Developing our teams and finding new ways of working together have taken on a new urgency as we adapt to living in a Covid world. In this series of four posts we look at how to develop an impactful learning culture that can transform your organization from within – despite what is happening in the outside world.
This second post explores the factors that allow and enhance a contemporary kind of learning process for the new world of work. More than ever, the overwhelming vastity of human knowledge currently accessible makes it impossible to cover everything you could learn on a certain topic. The focus is therefore shifting from knowing to understanding, from covering the topic to developing the skills to ask the right questions and look for the right information. But how to do that?
This series of articles will be followed by a seminar on November 18th at 12pm EST – 6pm CET. You can register by clicking here.
Key Concepts of Adult Learning
When talking about learning in this context, we are talking about adult learning, what researchers call Andragogy.
Adult learning is based on few key concepts, to be considered in designing the learning journey:
- Self-direction: As a person grows and matures his self-concept, they need to feel responsible for their actions and should be treated as a person who is capable of self-direction. In this case, an adult moves from being dependent to being self-directed, responsible for his/her own choices, also in the learning process.
- Uniqueness: Adults are generally more aware of their unique identity and different learning needs, thus a personalized curriculum and a degree of personal responsibility and individual choice is necessary, so that the learning results from the self and from the choices available to bring this out.
- Experience: The more we grow and mature, the more our experience becomes a major resource for learning. Thus, experiential learning is the most effective way to go, through problem solving and discussions, where we apply what we learned to the issue at hand.
- Readiness to Learn: Learning is driven by change. Change produces those situations that trigger the need for learning something new.
- Orientation to Learning: As we mature, our time perspective shifts from delayed application of knowledge, like when we were in school, to immediate application, and for that reason our orientation toward learning tends to shift from subject-centered to problem-centered. From just knowing, to applying what we know.
- Motivation to Learn: The internal factors are the strongest motivation propellers in adults, as they involve self-esteem and self-actualization. Also, research shows that when adults are recognized and appreciated for their individual contributions, they are best motivated to succeed in their learning goals (the need for belonging gets satisfied).
- Hierarchy of Needs: As showed by Maslow, human physiological needs progress gradually from Safety needs to Love/Belonging needs, Esteem Needs and Self-Actualization.
So, as we grow and mature, we are on a journey to autonomy, self-actualization, mastery and wisdom, but only if the lower levels of the pyramid have been satisfied. The first of which is the need for SAFETY. Let’s look at it more in depth.
Psychological Safety
Psychological Safety can be defined as the shared belief held by members of a team that the team is safe for interpersonal risk-taking.[1]
Research on organizational change have discussed the need to create psychological safety for individuals in order to make them feel secure and capable of changing and, consequently, learning. This term seems to suggest a sense of confidence that others will not embarrass, reject, or punish someone for speaking up, admit an error or ask for help. This confidence stems from mutual respect and trust among team members and, most importantly, between team members and the leader.
Trust is a decisive player in the context of Psychological Safety and can be described as the expectation that others won’t harm you with their actions or words, so that one is willing to be vulnerable in their presence. In other words, a feeling of trust creates a climate in which people feel respected and comfortable being themselves.
Psychological Safety facilitates learning behaviors as it:
- Alleviates excessive concern about others’ reactions to actions that have the potential for embarrassment or threat, which learning behaviors often have.
- Allows for some degree of risk-taking, speaking up, creativity — all behaviors that may lead to innovation and breakthrough.
- Makes people more open-minded, resilient, motivated, and persistent, eliciting emotions like trust, curiosity, confidence, and inspiration.
On the opposite side, research has shown that the sense of threat often found in organizations by discussing problems limits individuals’ willingness to engage in problem-solving activities. Blame and criticism escalate conflict, leading to defensiveness and, eventually, to disengagement. In sum, people tend to inhibit learning when they face the potential for threat or embarrassment.
What is paramount, though, is that the leader, or whomever has the power to influence decisions about promotions, raises, or project assignments, be the first to engage in this kind of conduct. Team members in fact, if aware of each other’s actions and responses, are particularly influenced by the leader’s behavior:
- If he/she’s supportive, coaching-oriented and non-defensive, the team will receive message that they are in a safe environment.
- Even better if he/she is the first to engage in learning behaviors, leading by example and demonstrating the absence of risk.
- On the contrary, if he/she has a tendency to retaliation and acts in authoritarian and punitive ways, that would hinder the team’s learning ability.
To know if there is a feeling of psychological safety among the members of your team, look for learning behaviors like:
- Seeking feedback
- Sharing information
- Asking for help
- Talking about errors
- Experimenting
The Feedback Fallacy[2]
We may be very fond of feedback. It has been presented as a strong indicator of good and healthy relationships throughout our career. But recent research shows that as much as an open, direct and respectful communication is the pivot for learning and growth, the traditional approach to feedback presents some fallacies. More in detail, what emerges is that:
- Telling people what we think of their performance doesn’t help them thrive and excel, and telling them how we think they should improve, actually hinders learning.
