Leaders are a vital part of any organisation because they influence how the organisation acts and responds. It can be said that leaders “manage the direction of the evolution of the culture” (Schein, 2017, p. 125). This means it is within the gift of the leader to manage and develop the systems that help people learn within an organisation. But developing a learning organisation goes beyond leaders just ensuring that people are booked on training courses. There are several actions a leader can take to positively influence the effectiveness of a learning organisation. When an organisation learns from past process safety incidents it can take proactive steps to prevent the incidents repeating. This paper reviewed a range of literature on learning organisations and developed some ideas for leader’s actions to enhance the creation of a learning organisation. This paper is based on a research project undertaken by the author as a Master of Leadership project.
