Most learning professionals want to move beyond a transactional order-taking role and increase their impact in the organization. We want to use our expertise to help drive performance, solve talent challenges, and achieve organizational goals.

For years, in my role as VP of learning, this desire to increase impact occupied my thoughts—mainly because it wasn’t enough to perfect our product with awesome learning experiences. Even though they were fantastic and well designed, they didn’t solve business challenges. We needed to work differently. Slowly, over time, we shifted our approach until we became strategic business partners. Our stakeholders stopped asking for training and started engaging in collaborative conversations about what might work to ease their pain. It was exhilarating!

But, in the glow of our own transformation, I started to wonder if other learning leaders had done the same and, if they had, how? Was my experience similar or different than theirs? Perhaps, if we could collect best practices, even more leaders could learn to make this shift and increase the impact of learning teams everywhere.

That question was all I needed to embark on a qualitative research study involving in-depth interviews with dozens of learning leaders across industries and company sizes. The results revealed those working as strategic business partners approached their work with an elevated perspective, broken down into four main categories.

These categories were the subject of a recent ATD Forum roundtable discussion on August 14, 2024. Forum members compared their own experiences to the results of the research and explored how they might elevate their approach to working as strategic business partners in their organizations.

The four categories describing the elevated approach of a learning leader working as a strategic business partner are as follows:

Category #1: Business Focused

A learning professional working as a strategic business partner sees themself as a business leader with learning expertise instead of a learning expert who works in the business. In their minds, the work of the learning team is that of an equal partner instead of a support function. It’s an important mindset shift that affects how they show up in conversations and how they respond to training requests. It also necessitates a strong knowledge of the business from top to bottom.

As equals, they hold themselves and their teams to the same standards as every other leader in the organization, including performance metrics, goals, processes, and standards. Just like any other highly respected organizational leader.

They use the big picture to drive every small step. The mission, goals, and objectives of the business are directly and strategically tied to each learning project. In most cases, if the project doesn’t align with these big-picture elements, they don’t spend the time or resources to work on it.

The focus is always on what’s best for the business overall, not their own team or ego. What’s most important isn’t their job, their team, their expertise, or even the quality of their learning solutions. What’s most important is helping the organization succeed. They are also savvy about the culture and politics of their organization and know how to navigate within them. They lean into the unwritten rules that make doing work in their organization a bit unique.

Category #2: Proactive vs. Reactive

Strategic business partners don’t sit around and wait to be invited to participate in important conversations. Instead, they insert themselves into meetings with the goal of learning more about the business. They are rarely turned away. Every interaction is an opportunity to learn more about what’s important to the business, how the business functions, and where the biggest challenges and opportunities lie (even if that learning happens simply by “overhearing”).

Continuously listening to learn more, they gradually put pieces of the business puzzle together to determine where learning can have the biggest impact. Then, they create an overarching strategy and make recommendations often before the business asks for them. Committed to this strategy, they follow through, only swaying if the business sways.

Category #3: Crazy About Adding Value

The strategic business partner isn’t shy about adding value. They do it every chance they get. If a request doesn’t fit within their current strategy, they focus on what the learning team can do— sometimes pointing the requester to already existing solutions or sometimes walking alongside that stakeholder as a resource or guide.

When working on a learning project, these leaders add their expertise to exceed expectations, often in small but meaningful ways. They aim to add a spark of “extra” or “unexpected” to every project that slowly educates the rest of the organization to the full capabilities of the learning team.

One-and-done learning events don’t exist in their repertoire. Instead, they analyze every learning solution for its potential to scale either now or in the future. The value they provide keeps expanding.

Category #4: Truly Collaborative

Strategic business partners see collaboration as a necessity for partnership. They engage the expertise of everyone in the room to maximize every conversation and project. They work with the business, not for the business, making strategic decisions about where to best use time and resources.

They know the learning function doesn’t need to “own” all learning and training in the organization. Everyone in the company has the potential to work as a “trainer” or a “mentor.” Thus, they equip and guide others to perform these functions at a high capacity.

Finally, because they sit outside any specific function, the learning team is often the first to recognize potential duplication or misaligned messaging between areas. They make it part of their mission to bust through the silo walls keeping this work separate, encouraging the areas to talk together and avoid waste and confusion.

By tapping into each of these four categories, learning leaders elevate their approach and continue the work needed to shift from transactional order-takers to strategic business partners. They increase their impact and maximize the contributions of their team.