Use Learning to Engage Your Team

HBR IdeaCast

Harvard Business Review

Leadership, Entrepreneurship, Communication, Marketing, Business, Business/management, Management, Business/marketing, Business/entrepreneurship, Innovation, Hbr, Strategy, Economics, Finance, Teams, Harvard

4.4 • 1.9K Ratings

🗓️ 1 May 2018

⏱️ 25 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Whitney Johnson, an executive coach, argues that on-the-job learning is the key to keeping people motivated. When managers understand that, and understand where the people they manage are on their individual learning curve — the low end, the sweet spot, or the high end — employees are engaged, productive, and innovative. Johnson is the author of the book “Build an A-Team: Play to Their Strengths and Lead Them Up the Learning Curve.”

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	When leadership advice feels like buzzwords and platitudes, it's time to get real.
0:05.9	HPR's podcast Coaching Real Leaders brings you behind closed doors as Muriel Wilkins coaches anonymous
0:11.9	leaders through raw honest career questions
0:14.6	that we all face.
0:15.9	Listen and follow coaching real leaders for free
0:18.3	wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to the HBR Ideacast from Harvard Business Review.
0:37.0	I'm Sarah Green Carmichael. Which person would you rather hire?
0:45.0	Someone who has all the skills and experience
0:50.0	and can hit the ground running?
0:52.0	Or someone who might need a little additional training.
0:56.0	A lot of managers are tempted to hire the person who can just do the job well from day one.
1:01.8	But consider this. And then when they do get that person who can come
1:05.4	in that doesn't need any training then that person's bored really quickly and
1:10.6	then you've got a whole other problem.
1:13.2	That's why our guest Whitney Johnson urges managers
1:15.9	to hire candidates who have to learn on the job.
1:18.9	As it turns out, learning is pretty essential for engagement.
1:23.2	Whitney is an executive coach and her new book is Build an A team.
1:27.4	Thank you so much for talking with us today, Whitney.
1:30.1	Thank you for having me, Sarah.
1:32.1	So this all goes back to an idea that you've articulated,
1:35.0	that people have these S-shaped learning curves,
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Harvard Business Review, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Harvard Business Review and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.