Great Leaders Are Great Learners - How to Develop Learning-Agile High Potentials

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by Margaret

Great Leaders Are Great Learners explains learning agility as the ability to know what to do when you don’t know what to do. It presents four interrelated behavior sets—seeking, sensemaking, internalizing, and applying—and describes how learning-agile people learn deeply from experience and transfer lessons to new, challenging situations. The paper also clarifies how to identify learning agility in leaders, distinguishing high potentials from high professionals and offering guidance for developing learning agility in individuals and organizations.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages16

Reading Time40 min

AccessFree to download

Executive Summary

What’s Learning Agility?

4 Components of Learning Agility

Who is Learning Agile? How to Identify It In Your Talent

The Difference Between High Professionals and High Potentials

How to Develop Learning Agility

Getting the Right Experience

Conclusion: Where Do We Go From Here?

About the Authors

WHITE PAPER Great Leaders Are Great Learners How to Develop Learning-Agile High Potentials By: George Hallenbeck and Laura Santana Contents Executive Summary 1 What’s Learning Agility? 2 Who is Learning Agile? How to Identify It In Your Talent 4 The Difference Between High Professionals and High Potentials 5 How to Develop Learning Agility 8 Getting the Right Experience 10 Conclusion: Where Do We Go From Here? 12 About the Authors 13 Executive Summary While learning agility has become a hot topic in recent decades, there’s not yet widespread understanding of its underlying nature, nor the best way for organizations and talent development leaders to leverage it, especially because it isn’t a skill that’s necessarily concentrated at the top of your organization. Instead, it’s likely dispersed among leaders at all levels. And it’s often overlooked. By learning how to identify and cultivate learning agility, your organization can create more confident leaders who are ready for the future, who are able to proactively identify business opportunities, and who can quickly respond to unexpected challenges. This white paper offers CCL’s perspective on 3 of the most fundamental and frequent questions about learning agility: • What is learning agility, and who possesses it? • How do I identify learning agility in my organization’s leaders? • How do I develop learning agility in myself and my organization’s leaders? Importantly, we’ll outline the difference between high potentials and high professionals, 2 classes of highly coveted employees that organizations often conflate. By properly identifying the distinctions between these groups of talented employees, your organization can maximize its workforce, putting people in the right roles, and helping you better design and implement a leadership strategy. ©2019 Center for Creative Leadership. All rights reserved. 1 What’s Learning Agility? Learning agility is the ability to know what to do when you don’t know what to do. That probably captures its essence better than any formal definition, but to put learning agility in more specific terms, it involves the practice of 4 specific and interrelated sets of behaviors that allow people to learn deeply from their experiences and then apply the lessons they’ve learned when faced with new and challenging circumstances. 4 COMPONENTS OF LEARNING AGILITY 1. SEEKING 2. SENSEMAKING 3. INTERNALIZING 4. APPLYING For learning agile individuals, their practice of these behaviors ~~i~~s often an “unconscious competence”—they merely “do what they do” when faced with new challenges and are more likely to identify as “lifelong learners” or “works in progress” rather than “learning agile.” Likewise, in the eyes of others, learning agile people are often characterized as “quick studies” or for having a “knack” for coming up with new solutions. Because of their penchant for succeeding in circumstances that are unfamiliar for both them and their organizations, individuals who are learning agile are often seen as also having high potential. 2 ©2019 Center for Creative Leadership. All rights reserved. Let’s dive deeper into the 4 sets of behaviors: • Seeking: Developing learning agility requires an intentional willingness to immerse yourself in new and challenging situations that broaden and expand your experiences. Learning agile individuals see these situations as prime opportunities for new learning and growth. Furthermore, these are seen as opportunities to seek out and embrace, not just to accept. • Sensemaking: Learning from experience is a highly active and ongoing process marked by curiosity and a willingness to experiment. Asking “Why?”“How?”and “Why not?” are essential to gaining the insight and perspective that fuels learning. Failed experiments, and the setbacks and criticism that accompany them, are just a part of the ongoing journey for learning agile individuals. • Internalizing: Learning d

FAQs

What is learning agility, according to the paper?

Learning agility is the ability to know what to do when you don’t know what to do, practiced through four interrelated behavior sets that help people learn deeply from experience and apply lessons to new situations.

What are the four components of learning agility?

They are seeking, sensemaking, internalizing, and applying. Together they describe how people immerse in new challenges, interpret experiences, reflect and retain lessons, and adapt by transferring principles to unfamiliar circumstances.

How can organizations identify learning-agile talent and distinguish it from similar groups?

The paper notes that learning agility is often distributed across leaders and is not tied to demographics. It recommends using appropriate tools to detect it and emphasizes differentiating high potentials from high professionals to place people in the right roles and strengthen leadership strategy.

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by Margaret