Hey, it's Rachel Cook, your modern mentor.

I'm the founder of Lead Above Noise, where we help leaders design work to create performance flywheels so that results, wellness and engagement all thrive together.

And if you are a leader of a team wishing that you could get more from and do more for your team, you're in luck.

I will be hosting a complimentary round table on this very topic on September 17th, 2025 at 1:00 PM Eastern.

You can learn more and register for free@leadabovenoise.com slash workign.

And now onto today's episode.

Okay, so by now you know that I run workshops and group coaching programs for leaders who want to explore how to rework how the work gets done, you know, so the results and the humanity stuff all happens together.

And today I wanna focus on learning and development.

Specifically.

A client reached out recently to say, Hey, we keep getting dinged on our employee engagement survey on learning and development.

It is our biggest gap, the thing that our teams are most dissatisfied with.

We know we need to invest in their engagement, but we are under so much pressure to just drive results right now.

We don't know where to squeeze learning in.

We need to get creative.

So they said, can you work with some of our leaders to help them help their teams experience more learning, but without adding more stuff into the system?

And so I have been running some coaching cohorts within this organization and together with their teammates and leadership, we have chatted a ton about what really qualifies as learning.

We have expanded the definition of learning, and we've explored ways to build it into rather than bolt it onto their work.

And today, I would love to share five of my favorite strategies that I have watched this organization's leaders literally discover, implement, and expand upon, all within the three month window of our coaching program together.

So here we go.

The first one is bring a challenge to a naive expert.

One leader in the program noticed that his team was kind of running on autopilot.

They were recycling old playbooks while their competition and even some of their internal teams had some really cool things cooking.

So this leader challenged his team members to explore to gain some fresh perspective.

And specifically we focused on the naive expert.

These are people inside of your organization who speak your language, but whose work and areas of focus are a little different.

In this case, each of his team members asked such an expert, Hey, if you were me, how would you be showcasing this product so that customers better connected with it?

And the answers they got weren't earth shattering, but they did start to shift the team's collective thinking.

A finance partner suggested a bundling model the team had never considered a colleague in hr.

Reframed the customer pain point in terms of unmet needs rather than product features.

Sometimes the best learning doesn't come from experts, but from perspective shifters.

So give a naive expert a try.

The next one was implement something before you're ready.

Another leader saw her team getting stuck in analysis paralysis, you know, polishing to such a degree of perfection that the thing would never actually see the light of day.

So she challenged her team to launch a campaign before they were ready.

Now to be clear, this was done carefully.

It wasn't sloppy, but a small pilot group of recipients who knew in advance they were gonna be seeing a prototype and had offered to give feedback before the full launch, and the prototype was good.

It just wasn't perfect.

And so they did it and the team missed a few details, but the feedback was clear and constructive, and ultimately it got the team to full launch faster than if they had done more and more analysis over more and more time.

Sometimes the best learning actually comes from your customers.

The insights may fuel you faster than any development program or polishing could have.

Next up, learn from peers outside your walls.

Another leader was focused on wanting to bring in more practices from the outside.

They tended to be very interior and he wanted them to branch out.

His challenge to his team, he asked each member to find and reach out to three peers on LinkedIn professionals in similar roles or industries, but not at competitive organizations.

And the assignment was to ask each of them how they tackled a problem that this team had been facing.

And it turned out to be a really successful experiment.

The team learned a ton, again, not in a classroom, but about how others in similar situations were navigating the same challenges.

And the exchange of ideas really triggered some refreshing dialogue.

Most of his team members have stayed in touch with the folks that they met, and they continue to challenge and educate each other.

Learning through real time dialogue and idea exchanges can fuel some of amazing creativity.

Next pair up with a peer coach.

Someone else in one of the cohorts wanted to see her team supporting each other more proactively.

So she put team members into pairs or groups of three and asked them to use each other as peer coaches.

The goal was for each person not to tell or teach the other, but to push and challenge them and hold them accountable to trying new things and finding new ways.

They set aside 45 minutes twice a month.

Sometimes they brought in live challenges, other times they reflected on past decisions.

But what surprised them most was how often a simple why are you approaching it that way could force them to step back and see their own blind spots.

Sometimes the richest learning is reflective.

It's not about discovering new things, but being challenged to reinvent or rethink old ones.

And finally, and maybe my favorite was the host, the Dumb Question contest.

In this cohort, we actually chatted about an old Grey's Anatomy episode because yes, guilty pleasures.

It was one where two super experienced surgeons are operating together and they realize the patient needs an appendectomy, or as they call it an api.

Now, this procedure is so basic, they always save it for their first years, and they suddenly realize in the moment that neither of them actually remembers how to do it, and it was mortifying, and they eventually had to swallow their pride and get some help from a first year.

And then of course, drama ensues.

But the point is this, sometimes we do our best learning when we feel safe enough to go back to the basics, to ask the dumb questions.

And you may not believe how common it is for someone to realize they have made a wrong assumption along the way, and then they've made a million imperfect decisions based on that flawed assumption.

Also, it was super fun and connective, something totally worth a try.

So what are all these strategies have in common?

They're simple.

No budget, no permission, no change plan required.

They're specific and relevant to the teams who chose them.

They are switches that any leader can flip and then unflip or flip again.

And while none of these changes alone are likely to move mountains, all of them collectively could really start a movement.

And in the time you have in your workday already, no big commitments necessary.

If you are curious for more, don't forget to join me on September 17th, 2025 at 1:00 PM Eastern.

Learn more and register for free@leadabovenoise.com slash work design.

And if a talk or a program could suit your organization, head over to lead above noise.com/connect and fill out a contact form.

You can follow Modern Mentor on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Find and follow me on LinkedIn.

Thanks so much for listening and have a successful week.

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