Read the following in Senge’s The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization:
Chapter 11, “Team Learning.” This chapter is about the discipline of team learning. While you have probably encountered the concept of team learning or team-building before now, consider how Senge’s conception of team learning is a discipline that requires components you might not have previously fully considered. For example, as you examine strategies such as dialogue and skillful discussion to foster small groups of stakeholders to transform their collective thinking and learn to mobilize their actions to achieve common goals. In team learning the ability to construct a collaborative intelligence and ability greater than the sum of individual stakeholders’ contributions is of paramount importance. As you read consider how team learning can be fostered in multiple types of organizations and contexts and the different challenges there are in achieving effective team performance.
Leading using a Systems Perspective: Examples
This article focuses on ways that organizational leaders can promote team learning by developing cultural brokers or employees who excel at connecting across divides; encouraging people to ask questions in an open-ended, unbiased way that genuinely explores others’ thinking; getting people to actively take other points of view; and broadening employees’ vision to include more-distant networks.
Casciaro, T., Edmondson, A. C., & Jang, S. (2019). Cross-silo leadership. Harvard Business Review, 97(3), 130–139.
Read about how an effective business creates consistent transformational and replicable growth. As you read, reflect on the similarities and differences between educational and business contexts in terms of the role of leaders play in managing change.