Senge’s The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization

Read the following in Senge’s The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization:

Chapter 11, “Team Learning.” This chapter is about the discipline of team learning. While you have probably encountered the concept of team learning or team-building before now, consider how Senge’s conception of team learning is a discipline that requires components you might not have previously fully considered. For example, as you examine strategies such as dialogue and skillful discussion to foster small groups of stakeholders to transform their collective thinking and learn to mobilize their actions to achieve common goals. In team learning the ability to construct a collaborative intelligence and ability greater than the sum of individual stakeholders’ contributions is of paramount importance. As you read consider how team learning can be fostered in multiple types of organizations and contexts and the different challenges there are in achieving effective team performance.
Leading using a Systems Perspective: Examples

This article focuses on ways that organizational leaders can promote team learning by developing cultural brokers or employees who excel at connecting across divides; encouraging people to ask questions in an open-ended, unbiased way that genuinely explores others’ thinking; getting people to actively take other points of view; and broadening employees’ vision to include more-distant networks.

Sample Solution

The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization (Senge 1990) is a book by Peter Senge (a senior lecturer at MIT) that focuses on group problem solving using the systems thinking paradigm to transform businesses into learning organizations. The five disciplines embody theories and strategies for inspiring desire, generating reflective discussion, and comprehending complexity. Senge goes into great detail about the importance of “mental models,” which he claims are necessary in order to “focus on the openness required to expose flaws” in perceptions. The book also emphasizes “team learning” as a means of improving teamwork.

rtance of establishing a hierarchy became evident during the planning stage of the outdoor management course for the red team, the coordinators within the team assumed leadership roles but were unable to gain positional power due to the team being a peer group (Pettinger, 2007). The leaders selected had little authority and influence over the group as everyone was perceived to have the same rank, status and occupation, hence the leaders had none of French and Ravens five bases of power (Pettinger, 2007). The result was leaders with no positional power over the group, so could not direct the group with the method of leadership required for the situation. The task had significant constraints, particularly a short time frame and a large group size, for this situation Chelladurai recommends an autocratic leadership style would be most favourable (Chelladurai and Madella, 2006). The leaders attempted an autocratic leadership style, setting individual tasks for the group, however due to the poor leader member relations and lack of positional power the leadership structure quickly became a democracy. The product was an extremely unproductive workforce initially because of the time spent discussing how was best to approach the task. Because of how the leaders were perceived by the group there was little mutual trust, respect or confidence that the leaders were making the correct decisions, and as a result any management style they tried to implement would have been unsuccessful (Pettinger, 2007). Ultimately, if the leaders had analysed their position and the group they would have realised this and chosen a more democratic approach initially the group would have gained trust for the leaders, making future policy implementation easier.

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