Own the Thinking Process, Not the Thinking: How Leaders Build Problem-Solving Capability

If the leadership changes that actually stick, they don’t come from learning content alone. They come from shared lived experience, immersive learning together. Welcome the chain of learning, where the links of leadership and learning unite. This is your connection for actionable strategies and practices to empower you to build a people-centered learning culture, get results, and expand your impact so that you and your team can leave a lasting legacy.

I’m your host and fellow learning enthusiast, Katie Anderson. I am sharing this episode between my regular releases because it’s been top of mind. I’ve just kicked off the pre-trip learning for my next Japan Leadership Experience cohort, and I’ve been talking with past participants about their experience.

I wanted to share what I keep seeing when leaders learn together. So think about the leadership development investments that you’ve been part of, whether for yourself or the leaders you support, the retreats, the offsites, the conferences, how much of it has actually shifted and changed how you lead, [00:01:00] not just because what you know and what you learned, but how you show up, how you make decisions, how you build culture.

And if you’re honest, probably not as much as you hoped, and you’re not alone. Now, I wanna be clear. I am a big believer in the power of leadership retreats and offsites. I love supporting teams at their annual events, and I’ve seen firsthand how a well-designed session can create alignment, inspiration, and even impact that work matters.

But even the best offsites have a ceiling. Most typically though, when you go to a learning or a training or a conference, although hopefully you’re inspired and walked away with a few things to apply, often when you return to the system, you left the same pressures, the same habits. It’s really hard to maintain that same level of energy.

You’ve been personally transformed, but you’re back in the old system. Potentially alone, and that gap is real. So what [00:02:00] enables a deeper shift? Not one where it’s just you pushing the boulder up the hill for the change you envision. Part of it is what you’re actually learning from not just going to a conference to hear about others’ experiences, but going to the gemba, the place, the work actually happens.

Witnessing what good and great looks like in practice. Not just reading about it or hearing a case study, but being there, seeing, feeling, experiencing what better looks and feels like. There is something irreplaceable about going to see. And there’s something even bigger, and that has to do with the conditions around the learning.

After nearly 30 years of working with leaders in eight years of leading immersive experiences in Japan, I see three conditions that most leadership development is missing. First, the power of shared learning, experiencing something together rather than alone. Second, the power of the [00:03:00] beginner’s mindset, stepping completely outside of your day-to-day into an immersive and unfamiliar environment.

And third. The power of connection, the deeper relationships that form when you learn alongside each other as a team in a meaningful way. I’ve had the privilege of seeing all three come together through my Japan leadership experiences, executive teams, consultants with their clients, organizations sending multiple cohorts, and even the individuals who develop shared community with their cohort.

They’ve all experienced this, and I wanna share some of what they’ve learned today. But what I really want you to take away from today’s episode is that these three conditions for learning are essential, no matter where or how you’re developing leaders. So let’s dive in. So we’ve all had that experience of coming back, fired up, and feeling like we’re the only one who gets it.

Individual learning is powerful, and nearly every leader who’s joined my [00:04:00] Japan leadership experience tells me that their credibility has increased because they’ve been to the source, that they have new context for how to frame principles and that they can share what they’ve seen. Here’s the thing I’ve observed and experienced.

It’s a fundamentally different dynamic when you have others who see it beside you, who learn beside you and with you, and that’s when your learning goes from credibility to collaboration, from leading alone, to moving together. I often have intact teams of executives from healthcare, manufacturing, biotech, you name it, join my Japan leadership experience.

And what they all tell me again and again is that it didn’t just accelerate their individual growth and impact, their shared experience, brought them together in a way that nothing before had. Jim a Healthcare COO brought three of his senior leaders, including their CEO to join me in Japan two years ago.

His goal was alignment, but not just intellectual alignment, but real alignment about what [00:05:00] and why they were leading their transformation. He wanted his whole executive team to really understand both the methodology and the people first philosophy, not as an abstract concept, but as something real and tangible, and that’s exactly what happened.

He recently told me that the experience in Japan brought the methodology, the tools, the practices, down to earth, and made it real and tangible, especially for those who’d been a little bit more skeptical, seeing it, touching it, feeling it together, gave them a frame of reference that they hadn’t had before, and it accelerated the transformation he was leading.

