Leaders’ Critical Role in Building a Learning Culture

Leaders must engage in reflection at both a thinking and behavioral level to drive meaningful change and development, particularly when cultivating the ability to ask questions. Reflection at the thinking level involves revisiting foundational assumptions, objectives, and guiding principles so that leaders can frame more insightful questions that align with overarching goals. Behavioral reflection, by contrast, focuses on evaluating specific actions, relationships, and behaviors, for leaders to identify areas where questioning can foster more profound understanding and improvement. Through purposeful self-reflection, leaders can analyze past experiences critically and develop their questioning skills. They’ll be equipped to adapt effectively to future challenges and promote a culture of inquiry in their teams.

In problem-solving, leaders must also actively work to identify and eliminate biases, ensuring that issues are examined thoroughly rather than jumping to solutions based on initial impressions. This deliberate approach of going slow to go fast ensures solutions are thoughtful, targeted, and built to last. As such, Lego and Velux leaders were trained during group coaching sessions to be mindful of biases and focus on real problem causes rather than symptomatic quick fixes.

By leveraging the power of reflective questioning, the leaders fostered a culture of continuous learning and effective problem-solving that drove both personal and organizational development. A Lego senior manager captured this approach well: “I used to just ask a few questions before concluding. Now I ask questions to let the employees arrive at the conclusions themselves. This enables me to see how they understand a problem.”

Similarly, a Velux manager shared, “I’ve started to ask all my stakeholders more questions to ensure we’re covering their needs, not just my own. As a result, more employees feel involved and motivated to take ownership.”

Developing reflective leaders through group coaching. Lego and Velux introduced a group coaching approach for leadership development to instill reflective questioning. Unlike traditional one-on-one coaching, group coaching brings leaders together so that they can practice critical reflection collectively, supported by structured roles and questioning techniques.

The group coaching process sharpens participants’ skills in problem framing, asking insightful questions, and effectively receiving coaching and feedback. This structured format promotes critical reflection and heightens awareness of personal assumptions, cognitive biases, and mental models. Each session with a leadership team designates a process facilitator, a problem owner, a coach, and the other participants as observers. The coach poses open, thought-provoking questions for 10 minutes, encouraging the problem owner to clarify their challenge, reflect on insights gained, and identify the next steps. Observers note additional questions and insights, which they share with the problem owner for the subsequent 10 minutes. The session concludes with a group reflection, where participants are invited to assess the experience from multiple perspectives, explore alternative ways to frame the problem, and uncover valuable lessons about their own thinking. This process builds core skills in action-learning facilitation, critical thinking, and collaborative problem-solving.

A distinctive feature of the group coaching process is cultivating the ability to think through questions without the pressure to respond immediately. This is a challenging shift given our conditioning in schools and workplaces to provide immediate answers. Developing this patience and openness is essential for deep problem framing, where understanding becomes the priority over instant solutions. This capacity for reflective questioning lays the groundwork for lasting insights and more impactful collaboration.

A core element of this reflective questioning is kata coaching, a structured coaching routine used in Toyota’s continuous improvement practice.6 The process encourages a disciplined cycle of questioning by a coach to guide individuals to set clear targets; assess current conditions; experiment with small, iterative steps; and reflect on each result. This approach cultivates a habit of ongoing learning and ultimately builds resilient organizational problem solvers.

Sample questions from kata coaching:

1. What does success look like?

• What specific outcome are you aiming for?
• How will you know when you’ve achieved it?

2. What is the current condition?

• What data supports your understanding of the current situation?
• What gaps exist between the current and target conditions?

3. What was your last step, what did you expect, and what did you learn from it?

• What actions were taken, and what insights emerged from them?
• How will these insights inform your next steps?

Group coaching not only enhances leaders’ reflective abilities but also strengthens accountability. By engaging in collective inquiry, participants become mutually responsible for the session’s depth and outcomes. This emphasis on collaborative reflection empowers leaders to apply similar methods in their teams, resulting in more thoughtful, data-informed decisions that address root causes rather than symptoms.

At Lego, this shift led to heightened creativity in problem-solving. One leader noted, “This approach transformed my thinking. It’s no longer just a tool; it’s a way to approach challenges thoughtfully. Now I apply these insights professionally and in my personal life, focusing on facts, setting clear goals, and avoiding assumptions.”

A Velux leader reflected on the transformative impact of group coaching: “I have moved from defending my own solutions to listening and reflecting. I now understand that failing is part of any success, so asking the right questions is more important than having the right answers.”

By embracing inquiry-driven group coaching, Lego and Velux are nurturing leaders who are skilled in facilitating learning and fostering a culture of reflective problem-solving. This approach enables organizations to harness the collective intelligence of their teams, navigate complexity with resilience, and drive sustainable growth.

