WHITE PAPER

Great Leaders Are Great Learners

How to Develop Learning-Agile High Potentials

By: George Hallenbeck and Laura Santana

Contents
Executive Summary 1
What’s Learning Agility? 2
Who is Learning Agile? How to Identify It In Your Talent 4
The Difference Between High Professionals and High Potentials 5
How to Develop Learning Agility 8
Getting the Right Experience 10
Conclusion: Where Do We Go From Here? 12
About the Authors 13
Executive Summary
While learning agility has become a hot topic in recent decades, there’s not yet widespread
understanding of its underlying nature, nor the best way for organizations and talent
development leaders to leverage it, especially because it isn’t a skill that’s necessarily
concentrated at the top of your organization. Instead, it’s likely dispersed among leaders
at all levels. And it’s often overlooked. By learning how to identify and cultivate learning
agility, your organization can create more confident leaders who are ready for the future,
who are able to proactively identify business opportunities, and who can quickly respond to
unexpected challenges.
This white paper offers CCL’s perspective on 3 of the most fundamental and frequent
questions about learning agility:
• What is learning agility, and who possesses it?
• How do I identify learning agility in my organization’s leaders?
• How do I develop learning agility in myself and my organization’s leaders?
Importantly, we’ll outline the difference between high potentials and high professionals, 2
classes of highly coveted employees that organizations often conflate. By properly identifying
the distinctions between these groups of talented employees, your organization can maximize
its workforce, putting people in the right roles, and helping you better design and implement
a leadership strategy.

©2019 Center for Creative Leadership. All rights reserved. 1

 What’s Learning Agility?
Learning agility is the ability to know what to do when you don’t know what to do. That probably
captures its essence better than any formal definition, but to put learning agility in more
specific terms, it involves the practice of 4 specific and interrelated sets of behaviors that allow
people to learn deeply from their experiences and then apply the lessons they’ve learned when
faced with new and challenging circumstances.

4 COMPONENTS OF

LEARNING AGILITY
1. SEEKING 2. SENSEMAKING 3. INTERNALIZING 4. APPLYING

For learning agile individuals, their practice of these behaviors is often an “unconscious
competence”—they merely “do what they do” when faced with new challenges and are
more likely to identify as “lifelong learners” or “works in progress” rather than “learning
agile.” Likewise, in the eyes of others, learning agile people are often characterized as “quick
studies” or for having a “knack” for coming up with new solutions. Because of their penchant
for succeeding in circumstances that are unfamiliar for both them and their organizations,
individuals who are learning agile are often seen as also having high potential.

2 ©2019 Center for Creative Leadership. All rights reserved.

Let’s dive deeper into the 4 sets of behaviors:
• Seeking: Developing learning agility requires an intentional willingness to
immerse yourself in new and challenging situations that broaden and expand
your experiences. Learning agile individuals see these situations as prime
opportunities for new learning and growth. Furthermore, these are seen as
opportunities to seek out and embrace, not just to accept.
• Sensemaking: Learning from experience is a highly active and ongoing process
marked by curiosity and a willingness to experiment. Asking “Why?” “How?”
and “Why not?” are essential to gaining the insight and perspective that fuels
learning. Failed experiments, and the setbacks and criticism that accompany
them, are just a part of the ongoing journey for learning agile individuals.
• Internalizing: Learning doesn’t end with the experience. Seeking feedback and
taking time to reflect are critical for deepening insight and embedding critical
lessons for future recall and application. They also strengthen self-awareness,
which is essential for dealing with future challenges in a realistic manner and
staying open to new learning.
• Applying: A lesson isn’t truly learned until it’s applied. Learning agile individuals
excel at adaptive learning—accessing principles and rules of thumb from previous
experiences and applying them to navigate new and challenging situations.
Swiftly adapting to new circumstances based on an understanding of what has
(and hasn’t) worked in other situations is at the heart of what distinguishes
learning agile individuals.

©2019 Center for Creative Leadership. All rights reserved. 3

 Who is Learning Agile?
How to Identify Learning Agility in Your Talent
Good news—your organization is already filled with people who possess learning agility.
But if you don’t know what to look for, it can be difficult to identify.
Learning agility is what’s often referred to as a “normally distributed” skill, meaning
that in any given population, you’ll see a bell curve of people with mostly moderate
capability while a smaller segment of the population resides at the extremes of having
a larger or smaller amount. Therefore, the people who really excel at learning agility—
and therefore can step up to the challenging and urgent issues your organization must
address—are relatively few.
To complicate matters, there are no demographics pertaining to age, gender, ethnicity,
educational level, experience, or other major characteristics that would differentiate
who is and isn’t learning agile. In other words, looking across the organization, it could
be just about anyone.
There are some valid tools on the market that can tell you with some accuracy whether
or not someone may be learning agile. Those measurements can certainly help to refine
your search, but you shouldn’t solely depend on them. From our experience, learning
agility is best understood and identified by direct observation, followed by a bit of
intuition and then using measurement as a finishing touch.
To spot learning agility, begin by really understanding what differentiates people with
this skill, and focus on what they do when faced with new opportunities for learning.

