Learning and Development International
Results-Based Management Training and Learning and Development
The senior team is rarely given the opportunity to develop its skills in ‘empassioning’ others.
As a leader, your success depends upon your ability to get things done: up, down and across all lines. To survive and succeed, you must learn four essential skills of persuading people. You must convince others to take action on your behalf even when you have no formal authority. [Read more...]
The focus on devising and implementing a systematic approach to the learning and development priorities within our organisations has seen some impressive returns over the last 20 years or so. Generally, the development or training investment decision is far less haphazard, sits within some kind of strategic framework (often competency led) and in some cases even gets evaluated to assess return on investment! (Alright, maybe we are getting too dreamy on that point). [Read more...]
Focus on Learning, not Training‘Training’ suggests putting stuff into people, when actually we should be developing people from the inside out – so they achieve their own individual potential – what they love and enjoy, what they are most capable of, and strong at doing, rather than what we try to make them be.
‘Learning’ expresses this far better than ‘training’.
Training is about the organisation. Learning is about the person.
Training is (mostly) a chore; people do it because they’re paid to. Learning is quite different. People respond to appropriate learning because they want to; because it benefits and interests them; because it helps them to grow and to develop their natural abilities; to make a difference; to be special.
Training is something that happens at work. Learning is something that people pursue by choice at their own cost in their own time. Does it not make sense for employers to help and enable that process? Of course it does.
The word ‘learning’ is significant: it suggests that people are driving their own development for themselves, through relevant experience, beyond work related skills and knowledge and processes. ‘Learning’ extends the idea of personal development (and thereby organisational development) to beliefs, values, wisdom, compassion, emotional maturity, ethics, integrity – and most important of all, to helping others to identify, aspire to and to achieve and fulfil their own unique individual personal potential.
Learning describes a person growing. Whereas ‘training’ merely describes, and commonly represents, transfer of knowledge or skill for organisational gain, which has generally got bugger-all to do with the trainee. No wonder people don’t typically enjoy or queue up for training.
When you help people to develop as people, you create far greater alignment and congruence between work and people and lives – you provide more meaning for people at work, and you also build and strengthen platform and readiness for any amount of skills, processes, and knowledge development that your organization will ever need.
Obviously, at LDI we do not ignore basic skills and knowledge training, for example: health and safety; how to use the phones, how to drive the fork-lift, etc – of course these basics must be trained – but they are not what makes the difference. We train the essential skills and knowledge of course, but most importantly we focus on facilitating learning and development for the person, beyond ‘work skills’ – we help them grow and develop for life – help them to identify, aspire to, and take steps towards fulfilling their own personal unique potential.
At LDI, what concerns us is the way evaluation of learning and development interventions is carried out in most organisations. Most rely on the feedback forms, or ‘happy sheets’ filled out by participants at the end of a course. This causes several problems: [Read more...]
At LDI , we have a diagnostic questionnaire that enables people at all levels in their organization to identify where they believe the culture is now, and what they would like it to be. Often, senior management and staff agree on the destination, but differ in their perception of the current culture. We can then work with those involved to bridge that gap. Otherwise, staff and management will be embarking on different journeys, which will often lead to conflict. [Read more...]
There is a change in the air!
It’s happening slowly, but the signs are there. Just as psychology and science are having to re-invent themselves to take into account human consciousness, so consultants specialising in organisational transformation are having to move away from processes that focus on performance and start paying more attention to the human dimension. [Read more...]
“Organizations where people continually expand their capacity to create the results they truly desire, where new and expansive patterns of thinking are nurtured, where collective aspiration is set free, and where people are continually learning to learn together” (Peter Senge, 1990).
The quote above is a definition of a Learning Organisation taken from Senge’s influential book The Fifth Discipline in which Senge proposed a number of ideas on what constitutes, and how a company many become, a Learning Organisation. Learning Organisations go back much further than Senge, however. As far back as the 1970s, Arie de Geus described learning as the only sustainable competitive advantage for one company over another.
Theories surrounding Learning Organisation are a response to unpredictable and hypercompetitive business environments and are intended to make companies more durable and progressive. In the current economic climate, any method that can help make a company stronger is surely worth considering.
Peter Senge’s theories of the Learning Organisations are based on Systemic Thinking. The importance of Systemic Thinking lies in the fact that by its nature it involves the ability to comprehend and address the whole. In order to understand and integrate other aspects of Learning Organisation theory, Systemic Thinking is first required.
Systemic Thinking allows people to look beyond their immediate context, to appreciate how their individual areas of responsibility impact and influence upon others and how these impact the whole. Crucially, understanding the system of a company ensures that individuals understand the feedback systems and therefore should feel like they know how to make their feelings clear. Systemic thinking is a key leadership skill and failure to embrace it is often one of the reasons why successful managers fail to make the transition into becoming effective leaders.
