Learning collectively to grow beyond oneself – why (inter-)personal development matters for agility

Abstract

This article in the journal “Gruppe. Interaction. Organisation. (GIO)” derives the importance of various forms of collective reflection and awareness processes for learning ability and agility from knowledge management and cognitive science and gives examples for their implementation. Most approaches explain agility as the flexibility to adapt to volatile, dynamic environments through the ability and willingness to continuously self-renew. The article highlights the importance of social processes of awareness and reflection for the capacity for collective self-renewal. It explains self-renewal from theories of collective knowledge, learning, and collective cognition and derives necessary qualities of cognition and levels of learning that enable permanent self-renewal capacity of teams and organizations. Next to multiple perspectives on contents of collaboration, it is permanent reflection and, if necessary, adaptation of the structures and qualities of collaboration, i.e. social interaction, which plays a key role. This collective learning on the 2nd or 3rd level represents (inter-)personal learning and development processes. Finally, examples are used to show where and how corresponding intervention elements are already integrated in existing agile frameworks.