Fostering a Safe and Supportive Learning Environment

Building a culture of problem-solving and learning to learn requires a foundation of psychological safety.7 Group coaching has proved highly effective in creating a supportive environment where participants openly discuss setbacks, challenges, and the mental models shaping their problem-solving approach.

In this safe space, constructive dialogue flourishes, enabling leaders to ask insightful, reflective questions that uncover underlying assumptions and drive critical thinking. Group coaching sessions act as a microcosm for the broader organizational environment, helping leaders challenge shared assumptions that can otherwise impede problem framing and solution development. By admitting they don’t have all the answers, leaders model humility and encourage rapid learning cycles: setting clear expectations, taking action, and continuously refining outcomes based on feedback.

Fostering a psychologically safe learning environment requires leaders to model vulnerability by sharing their own challenges and learning journeys. This builds trust, normalizes openness, and encourages participants to recognize and address their own growth areas. Leaders emphasize collaboration and value each team member’s perspective as they ensure every voice is heard in the problem-solving process. By establishing a culture of trust and support, leaders enable team members to develop their skills in critical thinking, challenging assumptions, and adaptive problem-solving.

Viewing Every Problem as a Learning Opportunity

Each problem initiates three interconnected learning processes that drive individual and collective development. First, the problem owner gains specific insights into solving a technical or organizational issue, deepening their understanding of the problem’s root causes and expanding their expertise. At the same time, they build general problem-solving skills through structured methods, arming themselves to handle future challenges with greater efficiency and effectiveness.

Leaders also engage in a learning process as they coach and support the problem owner, enhancing their abilities to mentor employees and develop organizational talent. This process strengthens leaders’ coaching skills and cultivates an organizational culture that embraces continuous improvement and transformation.

These simultaneous learning experiences reinforce the organization’s capacity to adapt, address challenges, and evolve. In essence, every challenge is an opportunity for multilayered learning. Individuals enhance their problem-solving capabilities, while leaders foster a culture that prioritizes skill development and growth.

Instituting an Organizational Learning Scaffold

Embedding learning throughout an organization is an ongoing challenge. Our research underscores the value of creating an organizational learning scaffold as a foundational support to ensure that learning is woven into every level of the organization and is not limited to specific teams or roles. The organizational learning scaffold integrates learning into daily operations rather than treating it as a one-off event. This framework embeds learning as a natural response to every challenge or opportunity for growth, combining the critical elements of effective problem-solving: leading with questions, fostering a supportive learning environment, and viewing each problem as an opportunity for learning.

Through this structured approach, organizations can create a sustainable foundation for development. The scaffold supports team members at all levels in engaging in systematic problem-solving and enables continuous innovation and improvement.

Organizing for learning through an organizational learning scaffold. Creating an organizational learning scaffold involves establishing a structured coaching hierarchy that assigns specific roles and promotes coordinated learning processes centered around concrete business problems. Employees initially engage as learners, while leaders step into three discrete layered coaching roles based on their positions in the organizational hierarchy. For instance, the first coach is typically a front-line manager, the second coach could be a senior manager, and the third coach may be an area director or general manager.

This learning scaffold organizes coaching into three interconnected processes that enable employees and leaders to tackle complex operational issues while strengthening problem-solving and coaching skills:

1. Finding, facing, and framing problems using data. In the first learning process, the first coach partners with learners to identify a specific operational problem, define clear objectives, and begin investigating the issue. The coach, trained in group coaching methods, applies the kata coaching approach to guide learners through a data-driven problem-solving routine. The focus is on gathering additional data and facts or conducting targeted experiments to uncover insights that help learners frame the problem and explore potential solutions.
2. Developing scientific thinking and learning routines. In the second learning process, the second coach observes these daily coaching sessions and focuses on the development of the first coach’s skills in guiding learners. This oversight enables the second coach to support the first coach’s growth in fostering scientific thinking among learners and setting them up to approach problems systematically, utilize data, and iterate on solutions.
3. Guiding critical reflection and leadership development. The third learning process emphasizes reflection and leadership development among all coaches. The third coach observes discussions between the first and second coaches and guides critical reflection on the coaching approaches and learners’ progress. Through this meta-coaching process, the third coach helps both the first and second coaches refine their abilities to develop learners’ scientific problem-solving capabilities while embedding the hierarchical coaching model as a routine that fosters continuous improvement.

Learners gradually transition into coaching roles as the organization matures and a dynamic, self-sustaining learning culture takes shape. This progression strengthens the organization’s transformative capability as learners step into the role of first coach, first coaches advance to second coaches, and so on, building a scaffold of continuous development. This structured progression fosters an adaptive organization, where each step in the coaching ladder is an opportunity for personal and professional growth and the organization’s ability to innovate and respond to change deepens.