Foundations of Total Learning
| Site: | Total Learning Platform |
| Course: | Total Learning Platform |
| Book: | Foundations of Total Learning |
| Printed by: | |
| Date: | Wednesday, 12 August 2026, 3:10 PM |
Description
This book introduces the core ideas, language, and principles that underpin Total Learning.
It is designed to be returned to throughout your learning journey
1. How we approach Total Learning
Three Steps to Total Learning
Our approach to (E)L&D[1] focuses on both shared and applied learning, aligned with our purpose, vision, and mission statements. There are three steps:
Learning for Impact
Our raison d'être; our purpose. Learning and practice create a measurable impact on the individual and institution .
Often, the organisation supports its people to go on training and development programmes. But, how often is this linked to the work that they do? Working with the institution as a delivery partner, we will assess the institution's needs, the behaviours it is seeking to encourage and what is expected of individuals. We will then work with the individuals to determine personal expectations and development needs. Engaging with both the institution and the individual, we will then balance both sets of expectations and needs and agree on an impact assessment framework for institutional and individual outcomes.
Integrated Learning
Our vision is to enable cohesive learning at all levels and across all skill bases.
In problem-solving, some of the best solutions come from those closest to the challenge. The challenges will also test others across the organisation and its networks. The age-old saying “the sum of the whole is greater than its parts” comes to mind. We encourage a unified approach to interconnected challenges by aligning learning across the organisation and its networks. This reflects the creation of learning organisations. An organisation that is committed to improvement must also be committed to learning. How does this emerge? A learning organisation excels in generating, attaining, and assigning knowledge, applying changed behaviours to reflect the new knowledge and insights. Only in this way can wisdom emerge.
Shared Learning
Our mission is to create empowered spaces for shared learning and evidence-based application.
Our empowered learning system seeks to promote a collective mission to improve institutional and individual outcomes.
An applied learning space is created to enable this. The space is a combination of virtual and face-to-face engagement and application. Within the space, we encourage collaboration, collegiality and mutual respect. The aim is to stimulate Learning through 360° Intelligent Networks in creating Knowledge and Skills (LINKS360®) to create a trusted environment where people feel confident and able to learn together. Our rationale is to reinforce a culture where leaders and learners feel able to exercise initiative and apply the learning within and beyond the learning space. Success is measured through impact assessment based on the co-designed impact framework across the short and long-term applications.
[1] Both (Executive) and Non-Executive Learning and Development
1.1. The Individual Level
Exploring the Anatomy of Collective Leadership
Our approach to individual leadership provides a simple but most important point for understanding collective leadership. Behind every collective is a range of individuals. We all think and act differently. We all have our values, and often, these values will compete for priority among groups of all sizes.
Groups themselves clash.
Collective leadership is not easy.
We will start the journey of discovery in the next section by emphasising that we need to understand ourselves before understanding others. We are individuals with selfish motivations. This view was the ‘ah ha’ moment for Stephen Brookes in 2006 when he saw Richard Dawkins's 30th Anniversary edition of “The Selfish Gene”. At this point, he began to explore whether it was the selfish gene – innate to our sense of survival – which gets in the way of collective leadership. The idea of the Selfless Leader then emerged. The idea influenced his research for the next ten years (Brookes, 2016). Before delving into our journey of exploring collective leadership (the style for selfless leaders), we briefly introduce the essential concept of self-will. The question is whether this sense of self will make us different from animals.
Previous research has shown that when it comes to decision-making, going with our gut usually makes for a better outcome than if we go on intellect alone
(Perry, 2018)
From the Anatomical to the Metaphorical
Metaphorical language often describes leadership and followership, particularly popular with anatomical allegories and personal mythology (Lindsay, 2013). Examples include getting our feet wet rather than diving right in, a strong pair of hands or a touch (of the hand) on the tiller, putting your heart into it or deciding with a heavy heart, and so on. As Lindsay argues, metaphors are deeply entrenched in our everyday language and help us to make sense of our lives and dictate to a large degree how we live our lives (Lindsay, 2013: 5).
Both anatomical and metaphorical language helps us understand the complexity of collective leadership more broadly and intelligent leadership more specifically.
A 5 minute nugget.
Click on the Link below for the activity [NOTE: Link is currently a placeholder - takes to the longer version of the history of leadership which needs to be amended/moved]
