How to Form a Culture of Continuous Learning for Project Teams

Continuous learning is a popular core value of growth-minded startups and innovative companies like Nvidia, HubSpot, and more. 

You’ll sometimes see it referred to as ‘continuous improvement’, but the idea is the same that learning should never stop. And by extension, neither should improvement. 

Learning is both the journey and the destination. 

As a project manager, the ability to effectively lead a team and bring out the best in the people you work with has a direct impact on overall project success. 

While you may already have a continuous learning mindset, as many successful project managers do, the question is, how much, if at all, is that transferring to your team? Could you be doing more to create a culture of continuous learning, so that your team can produce even better results? Results that also perhaps increase your project profit margins?

Here we’ll discuss the benefits of continuous learning and 3 easy ways to establish a culture of continuous learning with project teams. 

The Benefits of the Continuous Learning Mindset

Adopting a continuous learning mindset means that you commit to learning consistently, and that this process is delightfully never-ending, not a life sentence you dread. The concept is popular in the realm of self-improvement to help a person consistently move toward the best version of themselves.

Beyond the self-help space, continuous learning plays a big role in successfully leading teams to create awesome things, especially when there’s pressure to be creative or innovative.

In 2024, there’s even more of an emphasis on continuous learning within company cultures, specifically because of the rise of AI. The main point here is almost a threatening one: if you don’t commit to continuous learning, AI might take your job. At least that’s the subtext, anyway.  

So, what makes continuous learning so groundbreaking? For one, what makes the paradigm so different is that failure is built-in to the framework. Stumbling along the way is not perceived as something to avoid, but something that can be used as a means to an end. For continuous learners, stumbles more often than not lead to big wins.

What does it take to be a continuous learner? The continuous learning model contains these three defining characteristics:

• Self-directed learning - Individuals are naturally curious, ask questions, and chart their own course to obtain new knowledge and sometimes even new skills that can be learned with free, low-cost, or online resources.
• Iterative learning - The iterative side of learning is more about structures and processes. The iterative learner wants to figure out what’s going on underneath the surface to make everything spin, and how to go in and optimize that. They are the show directors who use dress rehearsals to make changes that improve the performance.
• Socially-driven learning - The old adage still holds true that it’s not what you know; it’s who you know. Continuous learning doesn’t happen in a vacuum, and expertise is meant to be widely and freely shared with others.

Individuals and teams can achieve better results, both personally and professionally, by adopting these three facets or shifts. Continuous learning, which until recently was commonly referred to as ‘lifelong learning’ for almost half a century, offers a slew of well-documented benefits:

• Improves cognitive function, especially with age

• More confidence 

• Better interpersonal skills

• Better communication skills

• More opportunities to advance career

• Improves adaptability

• Promotes resilience

3 Steps to Instill Continuous Learning Within Project Teams

Solid communication and adaptability are crucial for project teams to effectively work together and ultimately, thrill the client. These are all fruits of continuous learning.

But the question is, how can you transfer this mindset to your team? How can you guide them toward being more self-directed, iterative, and socially driven learners? Here’s how to intentionally form a culture of continuous learning in 3 easy steps:

1. Optimize the environment for learning

Willpower is diminished in environments that aren’t conducive to the overall goal or vision. That’s why you need to first optimize the environment for learning. As far as what that looks like, a lot is determined by the interpersonal leadership of the project manager. 

As the leader of the team, make it a point to encourage curiosity and experimentation. Promote the relentless questioning of the status quo, to get your teams to think outside the box for better solutions that might be a better fit for the client.

Distractions not related to learning are bad news for the environment. Discuss the mal effects multitasking with your team and brainstorm ways to limit distractions not related to learning.

You don’t necessarily have to make knowledge easier to find, as people are encouraged to be self-directed learners who search for answers themselves. That said, be sure to share your resources and experiences with team members when applicable. 

2. Set up specific channels for knowledge sharing

Sharing knowledge and expertise is the underpinning of the socially driven aspect of continuous learning. As a leader, encouraging this sharing will begin with you. It may be up to you to reach out to people who are reticent to give feedback. Make sure everyone knows their perspective is valued, and that sharing knowledge and experiences can trigger learning in others. 

Establishing effective communication channels will determine how effectively knowledge gets shared among your team. A great idea for small teams is to create a Slack channel, or two, related to sharing knowledge. In this space, people can share ideas and keep them organized. 

From there, if that knowledge gets applied to a specific project task, simply import the information from your Slack channels into your project management tool. This collaborative flow naturally supports continuous learning, and it’s also a fantastic way to support overall productivity. 

3. Do project performance reviews with two-way feedback

Regular performance reviews keep both project managers and team members accountable for the success of their projects. They’re also a way to keep continuous learning at the forefront of the culture.

Project managers like to do their performance reviews in a variety of ways, and there’s no one-size-fits-all review process. However, two-way feedback should be non-negotiable in the interest of continuous learning. Again, it’s part of that social contract where everyone agrees to share knowledge, experiences, even failures, in the interest of learning as both a means and an end. 

One final idea is to include continuous learning as a metric by which the performance review is totaled. In addition to areas like time management, communication, etc. you can discuss with each team member how they incorporated learning into their process and what improvements/adjustments could be made to take their work to the next level. 

Why Incorporate Continuous Learning into Project Management?

Continuous learning involves consistent questioning, sharing, and improvement, and it can be applied to any and every role in human life. Continuous learning has been documented in numerous published studies over the past 50 years to help improve cognitive ability, confidence, and much more. 

Remember that continuous learning doesn’t always follow a traditional, linear path. To become a continuous learner means to adopt three facets of a learning personality: self-directed, iterative, and socially driven. The key to getting teams to buy in is to guide them toward developing these faculties. 

You can easily instill continuous learning into the culture of your team by optimizing the environment, encouraging knowledge sharing, and doing rolling performance reviews. These simple hacks can help project managers bring out the best in their teams from creatives, developers, engineers, and all the other individuals whose brainpower culminates into awesome deliverables.