“Dear L&D” is a reflective letter-style series where learning leaders address the profession directly, giving voice to the lessons, challenges and opportunities shaping the future of learning and development (L&D).

Dear L&D,

I don’t know about you, but I hear stories all the time about teams or people making bad decisions or mistakes that end up wasting huge amounts of organizations’ time and money. Often, these mistakes could have been avoided by ensuring important knowledge was openly shared.

Sam, a colleague of mine, was complaining about this very issue recently. Sam works for a utility company with project managers spread across many areas. He needed someone for a large data project and none of the project managers he knew had sufficient expertise. He went through the process of getting a new job description approved — which as you know, takes time. During a chance discussion with a co-worker, he learned that there was already someone working in another division who had deep expertise in large data projects. Sam was able to connect with him and bring him in to advise on the project — and didn’t have to waste even more time on recruiting and hiring someone it turned out he didn’t need. Why did this happen? Because the expertise present within his company was hidden.

One reason organizational knowledge remains hidden or unknown is because of what’s deemed “knowledge hoarding.” Maybe you’ve witnessed this phenomenon: People holding onto knowledge because they see it as a source of power. Employees who feel this way may resist sharing valuable knowledge with others because they think doing so reduces their “competitive advantage.”

Knowledge may also not be shared for other, less intentional reasons. For example:

• Experts often assume that their knowledge is commonly held by others and so they simply don’t think about sharing it.
• People may think others aren’t interested in their knowledge or experience.
• It may not be immediately obvious how knowledge in one area of an organization relates to other divisions or teams. And as a result, it remains hidden and unshared. This can happen anywhere, but is often worse in larger companies with multiple locations and distinct divisions, which may lead to organizational silos.

Lack of knowledge sharing isn’t only an efficiency issue. While it’s true that sharing knowledge helps employees learn from others’ experiences and reduces time wasted searching for information, repeating ineffective approaches or reinventing the wheel, its impact, however, goes much deeper. As the CEO of a marketing company told me recently, it can also be a “game changer when it comes to improving collaboration, innovation and engagement.”

If you want to identify and leverage the untapped expertise hidden within your organization and foster a culture of knowledge sharing, here are some strategies that can help:

Lead By Example

The No. 1 way to encourage knowledge sharing is by modeling the behavior. You can set the tone by sharing your own knowledge, recognizing others who do so and publicly praising them for it. If you have a knowledge sharing community or platform, senior leaders within your company should use it; actively and regularly sharing their knowledge as well as recognizing and rewarding others for doing so. When you create this kind of environment, you’ll find employees start wanting to share what they know and have learned.

Normalize Learning Through Mistakes

Share stories around both successes and failures and frame mistakes as important learning experiences. Sharing stories of times when things didn’t go as planned not only helps nurture trust and encourage questions, it can also help prevent the same — often costly — mistakes.

Cultivate a Strengths-Based Culture

Highlight and celebrate learners’ skills, knowledge and expertise. Some ways to do so include: internal messaging channels, lunch and learn gatherings, communities of practice and team presentations. I’ve also seen learning and development (L&D) teams introduce monthly “expert spotlights” featuring employees sharing their expertise in informal sessions; these were great ways to foster a culture of openness, trust and knowledge sharing.

Integrate Knowledge Sharing Into Your Core Values

Starting with onboarding, clearly communicate knowledge sharing as a core organizational value. It’s important for everyone, but especially for newer employees, to know where to go for guidance and information. You can showcase others’ expertise informally in team meetings, or work it into conversations. For example, if you know an employee is struggling with Excel, you might say: “If you want to learn more how to get the most out of Excel, you really need to talk to Camille. She is a pivot table wizard and has tons of experience to share.”

Talk, Explain and Share

A concept I really like — and think can be incredibly powerful — is intentionally making your work visible and sharing information transparently and proactively, often through networks. After all, people don’t always know what to ask for, or what information would be useful to them, until they actually see it. When people are part of a community where knowledge is actively shared, they may come across something unexpectedly valuable and highly relevant to their work.

Some refer to this as “working out loud,” and it can take many forms, many of which create opportunities for serendipity. For example, if you’re traveling to another city for a meeting or event, you can share that you’ll be there and look for opportunities to connect with colleagues you don’t see regularly. Another approach is to make your thinking and work more visible by contributing to topic-focused discussion threads rather than defaulting to individual emails or private conversations. In doing so, you’re adding to a searchable knowledge base that can continue to benefit others long after the original conversation has ended.

Tapping into the wealth of knowledge that lives within all organizations can be incredibly beneficial for both productivity and employee well-being — but it won’t necessarily happen on its own.

As an L&D professional, you play a key role in encouraging and supporting the open exchange of expertise and fostering a workplace culture where all employees embrace the power of knowledge sharing. I hope you find the ideas here useful as you continue to champion this important mission at your organization.

Here’s to learning from each other,

Julia