This article is written by Phil Gratton, Associate Faculty at the Canada School of Public Service’s Digital Academy. With over 25 years of experience in public safety, Phil is a frequent speaker on leadership, technology and national security. The views represented here belong solely to Phil and not necessarily to his employer or the Government of Canada.

  • The problem: If your supervisor or manager isn’t invested in their own learning and development, they may not be invested in yours, and you may miss out on career development opportunities.
  • Why it matters: Beyond mandatory training, the opportunities for career-focused learning can be rare. Supervisors play a key role in influencing career development. You need their support.
  • The solution: Challenge your supervisor on their own learning plan to start or deepen a conversation about your professional and career aspirations.

As a public servant with a growth mindset, you might feel the pinch when your organisation falls short on its learning and development promises. A stark figure from a 2022 Global Government Forum survey highlights this gap: only 36% of public servants across 45 nations feel satisfied with their training options, despite a consensus on its crucial role in forging a forward-thinking public sector workforce.

Learning is not just a boon for your personal growth but a strategic advantage for your department or organisation. Yet, the focus often narrows down to essential, job-specific training, sidelining the broader spectrum of professional and career development. These opportunities, pivotal for your evolution within or beyond your current role, unfortunately, come by less frequently and are often marked by competition for limited resources.

How can you gain an edge to incorporate strategic learning opportunities that will support you in the future?

Sometimes, it’s not the organisation

At times, the bottleneck isn’t the organisation but lies closer to home — your immediate supervisor. My own journey has been enriched by leaders who valued learning, but I’ve witnessed colleagues struggling to secure opportunities, hinting at a disconnect or a lack of commitment from their supervisors towards fostering a learning environment.

A strategically designed learning plan supports both how you work now but it also supports your future you.

One way to see how committed your supervisor is to learning is to challenge them — respectfully — on their own learning plan. The resulting conversation can be quite revealing if done with an air of inquisitiveness and support.

Potential positive outcomes include gaining insight into their leadership aspirations, better aligning with organisational goals and simply developing a better relationship with your supervisor. Showing curiosity in this manner helps you empathise with them, and this can help you visualise your own future more clearly.

It’s all about how you do it

If you are fortunate to work in an environment that offers psychological safety, one that does not simply pay lip service to it, you will be at an advantage. In fact, if the organisation really offers it, you may not need to be the one to make the first move because learning should be built into the culture, and you may get inspiring learning invitations, rather than having to ask for it.

In psychologically safe organisations, learning opportunities are pushed to individuals, rather than making individuals have to seek them out.

If you’re not sure how psychologically safe your organisation (or your branch or team) might be, you will need to prepare a little to ensure challenging your supervisor, even on something as innocuous as learning, goes well.

Start by poring over corporate documents that support the organisation having learning as a value — documents such as human resources policy, workforce development strategies (sometimes called “people strategies”), public reports, onboarding materials, even results from employee satisfaction surveys.

💬 Let the author know how you communicate with your boss about building a learning culture at work by leaving a comment below

Then, talk to trusted colleagues about their experiences with workplace learning. That they appear nonplussed by your enquiry doesn’t really matter — not everybody has a growth mindset or particularly cares about learning at work. But they might still offer insight into the organisation’s culture or your supervisor’s mindset towards learning.

Finally, find the right time to do it. Performance review meetings, including midyear reviews are appropriate times, but as mentioned earlier, you can bring up learning as a conversation topic to build rapport with your supervisor even outside the performance review cycle.

If the window is a formal invitation for a meeting, you can reply with, “Great! I’ll have some questions on training and how you see it.” This should set the stage for a non-confrontational challenge session. Avoid catching them off-guard: questioning someone when they’re not ready can put them on the defensive.

Practical questions worth asking

When you’re face to face, ask them: “Hey Fatima, I’m curious: What does someone in your position have on their learning plan? What did you ask for, and why?” Time to show some genuine inquisitiveness, even caring. They don’t have to share specific details if they’d like to keep some of it private, but they should give you a general idea.

Here are some more questions you can ask to prompt them on learning:

What learning experiences or courses have you taken that have had an impact on your approach to your work? It’s a tough question to start with; however, it’s an effective question to let them know you’re interested in what they do.

**What does having a growth or learning mindset mean to you? **This question is better than directly asking, “Do you have a learning mindset?”; a yes-or-no question that discourages conversation and can feel a little accusatory.

Are there any challenges or opportunities you foresee in our sector that I should consider when planning my learning activities? This can get them to think about capability gaps in your team and communicates that you might be the person to fill them, perhaps placing you ahead of colleagues when those rare career development opportunities come up.

How do you keep up with technology trends, and what’s your approach to learning about them for career growth? You have to talk about technology because, quite simply, it underpins everything we do in this digital era, and you want to signal that you are interested in being a part of it (being tech savvy is an undeniably important skill today, no matter what your job is).

Are there any specific thought leaders, books, or courses you recommend that can help deepen my understanding of what we do? It might be better to leave this question unanswered in the moment, and let it be an invitation for them to offer you these resources a little later. They may need to think about it if they’re not prepared.

And if you’re feeling brave: What have you heard that other departments (or organisations) are doing to get better at X, and why aren’t we doing it? This question lets them know you’re on their team but are intent on broadening your horizons, constructively. If they simply have no idea, consider offering to investigate it and report back. The outcome might take your entire team in an interesting direction.

Think strategically about your learning

Be bold about your career learning choices. Having conversations with your supervisor about your professional development is incredibly important. A strategically designed learning plan supports both how you work now but it also supports your future you.

Be up front with your supervisor. Talk about what you aspire to, career-wise, and help them help you get what you need to support these aspirations. It’s funny how frank conversations can make it hard for someone to say no.

Good luck!

I would love to know what other questions you might ask your supervisor on the topic of learning. Please add them in the comments, below. You’ll be contributing to helping others craft better learning plans and thus creating better public servants everywhere.

Done reading? Make sure to share your own thoughts and questions on approaching your boss and colleagues to create a learning culture at work leaving a comment below ⬇️

(Image credit: Unsplash)