- The process of learning is not like filling up an empty vessel. That stems from the assumption that your expertise is the right one that must be transmitted to the ones who lack it. But our evaluations are deeply biased in a very pervasive (almost all of our rating of someone reflects our characteristics, not theirs) and automatic (no amount of effort can do much about it) way.
- Failure is natural on the way to excellence. People need to be free to make mistakes.
- We can be sure to know only OUR truth.
- There’s not just one definition of excellence (which corresponds to ours or our leader’s parameters) but many, depending on who performs the task.
And most importantly:
- Neurologically, we grow most where we are already strongest; that is to say, learning is strengths driven. We build on the patterns that are already within us, unique to ourselves. Getting attention to our talents catalyzes learning, whereas attention to our weaknesses suffocates it. Criticism and negative feedback activate the vagal nerve’s “Fight, Flight or Freeze” response, impairing the learning experience.
- If it’s true that we develop when venturing out of our comfort zone, we should be careful not to go too far: the optimal learning happens when we find ourselves in “the zone”, at the right conjunction of Challenge and Skills, so not to be weighed down by anxiety on one end or boredom on the other.
In conclusion, learning builds on the foundation of our innate talents and skills and flourishes if we cultivate them wisely. The suggestion is to check-in with ourselves and increase our awareness around our strengths, being the honest judge of our aptitudes and performance, while remembering that almost always, the perception of what we are doing poorly in the opinion of someone else, is biased by an unavoidable fallacy of the mind.
Motivation
Intrinsic or Extrinsic Motivation? They both are very powerful factors in order to spring us to action but it has been demonstrated how Intrinsic Motivation is the real driving force of our choices and, more significantly, our commitment to bring forward what we start. A certain degree of outer influence and acknowledgement is nonetheless ever present and pivotal to maintaining our engagement.
Intrinsic Motivation is linked to change. A desire for change is what, in fact, gives us energy, drive and direction. The changes we enable are aimed at satisfying our basic physiological and psychological needs for autonomy, mastery and belonging.
When an activity involves or activates a psychological need, we experience interest, alertness, attention. When an activity satisfies or nurtures one of these needs, we experience enjoyment. Interest and enjoyment meet in shaping a deeply satisfying experience when challenges and skills are in the optimal proportion, presenting:
- An optimal challenge to master
- New, curiosity-provoking information
- An occasion to do what you really want to do.
If these conditions are satisfied, we are bound to progress and succeed in learning something new and achieving our goals. These circumstances leverage our need for autonomy: to choose to learn something supports agency, interest and cognitive engagement in the learning activity.
Contrary to the repetitive and boring tasks, which need short-term rewards and a recurring progress feedback in order to fuel the commitment, interesting and optimally challenging endeavors are potentiated by long-term goals. These goals, in fact, give the flexibility and autonomy necessary to the pursuit of more ambitious achievements, while in this context short-term milestones and deadlines may result in an obstacle.
These types of goals, and in our case of learning, are called Autotelic, which means that to experience them is its own reward, as they entail growth, curiosity and discovery. They give us pleasure because they satisfy our fundamental needs.
In this context, positive feedback to the application of learning can create a virtuous loop which increases the likelihood of repeating/deepening the experience.
Uniqueness
As mentioned at the beginning of this section, adult learning is characterized by an awareness of our own identity, our talents and pitfalls, and a sense of self-direction and self-actualization we want to be respected and considered for. We are invited to listen to our unique system of values which defines what motivates us and we are able to build on our strengths: that set of skills we are equipped with and we should cultivate intelligently.
What does this mean for learning then?
- It means opening the doors to a “metacognitive approach”, which helps the learner take control of his/her own learning by defining learning goals and monitoring their progress in achieving them. We learn when we are at the center of the learning.
- Understanding, more than knowing, becomes essential. People must learn to recognize when they understand and when they need more information and, provided that the information be available, go get it.
- Given the goal of learning with understanding, assessments must tap understanding rather than merely the ability to assimilate knowledge or perform isolated skills.
- Learners’ thinking has to be visible to themselves, their peers, and their supervisors, in order to be facilitated towards the right kind of learning they need. As seen above, this requires a safe space where self-expression is encouraged.
- There are not measures for learning. Motivation and resilience are more important than the IQ. Learning doesn’t depend on the IQ but on courage and humility. Believing that there are fixed factors for learning just puts people in a defensive mode, making them performance oriented rather than learning oriented. They don’t want to make mistakes by experimenting because that would make them look bad.
