through five phases of a developmental process. Achieving the learning advantage requires teamwork. Team learning marks a movement from individual learning to learning across individuals and serves as the basis for moving from individual to organizational learning. Even though team skills are among the top three qualities employers seek in their employees (National Association of Colleges and Employers, 2010), being an effective team member is difficult to master without support from a leader. In this chapter, we outline how leaders can draw on learning principles to build and sustain successful teams. Leaders build team-learning beliefs and behaviors, navigate the learning cycle, recognize and overcome barriers, and facilitate teams through a progression of phases that lead to high-performance learning.