(January 14, 2025 Newsletter)
If I were CEO of a company much larger than mine (currently) is, I’d have one main company value to keep the team unified, motivated, and focused.
I believe that it is The North Star and all others either fall under it or are secondary to it.
I call it “Always Learning.”
Why it matters
Some companies way overcomplicate their company values. They create too many so they lose meaning or are hard to remember.
Other companies don’t have any at all, leaving their teams without any guiding principles.
Having one centralized principle, specifically “Always Learning,” serves as the ultimate filter for tough decisions, sticky situations, trust building, and more. It’s simple yet profound (and easy to remember!).
What “Always Learning” means
Here are a bunch of ways that “Always Learning” can be interpreted or utilized:
Prioritize continuing ed and innovation. Setting “Always Learning” as the north star means that people are expected to make time in their calendars for workshops or courses, reading/listening/watching the latest thought leadership, and codifying their learnings and sharing them out. It also means that taking risks and making mistakes is also encouraged, as long as they learn something from the experience. It also means finding and suggesting ways to adopt new technologies, and questioning the way things have always been done.
Feedback is welcome; make debriefs a habit. When you put feedback in the context of learning, it takes the edge off. The giver stays humble enough to acknowledge they’re not all-knowing and the receiver is open to the chance to learn. Debriefs become fun opportunities to take every aspect of a team’s work to the next level, with the spirit of relishing the analysis of mediocre performance.
We’re all on the same team. “Always Learning” helps us bypass the need to prove ourselves or “win” at the expense of colleagues. When disagreements arise, this principle reminds everyone that winning equals coming to a shared understanding and alignment.
Everyone has something to learn from everyone. While organizations need hierarchy, different rungs on an org chart do not dictate people’s worth. Keeping “Always Learning” front and center allows those at the top to seek out perspectives from their coworkers across the company and empowers those with less tenure or authority to feel comfortable raising ideas or issues that come across their radar.
How to use “Always Learning”
In hiring – Incorporate an interview question like “What is a challenge you recently overcame and how have you implemented the lessons you’ve learned?” or “Tell me about a time when you changed your mind.” Or “Tell me something interesting you’ve learned recently.”
In performance reviews – Add a question to your evaluation about instances since the last review when the employee embodied this value. Discuss and celebrate the biggest learnings since the last review. Leave time in the review for the manager to receive feedback from the employee.
In courageous conversations – Whoever is initiating the conversation remains aware that they might not understand the situation fully, so they ask questions and come to a common understanding before making a plan for resolving the issue together.
In goal setting – Whenever goals are being set, they should always be in the context of learnings. What went well last time? What should we do more or less of? What will we need to learn in order to accomplish this goal?
Final thought: The underpinning for “Always Learning” is curiosity. If you fill your teams with people who relish a good question, you’ll be set.
The Coaching Corner
Whether you’re in performance review season or not, now’s a good time to ask some of the following in your next 1:1’s:
What was the biggest thing you learned in 2024? How can you implement that learning in 2025?
What do you want to do more or less of this year?
What can I do to support you better?
Recommendations
Shoutout to Sarah who recommended Likeable Badass to me. This new book by Alison Fragale helped me rethink two assumptions: that women need to first adjust their status before they can gain more power and that there doesn’t need to be a tradeoff between being perceived as warm and competent.
I’m also almost done with Supercommunicators by Charles Duhigg. I loved his first book, Power of Habit, and feel that this book summarizes much of what I work on with my clients, be it in 1:1 or group settings. Lots of good anecdotes and science about being a better listener, asking better questions, and more.
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