In conclusion, quoting the How People Learn report:
“As Nobel laureate Herbert Simon wisely stated: the meaning of “knowing” has shifted from being able to remember and repeat information to being able to find and use it (Simon, 1996).
More than ever, the sheer magnitude of human knowledge renders its coverage by education an impossibility. Fundamental understanding about subjects, including how to frame and ask meaningful questions about various subject areas, contributes to individuals’ more basic understanding of principles of learning that can assist them in becoming self-sustaining, lifelong learners.”
And, we add, succeed in an ever-changing world.
In our next post – on the 27th of October – we will look at how to make the learning stick and be applicable.
Authors
Anna Gallotti, Selika Cerofolini, Jody Julien & Jo Leymarie.
[1] Amy Edmondson, Psychological Safety and Learning Behavior in Work Teams, Sage Journals.
[2] Marcus Buckingham and Ashley Goodall, The Feedback Fallacy, HBR, March-April 2019.
Bibliography
Jayakumar Chinnasamy, Mentoring and Adult Learning: Andragogy in Action, International Journal of Management Research and Review, May 2013/ Volume 3/Issue 5/Article No-1/2835-2844.
Amy Edmondson, Psychological Safety and Learning Behavior in Work Teams, Sage Journals.
Marcus Buckingham and Ashley Goodall, The Feedback Fallacy, HBR, March-April 2019.
Johnmarshall Reeve, The Neuroscience of Intrinsic Motivation and Basic Psychological Needs, Institute of Positive Psychology and Education, Sidney, Australia, www.johnmarshallreeve.org.
How People Learn, Committee on Developments in the Science of Learning, NATIONAL ACADEMY PRESS, Washington, D.C., 2004.
Biographies:
Anna Gallotti
Anna Gallotti has 20 years of experience as an Executive Coach. She is the founder of two coaching companies, one based in Paris (since 1999) and one in the United States (since 2013). She recently also founded a micro-learning based company with worldwide exposure.
Italian, she lived 20 years in Paris. Since 2013 she has been living in New York and has been working between Europe and the United States. In 2001 Anna received her first coaching certification in Paris. In 2009 Anna became a Master Certified Coach +5000h coaching), examiner and mentor coach for the International Coaching Federation (40 000 members worldwide). She is also Vice Chair of the ITL Global Board at International Coaching Federation whose mission is to study the future trends of coaching and the impact of coaching.
Anna holds a BA in International Law at University of Milan (Italy) and a MA in European Law at University Paris V (France). Anna is co-author of 3 books: “Make the right Choices” (in English, French, and Italian), “L’art et la pratique du coaching professionnel” (in French) and “Coaching for Leaders” (published in Q4 2020).
For more information, go to: www.share-coach.com and www.welead-coaching.com
To contact Anna: anna.gallotti@share-coach.com
Selika Cerofolini
Selika Cerofolini is a Certified Professional Coach through the Coaching for Transformation program. She founded Joyful Path, a holistic coaching practice devoted to approaching personal and systemic evolution with a deeper look, a compassionate heart and a broader vision, for the benefit of the individual and the collective. Prior to shifting her career entirely to coaching in 2018, she held managerial roles in Development and Communication for Art Institutions for 7 years, while pursuing her interests in psychology, philosophy and along with a devoted meditation practice. Originally from Italy, she holds a BA in International Communications and an MA in International Relations and Diplomatic Studies from the University of Perugia (Italy).
Selika lives and works in New York, and you can reach her at selikac@joyfulpathcoaching.com. More information on www.joyfulpathcoaching.com.
Jody Julien
Born in the USA, Jody Julien holds degrees from Oakland University in Michigan and RIT in New York in the areas of International Business and Strategic Human Resources. Trained and certified in both Professional and Life Coaching with over 500 clients and +2500 coaching hours to date. Held global Operations and Human Resources leadership positions for more than 20 years in North America, South America, and Europe, and is currently based in Paris, France. She is the founder of J2 Coaching & Consulting since 2011, a global firm specializing in professional development and international organizational effectiveness. Jody is a keynote speaker for international organizations on the topics of Women in Leadership and C-Suite Transitions.
More information may be found at www.J2coaching.com or by contacting Jody directly at jody.julien@j2coaching.com.
Jo Leymarie
Born and educated in Britain, Jo Leymarie holds a BA in Law and French from the Metropolitan University in London. She has lived and worked in France for the last 30 years.
Jo has 25 years of business experience setting up and managing profit centres in France for international companies. She founded Walden, a coaching and consulting company, in 2015 to support managers and teams during transformations and to contribute to building a people-centred workplace.
She is a member of SOL France (Society for Organizational Learning) and her core subjects include sustainable leadership, organizational learning and diversity and inclusion.
You can contact her at jo@waldencoaching.fr, www.waldencoaching.fr
