Congratulations, Judy Harmon and Doris Barnett! You’re the winners of the Leaders as Teachers Action Guide book giveaway!
Many of today's leading companies have active leaders-as-teachers (LAT) programs. If you plan to initiate or expand a LAT approach, start by forming your LAT team.
An effective LAT team includes learning professionals, leaders, and support staff. Here is a list of the roles that are often needed.
You. First and foremost, you are part of the LAT team. Consider what role you will fill, which roles you will delegate, and those roles for which you will recruit others. Be realistic about the size of the role you can perform well.
LAT champion. This person manages overall program responsibilities such as staffing, budgeting, and continuous improvement. A best practice is to have a senior leader in this role.
Learning professional for active design. With so much new knowledge about how the brain works and with so many new media options, it is best to bring in a learning specialist to partner with leader-teachers. This person can activate your leader-teachers' sessions.
Logistics planner. Successful LAT cultures make it easy for leader-teachers to participate. This role handles all of the logistics, version control, registration, and scheduling practice sessions, and manages all materials and assets for both leader-teachers and learners.
Leader-teachers. These are the senior people who do the actual teaching or delivery. As you begin your recruiting efforts, we suggest a “go to the light” approach. By this we mean identify people who have strong personal interests in teaching, coaching, and facilitation, and seek out strong business growth opportunities or problems that need to be solved and for which teaching and learning is part of the solution. As your organization has more success with the LAT approach, recruiting more leader-teachers becomes easier.
Topic experts. Often leader-teachers are recruited for a LAT session based on their personal expertise on the session topic. It is equally common for leader-teachers to be paired with an external expert. The expert delivers the content, and the leader-teacher puts it in context and validates the concepts.
These are the basic roles for a LAT team. For small programs, it is possible for just two people to cover these roles: one learning professional and one senior leader. Larger programs typically involve more people.
As your LAT successes begin to pile up and the many benefits of the LAT approach are realized, organizations experience a shift in demand for LAT programs. With that shift, there may be interest to include more leaders.
There are many roles for leaders in a LAT culture, not all of which entail teaching directly. These roles include:
- Topic or program leader
- Needs assessment analyst
- Post-session mentor or coach
- Coach for online asynchronous learning
- Dean of a “college” or cluster of programs
- Regional or global dean or program president
- Active blogger in support of online learning
- Advisor of customizing programs by region or department
- Advisor of customizing off-the-shelf programs for in-house use
What other roles can leaders fill in a LAT culture?
For a chance to win a copy of Leaders as Teachers Action Guide, answer the above question in the comments section below. Your comment must be received by 5 p.m. EDT on Friday, June 20. If you prefer to email your response, please send it to [email protected]. After reviewing the comments and emails received, we will select two winners and announce them in this post by Wednesday, June 25.
Learn more from Leaders as Teachers Action Guide: Proven Approaches for Unlocking Success in Your Organization, available now.
