We know so much more about how our brains take in, interpret and retain information than ever before. Yet we still rely on outdated notions of how learning works, and what it looks like. For example, I often hear my management clients lament that their enterprise training budgets are not robust enough to the support the education opportunities they would like to offer to their teams. Yet, they deter day-to-day learning by not supporting teams with encouraging the mental space to think, discuss, and experiment. In this talk, we will explore what it means to create psychologically safe spaces where teams can question, experiment and explore, as well as incremental changes they can make to help create those environments.

Session schedule:

05: Introduce myself and my passion for neuroscience, organizational behavior and fostering learning

05: Meet the attendees to understand what challenges they are facing in cultivating learning environments

10: Experience what learning looks like - individual exercise in learning a new skill, with group discussion to identify how we work through new/unfamiliar concepts

15: Understand what learning in a knowledge work environment looks like, and how an agile mindset can suppor an environment of learning

10: Reflect on our current environments - table discussions about what opportunities for learning we are taking advantage of in our workspaces already

10: Recognize negative spaces, e.g., environments which deter growth

10: Reflect on current environments - table discussions about what we are doing to get in the way of learning

10: Bridge the gap – table discussions to identify where we have gaps in our environments and define initial incremental steps we can take to improve

10: Summary of changes that can be taken back to workplace immediately following conference

05: Wrap-Up/Final Thoughts