The power of their shared experience wasn’t just a one and done, and it’s been almost two and a half years now and they still talk about it, still text each other about it, and the memories and the insights, they use visuals from what they saw. He said the Japan leadership experience moved them down the field in their transformation and paved the way for the strategy deployment, leadership rounding, visual [00:06:00] management, everything that they were trying to do from a leadership perspective in the organization.

They got it in a way they hadn’t before. They really started living and embodying the leadership that underlies the tools and practices from the head to the heart. That’s the shift from the head to the heart. You can share books and podcasts and data and case studies all day long, and it can make sense logically, but it often stays in the head as an intellectual concept.

When you experience something together, when you see it, feel it, reflect on it side by side, it drops into the heart, and that’s where conviction lives, where revitalization is born. And you really can’t create that in a conference room in the same way. And I see this pattern again, again with the executives and teams that join me in Japan.

Back in episode 25, Kecia Kelly and Amy Chaumeton talked about the impact the Japan leadership experience had on their individual and collective leadership after they joined me with their [00:07:00] COO and two external coaches. The concept of 1000% conviction in serious leadership. One of the biggest takeaways from our trip became their common language back at work, and they shared that they use it constantly.

They challenge each other with it, and it shows up in the leadership of their most important initiatives and strategies. Amy said, it all comes back to every piece in our work. And Kecia said something that really stayed with me, that she enjoyed a new freedom since coming back from Japan. She was able to let go of trying to solve every problem herself, what I often call the doer trap.

Instead, focus on building the capability of her team. And because she had colleagues, other senior executives beside her who had developed the same conviction about what needed to change for them as leaders and for their system, she didn’t feel alone in it. That’s the power of shared learning. Shared experience.

It’s not just that people individually learn more, it’s that the learning becomes exponential [00:08:00] through common language, common conviction, common experience, shared learning creates shared leadership. Now if you’re a consultant or an internal change leader, I wanna name a pattern I keep seeing as well.

Brad Toussaint, who you can hear on episode 20, was one of Kecia’s and Amy’s external coaches who joined us. And for those of you who listened to that episode, know Brad was my boss and my first continuous improvement role 20 years ago. Brad first joined the Japan leadership experience as an individual to learn and experience for himself, and it was so powerful that a year later he brought Keisha Amy, their COO, and another consulting colleague.

He said that the impact of having them learn together as a leadership and coaching team was so transformative in the impact they were able to have collectively when they returned, that he’s now coming back in this upcoming cohort with another intact. Team of six C-suite executives from a healthcare system he’s working with.

Why? Because the experience [00:09:00] not only gave him a deeper grasp of what it takes for leaders to get results and sustain excellence over time, the experience of being together with clients in Japan helped him help his clients really get it in a way that accelerated their progress. And he’s not the only one who’s shared this.

Himanshu Raj, a consultant from India who works with clients in the apparel industry, encouraged one of his clients, a group of five senior leaders, including their chairman, new CEO, and senior site leaders to invest in the Japan leadership experience because he knew they needed to see what good really looks like.

Together and the impact of them being together, coach and leadership team, side by side meant that when they returned Himanshu wasn’t just translating concepts for them. They’d seen it together as he told me. When I say something now, I’m more confident because I’ve seen it and his clients have seen it too.

And Josef Procházka, like Brad joined individually [00:10:00] first for his own learning and was so changed that he brought two of his clients on a trip. A year later, you can hear Josef share the impact that he had personally and with his clients in episode 48. So if you’re a consultant coach, or an internal change leader listening to this, think about the transformation you are seeking to enable for your clients or leadership team.

This experience isn’t just about your own development, though that matters. Of course. It’s about what becomes possible when you and the leaders you support share this experience together. The second condition. Is about what happens when you can truly see with fresh eyes what the Japanese call shoshin a beginner’s mind.

I explored the power of the beginner’s mind in detail just in the last episode 67 when talking about what being a lifelong learner really means. A beginner’s mind is about letting go of your expertise, your preconceptions, being genuinely open and curious. [00:11:00] The most powerful way that I’ve found to unlock the beginner’s mindset is through immersive experiences and not just any immersive experience.

One that requires your full presence and is so far away from your daily routine that you can’t easily slip into your usual doing. Think about it. How many times have you or leaders on your team left a retreat or a meeting to take a call, check, email at break, and never come back? It’s not that you don’t care about the learning or the meeting, it’s because the pull of the day to day is right to there.

