Don’t Keep It to Yourself! Creating a Culture of Shared Learning

What if the fastest way to master any skill was to teach it to someone else? 

This episode reveals how sharing your learning not only helps others – it solidifies your own growth, strengthens your team, and can transform your workplace culture.

Are you holding on to valuable insights, or passing them along? In this special round-up episode, Jessica and Coral explore why teaching others is the secret weapon for growth. 

Instead of just one practice, you’ll get a toolkit of real-world ways to share what you’re learning, from quick tips to full team huddles. 

Listen in to discover how knowledge sharing deepens your understanding, boosts your confidence, and creates a ripple effect far beyond your own desk. 

Whether you’re a seasoned leader or just starting out, you’ll walk away ready to build a culture of curiosity, generosity, and ongoing development.

Links and resources from this episode:

• Join our LinkedIn group: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/12879756/ 
• Send us a message: practicingconnection@oneop.org 

OneOp Academy is a free online series designed for anyone interested in positive change, whether you're an educator, community leader, student, or just passionate about supporting families.

This year's Academy spotlights the unique challenges facing military connected youth, from mental health to resilience education to community support.

 Explore the 2025 OneOp Academy and register today at oneop.org/series/2025academy

Transcript

CORAL OWEN: [00:00:00] Hi everyone. Welcome to this episode of Practicing Connection. I am Coral and I'm here with my co-host, Jessica, and today we're diving into something a little different, but super essential, which is how to share what you've learned with others. Hey, Jessica, how's your week going?

JESSICA BECKENDORF: Hey, Coral. I'm good. Honestly, this theme has been on my mind a lot. There's something about wrapping up a learning journey and then turning around to share it that just feels right to me. But I also work in the education field, so I guess that makes sense. I might be a little biased.

CORAL OWEN: That does track. I love that though, yeah. Any personal stories or moments from this week where you just found yourself wanting to shout, like, “I learned this, everyone needs to know!”?

JESSICA BECKENDORF: Yes. As a matter of fact I'm in a systems thinking class right now, and we have been talking about VMCL, which stands for Vision, Mission, Capacities and Learning. I just finished the [00:01:00] portion that discusses developing your learning systems, these are the systems of feedback that you set up to continually learn from.

And the systems you set up so that your team can make the most of their professional development by sharing what they learn with others on the team. So, super relevant to today's topics, and I do feel like I have to note that the class and the podcast converging at the same time was not planned.

CORAL OWEN: But a very happy accident, I think, as Bob Ross would say. But yeah, V-M-C-L, that's a new one for me. But I am so excited to dig into this more. And it is such a nice feeling when things align like that, isn't it?

So I know in previous episodes we typically zero in on like one practice specifically for our listeners to try, but I was thinking maybe we shake things up a little bit.

JESSICA BECKENDORF: Yeah, and there's actually a pretty fascinating reason behind it. Studies show that when you teach others, you [00:02:00] invest more effort, you spend more time on the material and you achieve better outcomes, even if your student is just a digital teachable agent. It's called a protege effect. And this protege effect happens because teaching requires you to organize your thoughts to identify gaps and to explain ideas clearly, which deepens your own understanding and memory. 

And I have to say, I went down just the tiniest rabbit holes that I'm gonna bring up here right now. I don't know if you've ever heard that term, “Those who can't, teach.” Have you heard that before?

CORAL OWEN:Yeah. 

JESSICA BECKENDORF: It's pretty derogatory and it's really not helpful. And frankly, it's not even the original phrase that came from Aristotle. Aristotle said, “Those who can, do, and those who understand, teach.”

CORAL OWEN: Oh.

JESSICA BECKENDORF: Yeah. And so it kind of, yeah, during I forget which play, but during like a play, they kind of messed with the [00:03:00] language a little bit.

And it ended up turning into this long-term derogatory thing that we say basically, “People who teach, they teach because they can't actually do the work.” And that's not true at all. Teachers have to both be able to do it and they have to be able to stay on top of everything and understand.

So anyway, this is why the protege effect works. It's not just about mastering the content either. So reviews of decades of research show that regular knowledge sharing among employees leads to greater innovation, to better team performance and stronger collaboration. So when knowledge sharing is part of your group's routine, it helps you grow, adapt, and succeed, especially in times of change.

But here's the thing, most effective sharing doesn't just happen one way. So research also shows that combining different types of knowledge sharing, like mini workshops, quick writeups emails, peer coaching and more [00:04:00] actually builds a much richer culture of learning. 

That's why we've put together a roundup of practices today, and I think we've done this a couple times in the last month and it's been kind of fun.

CORAL OWEN: It really has been. And it's kind of like a smorgasbord or charcuterie of strategies. You can just take what works and, you know, try and iterate as you go through some different strategies. So, yeah, let's do it.

JESSICA BECKENDORF: I think you just invented something, a “Charcuterie of ideas” instead of a smorgasbord. I love it.

CORAL OWEN: I'll take credit. I'll take full credit.

JESSICA BECKENDORF: All right, please do. Okay. So the first practice that we pulled together is hosting a mini workshop or a “lunch and learn.” 

In my organization, during the pandemic, we actually did these learning popups where if you had knowledge to share, you would just send everyone an email and say, “Hey, if you can make it great, but I'm gonna do it this time, this day, and we'll record it in case you can't make it.” 

But [00:05:00] whatever way works for you. This doesn't need to be anything fancy. Just carve out 20 minutes, 30 minutes to show your team what you've learned. Use a practical example and invite questions. Making it interactive actually will boost both your team's retention and your own.

