Challenge-based learning could be the key to unlocking a more connected company culture for your workforce.
This alternative skills development method is a collaborative experience that strengthens company culture by connecting individual team members in a meaningful, lasting way.
Not only is collaboration itself a vital and in-demand future-proof skill but also a method of cultivating a more connected company culture.
What does a connected company culture look like? And how is a connected company culture built through the challenge-based learning process?
A strong company culture is connected not just through like-mindedness, but also through difference. Challenge-based learning encourages collaboration between unique employees with unique strengths, knowledge, passions, and ideas.
The result is a diverse mosaic of innovative thinkers. Through collaborative projects, colleagues naturally teach one another because each has something unique to offer.
A University of Washington study that compared lecture-based learning to challenge-based learning in the workplace found that the collaboration of CBL offers more significant benefits: not only were the employees interacting with one another and engaged in their learning, but they were also sharing knowledge with one another.
In the end, collaborative learners showed a lasting understanding of the material and skills learned in comparison to the lecture-based learners, in large part due to the connective, collaborative work.
With challenge-based learning, team members connect through their differences, using diversity to their advantage in order to reach a shared goal. This fosters a connected company culture in which team members are productively engaged and teach one another. Happy to work together towards a shared mission despite their differences.
The diverse collaboration required in challenge-based learning encourages creative solutions. Employees look at problems, concepts, and situations through new perspectives. Exploring new creative ideas, however, may lead to failure.
Challenge-based learning encourages creative risk-taking and experimentation, which creates a blame-free environment for employees.
Instead of pointing fingers, employees can try and fail fearlessly, which fosters a community of employees focused on finding the best solution together rather than completing a task correctly.
This creative experience connects the employees through a determined, open-minded process. The creative cross-collaboration encourages open communication across the company team, as the diverse problem-solvers innovate interdisciplinary solutions for the benefit of the whole company together.
Apple’s case studies on the challenge-based learning framework proved that collaborators succeed when given the creative freedom to take risks, fail, and connect through open-minded perspectives.
Lastly, collaborating on challenges nurtures related soft skills that allow the team to connect through stronger professional bonds.
These soft skills include communication, conflict resolution, and negotiation, all of which encourage strong teamwork, a more productive team, and higher-quality results.
Along with nurturing hard skills from innovating solutions, employees will collaboratively build lifelong soft skills. Moreover, collaboration also builds personal-professional skills like adaptability and self-confidence.
Building these skills creates stronger professional identities for each individual employee, resulting in a stronger team as a whole.
For example, with each employee more confident in their diverse contribution to the team, the team as a whole can produce more authentic results with confidence.
Challenge-based learning connects a team through their differences, the creative process of innovative problem solving, and the skill-building opportunity
A connected company culture is one that is united by a shared mission while still made up of diverse individuals who are satisfied and feel a sense of belonging in the workplace.
Implementing challenge-based learning into your internal talent development strategy has the potential to drastically change the culture within your workplace for the better.
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