4 ©2019 Center for Creative Leadership. All rights reserved.

The Difference Between High
Professionals and High Potentials
Organizations looking to identify their learning agile talent are prone to assuming they’ve already
selected these employees as part of a “top talent” pool or by promoting them into higher ranks.
But job performance, professionalism, dedication, self-awareness, and on-the-job results aren’t
necessarily signs of someone who’s learning agile. Instead, it’s possible your organization is
mistaking “high professionals” for “high potentials.”
High potentials and high professionals often appear similar to one another because they share
some common qualities that make them valued talent. These include the following:

High Professionals High Potentials

High performers High performers

Dedicated learners Dedicated learners
In low supply in most organizational settings In low supply in most organizational settings
High in self-awareness and results orientation High in self-awareness and results orientation

But on closer inspection, some subtle—but nonetheless important—differences start to emerge:

High Professionals High Potentials

Seek depth Seek breadth

Value certainty Embrace the unknown
Refine existing solutions Create new solutions
Seek status and recognition Seek exposure and new experiences
Rely on knowledge and proven expertise Rely on intuition and willingness to experiment
(“We should . . . ”) (“What if we . . . ?”)

©2019 Center for Creative Leadership. All rights reserved. 5

 Of course, the above characteristics are only typical of each category of talent. Not all high
professionals or high potentials demonstrate these behavioral preferences, and certainly there
are individuals in each category that sometimes behave in ways more commonly associated with
the other category. For example, there may be instances in which high potential individuals are
deeply engaged in refining existing solutions versus exploring new ones.
Nonetheless, a picture emerges of high professionals directing their considerable talents along a
path more consistent with strong functional expertise and addressing very challenging technical
issues that require deep knowledge and highly refined skills.
High potentials, by comparison, are intrigued by “the new and the different” and revel
in opportunities to break boundaries and discover new solutions. Their curiosity about the
people, problems, places, and things that are interesting but not yet familiar to them can lead
both their careers and the organization in new and unexpected directions. It’s not unusual to see
the LinkedIn profiles of learning agile talent with a number of “slashes” to designate their varied
professional identities. Their resumes often look more like a zig-zag of roles and experiences than
a straight-line progression of functional roles.
The day-to-day actions and the longer-term career journeys of high professionals and high
potentials are driven by different orientations toward learning. In the above table, we noted that
both high professionals and high potentials are dedicated learners, but the kind of learning they
are dedicated to differs. The following chart illustrates some of these differences in what each
group seeks in learning situations:

Mastery Orientation Agile Orientation

(High Professionals) (High Potentials)

Clearly defined problems Ambiguously defined problems

Sufficient facts Insufficient facts
“Best” or “right” solution Many possible solutions
Following established practices Devising own practices
Answering questions Generating new questions

6 ©2019 Center for Creative Leadership. All rights reserved.

As with the previous comparison, these are only typical preferences, and each
individual will differ to some degree. Hopefully these comparisons give you a
better sense of what differentiates these 2 very important categories of talent and
the preferences and behaviors that characterize each. Having a more fine-grained
understanding of high professionals and high potentials helps accurately identify
each and also ensure that they’re placed in situations that are suited to the types of
challenges they seek, putting them on a pathway to continued success.
For high potentials, the general prescription is to place them into situations that are
ambiguously defined and require innovative solutions. But it also requires putting
them into settings that are “first-time” in nature for them and require developing
new knowledge and skills to succeed. This is where learning agility becomes of
primary importance to their success.

How to Elevate and Encourage High Potentials

If your high potential employee is already on the right track but needs an extra nudge,
consider having a learning agility conversation with them using the “LACE” behaviors
outlined below. This approach can also help expand the positive impact of their learning
to their team, department, or the organization as a whole.
L: Listen as they explain how they tried something new and navigated adaptational
challenges.
A: Ask what helped them be successful. Identify their strategies and make them
explicit.
C: Challenge them to think about where else they might use the new approach or
skillset, and who else might benefit.
E: Establish next steps for follow-through and sharing knowledge. Execute on ideas
that make learning agility’s value visible in the organization.

For more information on this model, explore our Better Conversations Every DayTM program.

