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The purpose of this study is to review literature on the relationship between leadership and workplace learning, to critically analyze and discuss findings and to suggest future research paths based on the synthesis.

This study applied a refined literature review process leading to a selection of 40 articles, which originated from 14 internationally acclaimed journals.

When explaining leadership influence regarding individual and team learning, the concepts of role modeling behavior, relational support and negotiation of meaning is significant. If leaders provide support, show exemplary behavior and negotiate individual arrangements with employees, workplace learning development is positively affected.

Future studies should focus on empirical cases further illustrating how the leader–employee relationship is formed in practice, to further understand differences in leadership influence on employee workplace learning.

The gathered knowledge implicates that carefully designed leadership training programs and personalized work arrangements between leader and employees are beneficial for leader’s ability to influence employee workplace learning.

The reviewed studies were solely published in top management journals, which resulted in an original literature selection. This study also discusses implicit or articulated assumptions about the view of learning in the selected studies, offering additional understanding about the underlying learning views in leadership–workplace learning research.

This article summarizes practitioner observations on three research questions. First, the factors that lead to the emergence and persistence of such teams. Second, the repercussions of siloed teams. And third, practical suggestions and recommendations that practitioners can employ to prevent silo formation or address existing silos. This article thus complements recent academic work that has previously explored the formation of silos.

The authors used the input of current team leads from a focus group along with their consulting experience to explore these three research questions. The team lead input and consulting expertise are integrated with academic research on silos.

The emergence and persistence of silos was mostly attributed to company characteristics (size, growth and stakeholder management) as well as communication inefficiencies (lack of role clarity and ownership within teams), which in turn were impacted by situational variables (pandemic and turnover). The authors noted the effect of team composition effects, team competition and organizational changes (rapid growth and restructuring) as potential contributors to the formation and persistence of silos. The team lead experts and our consulting experiences were congruent with the literature focused on repercussions of silos, from poor information exchanges to inefficiencies, divisions and perceived isolation of teams from the organization. Solutions focused on project organization and documentation as well as the adoption of new decision-making tools and practices, and the creation of more exchange and learning opportunities. The authors added additional options to promote more visibility, appreciation, proactive monitoring within teams and organizational identification initiatives.

The current article adds a pragmatic perspective to silos and how organizations can address these when they become problematic and hinder performance and collaboration.