So far so good, but one of the problems of integrating Systemic Thinking into a business environment is that many companies have extremely complex organisational structures. For Systemic Thinking to be truly effective, a company should not oversimplify its structure. Rather, it should make it possible for each worker to understand the full complexity of the structure. Particularly with the enormous complexity of many modern companies this can be difficult, and, some would argue, impractical.
Senge identified four other disciplines which individuals must embrace in order for a company to become a Learning Organisation. In practical terms they represent the method through which a learning culture can be established in a company. Whilst there may be other ways of describing such processes, Senge’s disciplines provide a good starting point.
The first of Senge’s disciplines is “personal mastery”. This is best characterised by an awareness of an individua’ls own strengths and weaknesses, a deep self-confidence and being continually open to learning. It, perhaps, could also be defined as the pursuit of greater self-awareness; a knowledge of company systems coupled with a knowledge of the role that an individual is expected to play and their ability to meet that role. Personal mastery is vital for the development of a company and also for the development of the individuals within that company.
The second of Senge’s disciplines is the idea of “mental models”. Mental models are deeply ingrained, entrenched, ideas that individuals have of the world and of their roles within the company. For the company to succeed it is vital that people must bring these models to the surface and scrutinise them intensely in order to ascertain whether they are suitable within the context of the company. Entrenchment in these mental models can foil the development of the company as a whole. Mental models rely heavily on two simple elements that are vital to the success of any company: confidence and openness. Senge’s proposition of a mental model that facilitates development is simple: all it requires is an individual being open regarding their own views and aims, and having enough confidence in themselves to articulate those views, and enough confidence in their managements to feel that their views will be taken into account. Simple in principle, challenging to achieve.
The third of Senge’s models is “building shared vision”. This is vital for the success of any team, whether it be a company or a sports team. If all members of the team share a common vision, one that they have faith in and “buy into” then the team can work together more effectively as they will all know the objective. As this objective comes closer to realisation, greater dialogue regarding the objective leads to greater clarification of the goal and the benefits that it will bring. This increases enthusiasm in the shared vision and makes the elements of the team work even harder in order to attain it. Importantly, a shared vision can make individuals look towards the longterm, which is vital in the realisation of a Learning Organisation.
The fourth of Senge’s models is “team learning”. Team learning builds on a shared vision and personal mastery with the aim of creating a sum that is more than the parts. The process of learning and developing as a team is vital for the success of a company, which is effectively a team of individuals. Team learning can also increase the rate at which individuals develop, as they will be more enthusiastic about learning new skills if they feel those skills will be valued and appreciated by their colleagues. Teams are of vital importance to a Learning Organisation, because a well run team fosters shared mental models, shared vision, whilst also making individuals aware of their own roles and the importance of those roles, thus incorporating the ideas of personal mastery and systemic thinking.
The idea of the Learning Organisation is a compelling one, but it is rife with difficulties. First of all the leadership in a Learning Organisation have to lead the development of the organisation along the lines mentioned above. Whilst this might not be difficult when it comes to small or new businesses, or even setting up a business as a Learning Organisation, when it comes to large, complex, established companies, it can be much more difficult. Leaders in the organisation may already have mental models that are entrenched and must be overcome in order to foster the openness and confidence required. Learning Organisations require leaders to be open to challenges about their vision and behaviour, and to be prepared to change when necessary.
A second major difficulty with leadership in relationship to Learning Organisations is that Learning Organisations require a Socratic, questioning approach that is contradictory to the cultural expectations of both leaders and the majority of organisations. Most leaders are promoted to their level because of their expetise at the previous level, they then fall into the ‘Expert Trap’, telling people what to do, as they have experienced success at that level, and this does little to develop those people, and little to develop original thinking and find new ways of dealing with old problems.
Learning Organisations must have a long-term vision, and be focused on the learning and development of their workers in order to achieve development of the whole. In reality, very few organisations have the combination of characteristics that are identified with the Learning Organisation. This requires many to make large changes and in a results driven, time pressured, business environment, the decision to look longterm is a hard one to take. As far back as 1995 Will Hutton was arguing that British companies’ priorities are overwhelmingly financial. This has barely changed in the last decade and a half.
What is more, the training and development required to move towards being a Learning Organisation takes a lot of time that companies may not be able or willing to spend at the moment.
Learning Organisation theory is one that is meant to be applied to businesses and companies. Therefore, whilst it may be difficult to adapt in its entirety, it is a goal towards which a company should work, and partial realisation of this goal will still yield success. Learning Organisation theory is largely about acknowledging what constitutes a perfect team and breaking it down to the individual level.
