Especially in our peacebuilding operations, where we are working in fragile environments, the circumstances affecting our work can change very quickly. Being able to be innovative, adapt fast and react flexibly to the changing context are important skills. It is also important for organizations to learn from experience that has been gained and ensure that this knowledge is institutionally embedded. That’s why many organizations ask themselves: how can we best support collective learning processes within and between organizations?
Within organizations, one important requirement is to establish a culture of open dialogue, one in which employees have the confidence to take risks and address mistakes. Because mistakes are associated with unwelcome emotions like shame, fear or uncertainty, people’s first impulse is to hush them up. A special relationship of trust is therefore needed if people are going to be able to talk about mistakes. It requires psychological security. We need to feel confident (within our team) that our openness will not be punished or used against us. A culture of psychological security can best be summed up in two words: honesty and appreciation. That’s why terre des hommes Schweiz addresses the following questions in its team development process: How can we encourage intelligent failure? How can we try out new things, get feedback early and quickly bring fruitless projects to an end? How can we make it clear that it’s okay to make mistakes, but it’s not okay not to acknowledge them or learn from them? How can we closely monitor our meetings to ensure that we are creating a safe space for open dialogue?
In a work culture that is dominated by a performance-driven society, most of us are conditioned only to show our strengths in our professional behavior and conceal our weaknesses. By deliberately revisiting our communication patterns and meeting formats, we can practice overcoming entrenched habits of competitive behavior and instead establish an organizational culture that encourages collective learning and embraces constructive errors.
In addition to the collective learning processes within organizations, encouraging institutional learning between different organizations offers tremendous potential – while at the same time presenting something of a challenge. The Intervision Group introduced by KOFF is an excellent example of how forums for sharing experience between organizations can constitute a safe space in which people can talk openly, including about their challenges, failed projects and mistakes. The group has jointly come up with clear ground rules for their meetings, covering issues such as constructive feedback and confidentiality. Because these meetings are explicitly set up to be a safe space, the dialogue within the Intervision Group is of a different nature in terms of learning together compared with other such NGO networking sessions where, all too often, the focus is on showcasing and raising the profile of one’s own organization. Deliberately defining a safe space is of enormous value in encouraging collective learning processes and helping everyone to move forward.
