Learning agility is a critical skill. As organizations and industries evolve faster than ever, an individual’s willingness and capacity to learn is what will enable them to keep up. However, engagement statistics remain low across the board, and many organizations are faced with the question of how to inspire their employees to learn. Some look to leaders to solve the problem, but that’s only half the equation.

Yes, leaders have a powerful impact on engagement, but if it stops there that energy is undirected. In order to create an environment where individuals are driven to learn, engagement must be transformed into ownership. That’s where the performer comes in.

The Leader/Follower Relationship

The leader/follower relationship is a two-way street, but companies often focus primarily on the leader. The leader drives the relationship, sets expectations and creates the environment in which that relationship exists. The leader is the one who has to balance success and engagement to both meet organizational goals and retain top talent. But at their best, leaders and performers are working together toward a common goal of performance improvement, connecting organizational goals to the individual’s personal and professional goals.

In this relationship, the individual owns their performance. They speak up when they need support or direction from their leader. They let their leader know when they’re feeling burnt out or experiencing regression. And it’s safe for them to do so. We call this a performance ownership culture.

A Performance Ownership Culture

For this to happen, the leader and the organization need to foster a culture where failure is ok and accountability is celebrated. This starts as a top-down change. For individuals to believe true ownership will be rewarded, they need to see their leaders practice it. From there, you can begin to build a reciprocal relationship between leaders and followers around performance and development.

Here are the qualities you need to start a performance ownership culture at your organization.

• Open communication: Open communication is the first step to building the trust necessary for accountability. On the leader’s side, this means being transparent about decisions, future changes and feedback to the level that you responsibly can. On the individual contributor’s side, this means being upfront about your current skill level for tasks and overall engagement.
• Curiosity: Curiosity enables us, both leaders and followers, to avoid coming to conversations from a place of assumptions. From a leader this can look like sharing your performance observations and asking the performer for their perspective. On the individual contributor’s end, it means asking for the “why” behind tasks or decisions and working to understand the larger organizational goals.
• Accountability: Leaders often need to take the first step by owning up to mistakes and recognizing the part they play in team dynamics. This then ripples down to the follower, who must take accountability for their performance, both when it’s high and when it’s low. This transparency must be encouraged. That doesn’t mean long-term poor performance is acceptable, but when a follower comes to you asking for help, it’s an opportunity to help them course correct and resolve issues before they grow into something bigger.

The Impact on Learning

There are many positive outcomes to fostering a culture of ownership, but one of the long-term benefits is that it creates an environment that engages individuals at all levels of the organization in learning. By putting people in the driver’s seat of their own development, you open the door to opportunities. It gives them the freedom to explore areas that tie to their own goals as well as the organization’s. This kind of culture doesn’t happen by accident, it takes intentional modeling from leaders at every level.