©2019 Center for Creative Leadership. All rights reserved. 7

 How to Develop Learning Agility
While learning agility encompasses a broad and diverse set of behaviors, it can be
developed. For your organization and employees to become more learning agile, 5
principles are important to embrace:
Learning agility is a “life” skill. It is, in part, a product of our experiences in life and
what we’ve learned from them. These include experiences we have outside of work. We
can apply lessons learned from experience in both our professional and personal lives
over the course of our lifetime.
Learning agility can be learned. And the main ingredient is experience. The more we
gain access to rich learning experiences and position ourselves to learn as much as we
can from them, the more a virtuous cycle of learning and growth can take shape.
Anybody can learn it. As mentioned earlier, there are no demographics that reliably
differentiate who is and isn’t learning agile. It comes down to the ability to “learn how
to learn” coupled with experiences that can provide the right degree of novelty and
challenge.
Learning agility is like a muscle. Without a steady stream of new experiences for
learners to refine the 4 core skills at the beginning of this white paper, learning agility
can plateau or taper off.
Awareness is key to nurturing learning agility. Learn to ask questions—of yourself
and others—to help see where experience can inform new solutions to challenges.

Developing learning agility requires focus on 3 critical components:

1. The appropriate mindset for learning.
2. A refined skillset to navigate the 4 components of learning agility (above).
3. A toolset that can be readily accessed and applied at various points throughout a
learning experience.

8 ©2019 Center for Creative Leadership. All rights reserved.

Organizational Challenges to Learning Agility
We’ve worked with countless individuals and organizations to improve learning
agility. Along the way, we’ve run into several primary reasons people give for avoiding
opportunities to enhance learning agility. Ultimately, most of their explanations can be
traced back to a broader organizational issue. Here are 4 common examples of the types
of organizational cultures that thwart learning agility:
Risk-averse cultures that don’t encourage people to experiment and make mistakes.
Siloed cultures where employees feel pressured to stay in their lanes rather than
pursuing learning opportunities.
Overdrive cultures where leaders feel so overwhelmed that they can barely keep up,
let alone take time to reflect and learn.
Punitive cultures where employees keep their heads down and worry that new ideas
or experiences come with a risk of failure.
Sometimes the issue is more benign, and employees simply don’t see how learning
agility experiences would benefit them in their current organizational setting.
Organizations that commit to addressing their existing culture and finding ways to
promote learning agility will eventually be able to win support from their employees,
leading to wider individual acceptance of learning agility.

©2019 Center for Creative Leadership. All rights reserved. 9

 Getting the Right Experience
Finally, let’s focus on getting access to the right experiences to fuel learning agility. These 3
variables are critical: quantity, quality, and diversity.
What sometimes goes unappreciated is that you can control these variables in your organization.
More specifically, you can curate specific experiences for specific individuals that will maximize
their learning and development. Done right, it can be an opportunity to invest in some of your
key talent while simultaneously addressing important organizational challenges. Only the savviest
organizations do this in a mindful and strategic manner.
Quantity speaks for itself. The more distinct learning experiences we have in life, the more
opportunity there is for learning.
We’ve identified 10 characteristics of quality learning experiences to help you think about
opportunities for growth: unfamiliar responsibilities, new directions, inherited problems,
problems with employees, high stakes, scope and scale, external pressure, influence without
authority, working across cultures, and work group diversity.
CCL research has also revealed that the vast majority of learning experiences can be sorted into
15 categories. These diverse scenarios each provide distinct learning opportunities that offer a
chance for dramatically different lessons.

15 Types of Learning Experiences

Bosses and superiors Personal experiences Culture crossing

Turnaround Crisis Career setback

Stakeholder
Increase in job scope Difficult people
engagement

Feedback and
Horizontal move Ethical dilemma coaching

Coursework and
New initiative Mistake training

10 ©2019 Center for Creative Leadership. All rights reserved.

Put it all together and the goal over time is to accumulate as many high-quality
experiences as possible in a diverse number of categories of experience to generate
positive ROE: Return on Experience.
We should note that, even with the right mix of experiences, this alone isn’t a
guarantee of learning. Without a learning mindset, it’s possible to move through
experiences without absorbing anything. Indeed, different people can walk away
from the same experience with takeaways that vary dramatically in terms of the
depth and breadth of their learning. That’s why it’s important to understand the 4
behavioral elements of learning agile leaders—seeking, sensemaking, internalizing,
and applying—outlined in more detail earlier in this white paper.

