Why?

Every good company should invest in its employees’ skills; your people are a resource, and just like any other resource, you must invest in them. Now, most companies understand this and put aside money for training. This training can take many forms, including instructor-led training, both in-person and online, self-paced training, and book-based training, all of which I have seen being deployed. This is great, allowing your staff to choose a training method that fits them and how they learn is the best way to achieve results.

However, a resource that often gets overlooked is your team. Your team will include individuals with diverse skillsets and experiences that can be valuable to others. The advantages of utilising this knowledge are many, and it can provide higher-quality results than other training methods with less investment.

One of the most apparent advantages is that it can reduce the bus factor if you have people with particular knowledge. Sharing this knowledge across the team means it is already known, should the worst happen. You may, however, encounter pushback from toxic individuals who see having knowledge only known to them as ensuring job security or want to gatekeep that knowledge. Unfortunately, you may have to address these behaviours with those individuals through your existing HR process first.

Another advantage of using the knowledge in the team is that they will have more domain knowledge. They know your business, its process, users, and tech stack. This means that things as simple as examples, as well as topics covered, are being tailored. This will give you higher-quality training and reduce the time to learn for participants. This is also good at forming a common language within your teams.

This training style isn’t always possible, possibly due to regulatory or legal requirements or because your team may not be comfortable leading training. As you can tell, if you follow me or have worked with me, I enjoy sharing my knowledge and expertise with others. Even though I found it very difficult to start doing that within a new team, it has helped my learning, and explaining something to someone else is a great way to validate your understanding of the topic.

Although I have covered the advantages of Learn Together™, it shouldn’t be the only training provided. You may have to look at other options if your team doesn’t know a specific area. Learn Together™ can also be a great starting point for topics, and then individual team members may want to learn more through more traditional training avenues. It can also help to look at cross-team training opportunities. A team may already have expertise in an area that another team needs.

How?

So, how do you use Learn Together™ in your organisation? Well, I can’t say for sure, I was lucky when I started it, I wanted to share my knowledge and expertise with the team, the team wanted to learn, and my manager was open to the idea.

I will review how we do Learn Together™ if anyone finds it useful. So a learn together session has no fixed length, and that more casual flexibility, I think, makes it work for the team. I will schedule a session once a sprint (our sprint cadence is two weeks), generally in the second week. One thing I make sure to emphasise is that these sessions are entirely optional. The idea is that team members can choose to attend sessions they find interesting or valuable. I typically book the session for at least 30 minutes but up to an hour. I don’t feel that anything longer than an hour-long session is helpful, as it causes fatigue in both the trainer and the students and can conflict with team priorities.

When running a session, I will try to keep it casual and use as many examples, workshops, and demos as possible to keep people engaged. As mentioned above, because I am aware of the business, its technology, process, and goals, I can keep these demos relevant, which makes them much more helpful to the team. These tips are more about how people want to learn, but I believe these methods are better suited to the Learn Together™ format, rather than lecturing or presentation-based learning. Not all topics will work with this format, so you may need to explore other methods depending on the subject.

After a session, I will write an overview of what was covered in our knowledge platform. This will provide a reference for those who attended and those who could not. It will also help me track what has been discussed when planning new sessions and topics, so they are not required to be covered again when building on previous sessions.

The most significant barrier to getting started is finding someone prepared to champion the Learn Together™ format. If that is you, that is great, but you may struggle if you are looking for someone else to do it. If you are not a manager, make sure to get manager buy-in; you will need to use up to an hour of the team’s time regularly, which is easier if the manager scheduling the team’s work is aware.

I have also found it essential to try to involve other team members as the trainer who may have more knowledge than you on a topic. This allows others to grow and shows you what it is like to be a student and a trainer. This will make it easier to tailor your teaching to your team and their needs.

In summary

• Be the champion, or find someone who will.

• Keep the sessions under an hour.

• Use demos, Workshops and examples.

• Keep it casual.

• Make sure people are aware it is optional.

• Try to do it regularly.

• Reinforce the learning with a write-up post-session.

• Involve other team members, especially if they are keen to get involved.