Mid Sweden University

This study aims to understand how leaders' approach to learning affects the experience of their own learning and how they through their leadership influence the organization's learning and the learning culture. Furthermore, another purpose is to understand how they experience the organizational learning and what attitude they have towards learning in change processes. To best meet the purpose of the study and capture the knowledge, based on pre-understanding, previous studies, theory and empirical evidence, the hermeneutical methodology has been used and through an abductive approach. Qualitative method has been applied for the collection of data. The study has been framed by a theoretical model containing four parameters: Learning at Work, Climate for Learning, Organizational Learning and Learning Structure (Örtenblad, 2013:24, Figure 2.3). The purpose of this is to ensure that all the components that characterize a learning organization are captured. In addition to showing how the leaders participating in the study feel that the organization meets the four parameters of the theoretical model, the study has contributed with deeper knowledge of factors that affect the possibility or ability to create the continuous both structural, cultural, formal, and informal learning that characterizes a learning organization. It has become clear that the leaders' approach to learning and that the focus is on both their own and the employees' development is significant for learning to take place. A number of characteristics have emerged in the study that are perceived to contribute to both one's own and the employees' learning. For this reason, the study also presents a development of the theoretical model where both the leadership, as Leadership, and the individual's attitude, as Personal Mastery (Senge, 2006:131) are added as new components to the model. Since learning is a social process based on relationships and interactions between individuals, it has also emerged that teleworkingduring the Covid-19 pandemic as well as the current hybrid solution negatively affects learning. Time is the single biggest challenge to get to learning both for leaders and employees, even in those groups where both focus and will are there. A variant of lack of time that is also perceived to hinder learning is the feeling of stress, as the experience is that there is no room to take in new knowledge when the individual is in that state of mind. Another aspect that is critical is the organization's approach to learning, both based on how learning is defined and by setting clear demands that the individual engages in their own development. The study also shows an example of how the focus on learning and skills development seems to have positively affected employee engagement.