Policy : Model Continuous Learning

Commitment to Leading Through Learning In organisations where leaders project certainty and avoid admitting ignorance, a culture of performance — not learning — takes hold. People optimise for looking competent rather than becoming more capable. Leaders who visibly learn, ask questions, change their minds, and share their development signal something powerful: that growth is valued here, and that not knowing is the starting point for knowing.

What This Means Modelling continuous learning is not about attending courses. It is about demonstrating curiosity in everyday interactions — asking questions before giving answers, reading broadly and sharing what you find useful, admitting mistakes without excessive self-criticism, and treating feedback as information rather than threat.

Our commitment to modelling continuous learning is built on:

• Learning in Public – Leaders share what they are reading, thinking about, and learning — making their own development visible and inviting others into the conversation.
• Changing Minds Openly – When leaders update their view based on new information, they say so. This signals that updating is a sign of strength, not weakness.
• Asking More, Telling Less – Leaders approach conversations with genuine curiosity rather than pre-formed conclusions. Questions generate more learning than lectures.
• Investing in Others' Learning – Leaders actively enable their teams to learn: through time, resources, access to experts, and permission to experiment and fail safely.
• Staying Technically Grounded – Engineering leaders maintain enough technical literacy to participate meaningfully in technical conversations, even if they are not hands-on engineers.

Why This Matters DORA research identifies learning culture — and specifically generative organisational culture — as one of the most significant predictors of both software delivery performance and organisational outcomes. Leaders set the cultural tone. If they do not model learning, the culture will not sustain it.

Our Expectation All leaders must invest in their own learning and make that investment visible. They must create protected time for teams to learn, and treat learning as a legitimate use of working time — not a nice-to-have squeezed into evenings.