CORAL OWEN: I just, I love that idea of like a popup workshop or, you know, just something like, “Oh, hey, I learned this thing,” and just harnessing that energy and that excitement and then passing it along. You know, I think too, sometimes we kind of overcomplicate this idea of a workshop. Like it has to be this full blown training, complete with slides and handouts and, you know, all of these knowledge checkpoints.

And really just like you said, even 15 or 20 minutes can be so useful to spark some great conversation and brainstorming, even innovation.

JESSICA BECKENDORF: And you can use slides if you want to, especially if it helps you get your point across.

CORAL OWEN: Yeah.

JESSICA BECKENDORF: Whatever works for you. But let's move on to the next one. So this next one is, create bite-sized training resources. [00:06:00] So you could record a short video on a new tool that you've learned. You could write a quick how-to with or without screenshots, whatever your preference.

It's your resource. Or you could make a checklist to share in your team chat, or if you've got a team wiki or you know, some other space where you typically share things like that. This approach caters to different learning styles. So some people might prefer the checklist or they might prefer a video, but it also caters to your own style of wanting to share information.

So, catering to different learning styles is another element that is kind of found to increase knowledge, retention, and sharing at work.

CORAL OWEN: Absolutely. I personally trend towards the videos. Screen capture with some of the voiceovers. But I love that there are so many formats, especially leveraging different types of technologies these days for quick gathers of information with a little bit of an additive narration or whatever, that make it so [00:07:00] easy to distribute and capture knowledge, and share it along with people who may benefit from it.

JESSICA BECKENDORF: Yeah, I mean, I would say an incredible example of this is when you created a training video for me on how to post these podcast episodes to our WordPress page, and I think it's silent. And if it isn't silent then, you know, I never heard the sound. But even when it was silent, like I could see, you know, the mouse was circling a certain thing and clicking on it.

And I still use that sometimes to remember if I miss something, right? I don't want to miss something. It was perfect. And then you posted it in a shared space and it's an easy shared folder, it was easy to find. 

So, let's move on to the next one. This is another favorite of mine. Try doing one-on-one peer coaching.

Showing a colleague firsthand how you're using a new process or a new skill can really spark change and the peer tutoring effect actually boosts your own mastery as well.

CORAL OWEN: Agreed. Jess, this is actually one of my favorites as well, and I've [00:08:00] noticed that when I take time to walk someone through a process, I almost always catch myself noticing opportunities to elevate how something flows or help it work more smoothly. And teaching never fails to sharpen my own skills as well.

JESSICA BECKENDORF: Yeah. Alright, next up, if you love writing, this is for you. 

You can create and send a tips-and-tricks email or a mini newsletter to your colleagues, or to whoever you're trying to teach what you're learning to. You could sum up your top learning points and how it's helped you. This really makes the knowledge easily accessible and it creates a record for your team to refer back to and for you to refer back to.

CORAL OWEN: Absolutely. I think there are, this was, you know, probably eight, ten years ago when I first started a particular professional track in my life. There were a number of blogs that I would refer to about, you know, educational technology and learning so much from those just widely available resources.

But having [00:09:00] that sort of personal knowledge database to you to track your own journey, which is something that we talked about in our previous episode. It's really cool to see those skills develop as well.

JESSICA BECKENDORF: Yeah. And I would say too, if you do this one, you could easily then turn it into I think the second practice we shared, the creating bite-sized training resources. Like you could repurpose it too and vice versa, right.

So next up we have team huddles and book clubs. I love this option. Team huddles or book clubs can offer a regular space for everyone to share what's working for them.

So having these structured opportunities for exchange is linked to more resilient and innovative teams.

CORAL OWEN: Yeah, this is something that I've actually done with colleagues throughout the years, especially the book clubs. And initially some people were like, “Oh, I don't have time every week to do this.” But sometimes it would kind of be like you said, popup trainings. It would be kind of like a popup book club.

Like if there was a particular book that a [00:10:00] few folks were interested in, it's like, “Hey, well let's just do a popup book club for, you know, a particular four or six weeks,” and then maybe it'd be dormant for a little while until the next quarter, and then we kind of pop it back up or breathe more life into something else.

But yeah it's just so fun when it's sort of baked into the way that you work. And there is sort of that culture shift as well of, you don't have to overthink it, it just becomes part of what you do.

JESSICA BECKENDORF: Yeah. All right, last one. Invite a teammate to shadow you as you try a new skill, or run a live demo so others can see it in action. Interactivity like this, including observation and hands-on trial, is shown to significantly improve retention and understanding.

CORAL OWEN: Absolutely. Things a hundred percent stick way better when we're able to see them and experience them firsthand. You're so right.

JESSICA BECKENDORF: Yeah, so that's why we did a roundup this time because the research is pretty clear that when sharing is varied, [00:11:00] when you can employ more than one option when it's regular and part of daily life, everyone, including the person doing the sharing, learns more. They feel more confident, and it contributes to a stronger, more adaptable team.

CORAL OWEN: Awesome. Yep. And you heard it here. So I would love to, I know that we've got our mailbag open so we would love to hear if y'all try out some of these practices or combine a few, and see what works. 

Please share with us what's working. Jess, what is the best way for everybody to get in touch with us?

JESSICA BECKENDORF: Yeah, so share your stories, your struggles, your wins at practicing connection@oneop.org, and maybe we'll feature them on a future episode. 

Until next time, keep learning, sharing, growing, and of course, keep practicing. 

CREDITS: The Practicing Connection Podcast is a production of One-Off and is supported by the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, US Department of Agriculture and the Office of Military Family Readiness Policy, US Department of Defense under award number 2 0 2 3 4 8 7 74 3 3.