To create a learning culture, you have to admit failure. It's as simple as that. You cannot claim to foster skill acquisition, growth, and progress without accepting that people make mistakes – because it is human nature not to succeed at everything, right away. The first thing to do is to establish a climate in which people feel safe and confident enough to dare to experiment with new things – even if it means being sometimes imprudent. I am sad when I see teams whose momentum has died out or is stifled. If you encourage them to take risks, they are capable of transforming into incredible learning laboratories.

There is a rule, expressed by the 70-20-10 formula, according to which learning is based 70% on concrete experience (daily tasks, essentially), 20% on exposure to more informal situations where it involves interacting and cooperating with others, and only 10% on formal education (e.g., courses and other structured training). In other words, 90% of all learning opportunities are related to teamwork! Knowing that learning contributes greatly to people's employability, one can easily conclude that teams that foster it are better equipped than others to attract, develop, and retain talent.

• Make work rhyme with learning opportunities. Behind every challenge lie opportunities to enrich one's knowledge and grow. Make sure your team discerns them. Instill a conquering spirit throughout the organization, explaining that individual talents are perfectible through practice.
• Encourage risk-taking and tolerate «mistakes». The notion of error in the sense of fault, failure, or defeat does not exist in an environment that promotes continuous improvement. Simply because learning happens naturally through trial and error. This process can only be put in place if people feel confident enough to dare to venture out of their comfort zone. Therefore, strive to encourage risk-taking (in an appropriate proportion, of course), experimentation, prototype building, etc. See your team as a kind of Fab Lab where everyone is allowed to let their creativity blossom. But above all, support people who take risks and destigmatize what is called failure.
• Spend time with your colleagues and consider these moments precious. Encourage people to cultivate their strengths. Discuss and plan with them their specific development needs. Make continuous learning a normal and valuable activity. When recruiting and promoting, take into account the potential of individuals. Openly congratulate people who have taken the time and effort to acquire new skills (e.g., as part of a personal development plan). Finally, remember this: promoting learning requires an investment of time!
• Institute systematic project analyses. Whether the results are good or bad, take the time to elucidate what happened and why. In high-level sports, a match is always followed by a detailed analysis of individual and collective performances. The same goes for your team. After each challenge, address these four key questions with them: What did we plan to do? What actually happened? Why did it happen? What will we do differently, or better, next time?
• Share lessons learned to inspire others people within and outside the team. For example, by putting up a bulletin board in the offices. Feedback can circulate better. Incidentally, this will give ideas to people passing through the premises, stimulating their own desire to progress. Never stop encouraging your team to learn from their experiences, positive or negative, because what is considered a failure often contains the seed of its solution.

• The fundamental attribution error. People tend to believe that their successes are not due to luck, but to their hard work, intelligence, or skills. On the other hand, they tend to
  blame their failures on bad luck. This phenomenon, which psychologists call attribution error/bias, significantly hinders the learning process. In fact, as long as we refuse to make connections between our actions and what we consider failures, it will be difficult to draw useful lessons from them.
• The overconfidence bias. It's well known: success increases self-confidence. But an oversized ego does too, and that's the problem. While assurance is a good thing, excessive self-possession induces a feeling of invincibility, which is obviously false. To truly learn, we must humbly acknowledge our weaknesses and errors in judgment.
• The impostor syndrome. Some people are convinced, despite evidence to the contrary, that they are less capable than others. They feel they don't deserve to celebrate their successes, for which they almost want to apologize, as if these results were usurped. Don't let your team and colleagues believe that their successes are solely due to luck. Disabuse them when they underestimate themselves.
• The excess of work standards and procedures. Don't overwhelm your teams with instructions. A profusion of internal rules would hinder experimentation and thus continuous learning. In particular, this could have a chilling effect on newcomers, who would be tempted to «play it safe» by reducing their contributions to the organization.
• The trap of productivism. Most organizations value action over reflection. However, the eureka effect (also called the Aha! moment), that magical instant when one suddenly understands a problem that had remained mysterious until then, occurs especially when one agrees to step out of their routine to let their mind wander. So give your team a little slack so they can take a step back and let themselves be inspired.