How Learning in Partnership Accelerates Your Transformation

Can you picture an important time in your life when you learned something completely new? Take a moment to remember your feelings in that moment. 

Who was with you in that learning moment? Whether it was a family member, a friend, or an inspirational faculty member, you most likely had someone walking alongside you as you learned something new. 

But can’t we learn things on our own and be independent learners? Of course! We do it every day. But even when we read a book, “google it”, or find a YouTube video to teach us in an independent way, we are learning in partnership with the author or creator. 

I recently tackled a backyard project that had truthfully overwhelmed me for too long. I needed to lay a concrete patio and didn’t have a clue where to start. I Googled it and watched numerous videos with little action. In the end, I reached out for help from my brother. Together with each member of my family playing their unique roles, we accomplished the job together in partnership! I would not have accomplished my goal or learned a new skill without their support. 

There’s something special that happens when we learn in the context of a partnership with another person or a community of learners.

Let’s explore this concept further together. 

Dictionary.com defines learning as “the acquisition of knowledge or skills through experience, study, or by being taught.” Learning includes both knowledge and skills alongside the ability to understand and apply knowledge and skills into action. We learn through study and experiences as we engage new ideas and put things into practice. In other words, learning is an active and social activity. 

Partnership is defined by Webster as a “close cooperation between parties having specified and joint rights and responsibilities” When we join into a partnership, we create a shared purpose with shared activity. In partnership, we are aligned and committed to the same goals. 

In a process consulting partnership, the benefit and growth move toward you as the client and your learning goals. The consultant and client are always learning and gaining new knowledge in the partnership, but toward the benefit of the client.

Learning something new will require a few things. 

At Design Group International, our mission is to help organizations and their leaders transform for a vibrant future. The transformational learning process requires several things from you as a leader:

1. Learning requires an open mind, heart, and hands and a willingness to grow through the process. Your authentic desire to grow and learn is the important first step.  
2. Learning requires humility and curiosity. When you can truly say, “I don’t know the answer” and you acknowledge you don’t know everything, you are on the edge of learning something new and meaningful. Humility also gives you the strength to ask for help from others.
3. Lasting transformation and learning will require a commitment to action and applying the knowledge you gain through the process. New learning and insights become new habits and strengths when you put them into practice.  

Once you have committed fully to becoming an active learner through openness, humility, and a movement toward action, you are ready to explore a learning partnership.

What makes a learning partnership healthy and effective?

1. A healthy partnership requires a level of vulnerability and openness toward your partner in the process. The process consultant can walk alongside you effectively when you share your true thoughts and experiences and bring your full self to the process.
2. An effective partnership requires trust and mutual respect with one another. As Kohlberg explains in the 6 stages of moral development, mutual respect is essential for a healthy partnership. This trust is fragile and compels both parties to hold it with care and intentional effort.
3. A lasting partnership requires clear alignment to a common goal. Within the framework of process consulting, the process design with intentional listening clarifies the WHY and aligns each person toward a shared vision. 

Is it worth the risk and effort? What benefits does learning in partnership create? 

We live in an increasingly complex and challenging context in our world today. The challenges you face as a leader are only increasing year over year. The technical solutions of the past won’t address the adaptive challenges of the future. More than ever, we need leaders like you willing to engage this adaptive moment. For today’s leader, everything worth anything is on the edge of something unknown and moving toward a new breakthrough for yourself and your organization. 

“For today’s leader, everything worth anything is on the edge of something unknown and moving toward a new breakthrough for yourself and your organization.”

Learning in partnership provides some important benefits to support you, your growth, and your organizational growth moving forward. 

Learning in partnership:

• Broadens your perspective on the adaptive challenge or opportunity facing you and your organization.  

• Expand possibilities for you as a leader and for your organization. The steps of learning, when done intentionally, can open the potential for new initiatives, programs, solutions, or systems. 

• Brings clarity to your current context. When you get up on the balcony and change your perspective, you gain a new vantage point and a different vision of your role as a leader and your organization’s future. 

• Deepens relationships through the process. When you walk alongside someone and learn together, you strengthen relationship and build your team in a new way. 
• Grows your leadership capacity and your organization’s capacity to make a greater impact. As Mark Vincent articulates, learning in partnership “moves you from organizational knowledge toward organizational wisdom.”

As you reflect on the unique challenges you are facing as a leader, I invite you to consider how learning in partnership can strengthen you and your organizational impact. Alongside listening and helping, learning provides a true pathway for personal and collective transformation. As a process consultant, it is my greatest honor to learn alongside you on your leadership journey.   

Walking alongside,

Matt Visser
Design Group International
Senior Consultant

Process Consulting competencies identified and implemented through
the Society for Process Consulting.