Learning Organisations rely heavily on good leadership, leaders that have already mastered, as far as is possible, the Learning Organisation disciplines, and these are difficult to find. They also have to have a good knowledge of their company’s existing systems, which can be difficult to attain in a company that does not already have a Systemic thinking approach. They also (and perhaps most importantly) have to have the courage to try and drive the development of a Learning Organisation approach.
Phrases like ‘Systems Thinking’ and ‘Personal Mastery’ put names to basic principles of teamworking and practical examples of how to pursue them. For an individual to work well in a team he must be aware of his own role, and his own strengths and weaknesses, and also know how the team works in relation to others, how he works in relation to others and crucially where the team is going and how that can be achieved. Learning Organisation theory offers a path through which a better business team can be developed, but ultimately it is the team that is important and not the theory.
Looking at many of the really effective leadership role models, people like Gandhi, Mandela, Tutu, or further back in time, The Buddha or Jesus Christ, they have one thing in common: leadership based upon service rather than on dominating their followers. I’ve been giving a lot of thought to this recently and it seems to me that one of the main distinctions may be expressed on a polarity with control at one end and stewardship at the other.
And as we all are leaders in some contexts, whether at home, at work or in our social lives, I think this is a relevant issue for most of us.
Some people see leadership in terms of control; they feel the need to be in control of their resources, their posessions, the people around them; in short, they try to control their lives
The flip side, though still seeing life as a control issue, is those who cast themselves as victims, feeling out of control or having given up their coontrol to others. We often see
this in people who have been through a personal tragedy or trauma and who believe that nobody can ever understand their grief and what they have been through. Sadly, at an unconscious level,
they have surrendered control to their tragedy and they view their lives through the lens of their tragedy.
Control-based leadership seems to place emphasis on:
The servant leaders seem to see life as being about stewardship; they view their ownership of posessions as only being temporary and see their lives, as Charlie Robertson wrote elsewhere, in terms of Givers Gain.
It seems to me that servant leadership is:
Ironically, whilst many of our clients want their people to work from a base of the behaviours and attitudes in the second list, their reward, recognition and promotion processess all emphasise the behaviours in the first. Hardly surprising then, that such behaviours persist!
Is servant leadership a model that is relevant today or do you believe it to be outdated and unrealistic by today’s standards?
In writing this article, I’m making 3 key assumptions about the reason for asking questions:
• Questions should be genuine, ie where the answer is unknown or needs bringing out into the open
• The motivation for asking questions is a genuine desire to know
• The intention of questions is positive ie not to show how clever one is, nor to dominate or intimidate or to prove the questioner right.
Typically, when things go wrong, managers, leaders, parents, lovers, all ask questions that place them in the role of ‘critic’, questions that focus on the problem such as:
• Whose fault is it?
• What’s wrong with me?
• What’s wrong with them?
• Why does it always happen to me?
• Why can’t I ever win?
• Why are people always so stupid?
• What’s the point?
• How can I prove I’m right?
• How am I going to mess this up?
If they really want to learn from the situation, and focus on solutions rather than problems, they might like to think about ‘discovery’ questions such as:
Inward focus
• What do I need to ask in order to understand?
• What do I want from this situation?
• What are my choices?
• What am I responsible for?
• What assumptions am I making?
• How else can I think about this?
• What am I missing or avoiding?
• What can I learn from this?
Outward focus
• What is the other person thinking, feeling, needing and wanting?
• Am I genuinely listening?
• What are their options?
• What assumptions are they making?
• What are they responsible for?
• How can I allow them to contribute?
• How can I contribute to them?
• What action step(s) make most sense?
• How can I ensure a win:win?
• What is possible?
• What would happen if we were to ……. ?
If you want to empower other people, if you want to create understanding rather than fear, I try experimenting with ‘discovery’ questions. Ask yourself the ABCD –
• Am I in Critic Mode?
• Breathe – take a step back, pause, take a deep breath and reflect
• Choices – what choices are available to me/us?
• Do I have all of the facts? What’s going on here?
When I listen to people in meetings, I usually get the impression that there’s very little listening going on. Usually, people are defending their positions, talking at each other, thrust and counter thrust. Yet, this traditional method, of stating your opinion and then defending it, is not the most effective way of influencing people. We use the ESP model when teaching influencing skills:
It leads to less confrontation and better listening. Lately, we’ve added a 4th step Agree the common ground, which, depending upon the context of the negotiation and your own personal style and preference, can come before or after you state your point of view – but it messes up the ESP acronym!