Coaching Learning Agility in Others

If you want to help cultivate learning agility in your direct reports, team, or organization,
we recommend having a coaching conversation that relies on these 6 questions:
1. Can you tell me about a recent challenge you experienced where you initially
weren’t sure what to do?
2. How did you approach it?
3. What happened?
4. What did you learn?
5. What is its value to your team, and to the organization?
6. How can you apply what you’ve learned?
Over time, asking these intentional questions will help your colleagues become more
reflective. It will encourage them to start incorporating a learning-agile mindset into
everything that they do.

©2019 Center for Creative Leadership. All rights reserved. 11

 CONCLUSION
Where Do We Go From Here?

The need for learning agility is obvious. We live in a rapidly changing world, where
industries and sectors routinely experience disruption, ambiguity, and uncertainty.
Without the ability to adjust quickly to new scenarios, an organization’s future
could be in peril. It’s not enough to continue performing well under classic
definitions of success and progress—now, leaders are expected and required to
experiment, embrace discomfort, and generate new solutions. Think of learning
agility as a core component of your organization’s strategy for creating “future
proof” leaders.
The good news is that your organization already has learning agile individuals,
whether you’ve identified them or not. Hopefully this white paper has given you
a stronger understanding of what to look for; you can easily refer to the charts
above whenever you need a refresher. Remember that learning agility is a key
differentiator between high potential talent and high professional talent in your
organization.
Most importantly, we hope you internalized the fact that learning agility can
be developed. With the right mix of rich, diverse opportunities over time, you
can help yourself, your employees, and your teams acquire a deeper level of
learning agility, creating positive ROE, and benefiting people individually and the
organization as a whole.
If you’re approaching this issue as an individual leader, you have an important role
to play in cultivating learning agility. As a leader, you can pay attention in a new way
and also help people articulate what they’ve learned. Start paying attention to the
unique experiences your colleagues or direct reports are having, both inside and
outside of your organization. Help people think about what they’ve learned and
how their insights can be put to use. By understanding learning agility, practicing
it, and identifying and nurturing it in others, you can have an outsized impact on
your organization.

Ready To Take The Next Step?

Tackling this task can seem challenging, or even overwhelming. To better prepare you for
that challenge, we encourage you to read more about the different elements of fostering
a learning-agile skillset, mindset, and toolset, or ways you can scale that learning
throughout your organization. But the introduction provided in this white paper should
be enough to get you started on the right path. Your organization can use the approaches
we’ve highlighted to create a “leadership blueprint” for leaders at all levels to embrace
the characteristics of learning agility. With this essential skill, the future won’t look as
scary—it will appear as a welcome challenge and an opportunity for growth.

12 ©2019 Center for Creative Leadership. All rights reserved.

Find Your
Future Fluency
It’s one thing to imagine the future.
It’s quite another to lead it.
At CCL, we speak future. We’ve inspired hundreds of thousands
of leaders around the world to embrace emerging challenges
today and lead into tomorrow. Let us help you transform
yourself, your team, and your organization.
www.ccl.org/FutureFluency

About the Authors

George Hallenbeck, PhD, is director of Commercialization at the Center for Creative Leadership
(CCL®), where he leads an innovation platform called “All-Access Leadership,” focused on enhancing,
re-imagining, and creating product offerings that empower and enable clients to deliver and
experience CCL’s intellectual property in ways that match their needs and strategies. George earned
a BA in Psychology from Colby College and an MS and PhD in Industrial-Organizational Psychology
from Colorado State University. He has authored or coauthored eight books including Learning Agility:
Unlock the Lessons of Experience and Compass: Your Guide for Leadership Development and Coaching.
He has written numerous white papers and journal articles, as well as pieces for publications such
as BusinessWeek Online and Chief Learning Officer magazine. George regularly participates in other
thought leadership efforts including speaking engagements, webcasts, and blogging.
Laura Santana, PhD, is a senior leadership solutions partner at CCL. She leads cross-regional/
functional teams in the design and delivery of customized learning and development solutions for
global clients. In multiple languages, Laura leverages deep experience and insights from psychology,
neuroscience, contemplative practice, and physical fitness as she works with clients to increase
personal and organizational learning agility for sustainable growth and results that matter. She
led CCL’s worldwide team in the launch of its online follow-through system to drive application of
learning back to the organization. Laura holds a doctorate from Antioch’s Leadership and Change
Program, a Master of Science in Management and Organizational Development from United States
International University–Mexico, a BA in Psychology from the University of California–Irvine, and is
certified both as a mind-body wellness specialist and personal trainer. She is an author and featured
speaker at international conferences on leadership.

To learn more about this topic or the Center for Creative Leadership’s programs and products,
please contact our Client Services team.
+1 800 780 1031 +1 336 545 2810 [email protected]

©2019 Center for Creative Leadership. All rights reserved. 13

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©2019 Center for Creative Leadership. All rights reserved. March 2019