As a business owner, it’s important your employees work to their most potential. In order for your business to be as efficient and productive as possible, it’s imperative employees are working towards becoming or excelling as leaders. The best way to breed leaders is by creating a learning culture in the workplace:
Giving Rewards
It’s a basic human understanding that people react positively and will continue their good behavior when rewarded. In order to create a learning culture in your business, it’s important to reward employees for continually learning. Rewards can range from giving a bonus to simply acknowledging their hard work. Put a reward system in place to encourage learning to create a climate that encourages critical thinking. This type of environment should push your employees to challenge authority. By doing this, innovation is produced and your employees will become leaders.
Curious Employees
Another way to encourage innovation and create leaders is by encouraging curiosity in the workplace. Curious employees will thrive in a learning culture environment. When hiring new employees, be sure to hire ones who seem naturally curious. Instead of relying solely on training to prepare a new hire, find curious employees who are eager to learn and grow from their position. You can encourage continuous learning, but it is more effective when employees actually want to learn more. CUrious employees will grow into strong leaders.
Constructive Criticism
As a leader yourself, it’s important to give constructive criticism and meaningful feedback to your employees. In order to create a learning culture, there are times when employees are going to get something wrong and you will have to steer them in the right direction. How you do this is very important. By giving constructive criticism, employees are able to learn the right way of doing a task or project and are encouraged to keep going. Providing criticism isn’t about pointing out flaws, but instead informing employees what they’re doing wrong and teach them how to fix it. The more feedback employees are given, the more they will learn and the stronger leader they will become.
Be the Example
To create leaders, you must be an effective one yourself. As a manager or leader, employees look to you and will learn from you on how to lead. It’s important to be a leader the can look up to. How you lead effects the performance and efficiency of your team. You yourself must be curious and eager to learn. In a learning culture, even the leaders have something new to learn. By showing your team and your employees that you are always willing to learn, they will follow. The leader you choose to be will be the leader they will become.