But that can’t happen when you’re a world away with an intense and immersive and fun agenda. There’s this sense of awe and wonder that opens you up being somewhere new. Everything is new. Every moment is available for learning. And when you’re in that state together with your team all open at the same time, all asking questions, all noticing things side by side, it doesn’t just shift you individually, it shifts how you see and [00:12:00] learn collectively as a team.

You can read about one of the companies. That’s the cornerstone on my Japan leadership experience, and you hear me talk about them all the time on this podcast because I wanna share those learnings and insights more broadly. A place where 360 employees generate nearly 4,000 improvement suggestions a year.

Their whole company’s purpose is happiness, and they mean it. Their founder is considered a sensei to Japanese business leaders, including at Toyota, because of their focus on long-term impact and people’s happiness. But when you’re standing in that factory in the beautiful gardens that surround their site, talking to the employees and senior leaders seeing respect and joy and happiness on their faces, you get it differently.

You feel it. It isn’t just something you think is that really possible? It is. It lands differently. Their focus on being over doing, which I talked about on episode four, isn’t just a philosophy anymore. You can see how it’s [00:13:00] embodied and lived by everyone at the company. John Summers, the chairman of the manufacturing company who came with Hemanchu and his senior leaders brought his leadership team because he knew they needed more the knowledge they needed to see it.

And he told me that by the second day, his team’s eyes started to sparkle and he knew. Mission accomplished that sparkle, that’s the beginner’s mindset. And action. It’s revitalization. He told me we have to go back to the basics and do this right. It starts with us as leaders and the experience together with his executive team is what got them there.

John said it was a fantastic restart for their company. When you go with a learner’s mindset. See companies where people first. Leadership isn’t just aspirational. It’s rare in how things work. It stops feeling impossible or intangible. You really start to understand and think that, wow, this can be done.

This is real, this is possible, and I [00:14:00] can help enable it in my organization. This is what Mr. Yoshino means when he says that the only secret to Toyota is its attitude towards learning. It’s not about the tools, it’s the attitude, the being, how you show up, and you can’t fully grasp that from a book. Shared learning creates shared leadership.

So the third condition, and to me this is the most important, is the depth of connection that forms when you learn together. It’s why I love each and every cohort that joins me from the depth of relationship and comradery that develops across. 18 global leaders in each group. I’ve made so many lasting friendships from each and every program.

Over 150 leaders now have joined me, and I count so many of them as close friends and colleagues. And what’s even more powerful are the bonds that I see develop or intact teams who come on each cohort, whether it’s a pair, a trio, a group of six senior leaders. When [00:15:00] people share a meaningful learning experience, especially one that takes ’em out of their comfort zone, something shifts in how they relate to each other.

This goes way beyond your typical team building experiences. Now, I love a good team dinner retreat or offsite, but there is a big difference between bonding over an activity in building shared understanding through spending a full week together, learning, reflecting, sharing meals, and experiencing a new culture side by side.

When you’re grappling with new ideas together, reflecting on what you’re seeing, having deep conversations over meals about what’s challenged you, or singing karaoke in yukata, a traditional Japanese robe. Now note what happens at karaoke stays at karaoke. The relationships that form are grounded in truly something deeper.

You see people differently. The usual hierarchies can soften. People become more human to each other. John Summers experienced this with his leadership team. He described how the usual hierarchy of their roles and reporting [00:16:00] structure broke down during the week. His leaders who normally deferred to titles started contributing as equals, and this maintained when they returned to work because of the bonds they developed.

And Jim, the healthcare, COOI mentioned earlier told me that the experience bonded his team together like nothing else ever could. He said that golf trips are fun, but this was much different, much better in every way. They all got closer as a result, and that closeness carried back into how they work together and what they were able to achieve in the organization together.

So why does this matter for leadership? Because the work of transformation is relational. You need people beside you who can share your conviction because one person pushing for change is effort, but the team moving together is aligned. Momentum. The connections that form during shared immersive learning aren’t a side benefit.

They’re how the change sticks when the pressure comes and [00:17:00] old habits pull. It’s those relationships that hold you accountable, support you, and keep the learning alive. Shared learning creates shared leadership. So everything I’ve talked about so far has been about intact teams and having shared immersive learning together, and that is incredibly powerful.

But some organizations are going even further and thinking about how they’re building cohorts and coalitions of. Leaders across their organization who have a shared understanding and shared experience. There are several organizations that I’ve been working with who are sending multiple cohorts of leaders over time to Japan with me from different departments, different levels, different functions.

