Research shows that workplace learning is only properly integrated when the learning is applied at work. Nevertheless, many training programs still operate in the classroom with insufficient follow-up or integration.

With Smart Learning, you can change that. The whitepaper on making AI your L&D partner explores how to apply AI strategically. It contains case studies that walk you through devising effective content creation and optimized experiences, all thanks to AI.

AI doesn’t just streamline the L&D process, it allows you to integrate learning into the workplace. Similarly, BookClub creates unique learning paths based on insights from books that can be accessed and applied at any time during the working day.

Optimizing Learning & Development

You need a secret ingredient when building a high-performing team. Alongside tools and training, you also need insight.

In other words, you need vertical development to enable teams to develop more sophisticated and wiser ways of thinking and behaving. This creates “self-transforming minds” that are more open and flexible to change and uncertainty. Another benefit is that people grow into greater maturity levels where they can operate more strategically and systematically.

The Center for Creative Leadership researched the key conditions for enabling vertical development, along with the deep changes normally associated with personal growth, as noted later in this blog post.

Putting these conditions in place isn’t necessarily easy, but AI can help you get there.

Complex Experiences

Teams and leaders need to be out of their comfort zone in order to develop—but not to the level of getting overwhelmed and burnt out.

The aim is to challenge people’s normal ways of thinking or problem solving alongside a supportive team or coach. To further the experience, ensure that employees know the “why” of your training.

International assignments are an obvious example, but what about simulating complex situations with AI?

With BookClub, you can disrupt people’s normal thinking processes with insights from books while also giving them complex projects in which to test out those insights.

Challenge Mental Models

Interacting with other colleagues and working through various insights together can be powerful and help employees grasp the wide variety of possible perspectives. For example, you could leverage the insights from books on systems thinking so that your leaders have a common language to evaluate those perspectives for better decision making.

With AI-created learning paths that can be accessed throughout the week, you nurture an environment of shared learning that encourages deep listening. This helps positively change our habitual thoughts.

Reflect and Integrate

Neuroscience shows that the most powerful way to grow or change habits or behavior is through self-reflection.

By challenging our minds, we activate the basal ganglia, which, simply put, subconsciously affects habitual memory. You need the “why” to connect your subconscious with your conscious mind and so activate personal change. Nevertheless, without the challenge or pressure of a complex situation, that reflection becomes an intellectual exercise rather than a “must-have” in order to succeed.

With AI asking the questions, employees can self-reflect together. Book insights, along with those AI inputs, trigger the debate, and your teams can set off on their exploratory journeys.

How Will You Make AI Your L&D Partner?

In the same way that a jack helps lift your car to change a tire, so too can AI be a valuable aid to learning and development. Let’s not forget that a tire change still needs someone to remove the bolts. Similarly, we still need people to curate and creatively apply AI outputs.

You can create the conditions for growth by providing the data and insights that teams need to challenge their beliefs and reflect on their mindsets. So, let AI pull out the data and information that you need for your teams to then do the transformative work of reflection and exploration.