Learn to Grow Shorts – The Domino Effect of Mindful Leadership

After each podcast we like to do a short, follow-up musing prompted by the conversation. When I talked with Rashim Mogha, I asked her about mindful leadership and she was adamant that a productive culture begins with mindful leadership. It reminded me of the 2020 Workplace Learning Report that emphasizes the massive role that managers play in driving learning engagement and building a culture of learning. Changing the culture can seem like a massive task. One that requires a huge budget and months if not years of planning. But there is so much about establishing a learning culture that is absolutely free! There is no budget required to share something you’ve learned with your team members. There is no budget required to highlight a TED talk that resonated with you.There is no budget required or to reach out to someone you work with, superior, peer, or subordinate, and ask them what they’re learning. I’ve always loved dominoes as a metaphor for the big impact of small gestures. A 2-inch domino can knock over another domino 1.5 times its size.Line up more dominoes, each 1.5 times larger than the last, and the 12th domino would be 15 feet tall. The 17th would dwarf the statue of liberty. The 19th would overshadow the Empire State Building. The 50th would knock over a domino the size of the distance between the earth and the moon.Small actions create big chain reactions. Leaders can inspire their teams with small gestures like a demonstrated interest in what their team members are learning! Leaders have this responsibility. But the thing is. We are all leaders. In a democratized learning culture, everyone is a catalyst. Everyone has the chance to inspire people around them. All it takes is to push the first domino.