People who might not work together day-to-day at all. And what’s happening in their organization through this investment is culture building because when you invest in shared learning for a large cohort of your leaders, even across different time periods, [00:18:00] you don’t have just one aligned team. You’re creating a network of people across the organization who share the same language, the same depth of understanding, the same conviction, and developing relationships that they might not have had the opportunity to do so without having that shared experience together.

That network becomes infrastructure for transformation that embeds it into the culture. Penny saw the continuous improvement leader at the Port of Seattle who joined me on chain of learning back at episode 17, has arranged for over 30 of their organization’s leaders to join me across six cohorts, process improvement practitioners, middle managers, senior leaders, people from all different parts of their organization.

And she personally joined one of my cohorts last year and told me that without the Japan Leadership experience, their leaders had missing pieces and their understanding about what people-centered learning was all about. The Japan leadership experience has revitalized and ignited something new [00:19:00] and fresh, not from books and tools, but from the people, the heart of it, and they’re building that foundation in their culture.

And there’s a shared language and depth of connection across the organization that otherwise wouldn’t have existed. And it’s not just the Port of Seattle. The senior executive of a family owned manufacturing company first came to Japan with me, along with two of his senior leaders two years ago, and he said that the experience crystallized his vision for the culture he wants to create.

And he’s since invested in sending multiple cohorts of leaders and emerging leaders on four additional trips, and the learning just compounds across their organization. That’s how shared experience becomes shared culture through a network of leaders who have been through something together, a learning together, and who can carry that forward into everything they do.

And this is really that chain of learning as they expand their learning within the organization. So as you’re listening right now, think about your team, your clients, the leaders beside you. [00:20:00] What would accelerate if you shared this experience together? I’ve come to understand that my purpose is connecting the hearts and minds of leaders around the world so that together we can make it a better place.

And my Japan leadership experience programs are the fullest expression of that purpose because it’s not just about helping one leader grow, it’s about creating the conditions that accelerate our shared mission. People-centered learning cultures where humans thrive and businesses create value. I’ve been leading these programs for eight years now, and this started as a glimmer of a possibility when I first moved to Japan in 2015.

Building relationships with Japanese businesses and leaders, learning alongside Toyota leader Isa Yoshino, who’s a subject of my book, learning to Lead, leading to Learn, and Who Joins the program for the entire week. An exclusive bonus for just the people who join me. And I’m so grateful to be able to share that learning and these connections with now over 150 leaders from over 20 countries, if [00:21:00] you’re an executive or senior leader, the shared learning and relationships will move your organization in ways that no individual training or retreat or offsite can match.

If you’re a consultant or change leader, think about how this can accelerate your impact with your clients or your leadership team. And if you’re an individual, come, your individual learning can make incredible impact. And you might just come back saying, Hmm, I need to bring my team. That’s happened more than once.

So let’s bring it back to where we started. The deepest leadership changes I’ve seen. The ones that actually stick don’t come from better content or even smarter strategies. They come from the conditions around the learning and then the application after shared learning, a beginner’s mindset and deep connections that form a new experience, something meaningful.

Together. That’s when learning moves from the head to the heart. Shared learning creates shared leadership, an exponential impact. [00:22:00] This is our chain of learning. So as you reflect on this episode, think about your own learning experiences. Not just what you’ve learned, but how you’ve learned it. Who’s beside you and how you’ve created impact together.

What would be different if more of the people around you, your colleagues, your teams, your clients, shared that same depth of understanding? And more than that, if you deepen the connections and bonds between you, because the work of transformation isn’t something that any of us can do alone. If you wanna explore what this could look like for you, visit KBJAnderson.com/JapanTrip and apply for the next Japan leadership experience for you, your team, your clients.

I’ll put the link in the show notes along with links to the episodes that I mentioned today of past participants who have shared their experiences and impact from joining the program. Some like Brad and Joseph who not joined me once. But twice or more. And on the episode website, you’ll find video clips from other leaders that I mentioned here talking about the impact that [00:23:00] the Japan leadership experience has had on them and their organization.

If this episode resonated with you, please share it with a colleague or fellow change leader and be sure to follow or subscribe so you never miss a feature episode. Let’s strengthen our chain of learning together. Thanks for being the link in my chain of learning today. I’ll see you next time.