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As economic uncertainty continues, many HR and L&D professionals are feeling the pressure to cut training budgets and at the same time help develop people to be more effective in their roles.
It can be done! In an earlier post, Shaun talked about how slashing your training budget can be a good thing because it forces you to think of innovative ways forward. Earlier today, I read about one such technique in an article by Phil LeNir, Social Learning for Management Development and was inspired to write this article.
In short, managers learn when they create times to come together with other managers and talk about the work of leadership—not in dry, abstract terms, but rather in relation to their prior experiences and current challenges. Before you dismiss the idea as being nice, but unsellable to managers whose days are already overflowing with demands, have a read of Phil’s personal story in the article article. Managers don’t resent learning, they just don’t like wasting time and money that could be better spent.
Dedicated learning conversations with peers cost less, take less time than most training, and deliver practical results.
Training and Learning Conversations
You can also attach learning conversations onto the end of more traditional training and development events. By having small groups of learners periodically meet for a few months after the event, you help them turn good intention into lasting changes within their workplace.
Learning Conversations and Web 2.0
The advent of Web 2.0 and blogging adds another free vehicle for getting managers talking with peers about leadership. Check out Shaun’s post on this and the new Between Leaders blogging community.
I was quite alarmed earlier this week when I read an article in a magazine published by the Australian Institute of Training & Development that referred to the dubious learning pyramid. The cause for my alarm was not the article itself but the stark reminder that our industry is awash with fads, and worse, that over time these fads become perceived as facts.
The learning pyramid has been around since the mid-twentieth century, yet even its origins are questionable. The NTL Institute claim to have developed the pyramid as the result of research they conducted in the 1960s. However, they reportedly cannot find that research, which is more than a bit strange. There were similar models developed much earlier, such as Edgar Dale’s Cone of Experience, although this model did not include percentages.
The Questionable Learning Pyramid
My point is not to criticize the NTL Institute, the Australian Institute of Training & Development, nor the author of the article in question. Rather, it is to highlight the need for HR and L&D professionals to be vigilant in checking the research behind any models before adopting them yourself or advocating them to others. There are many popular models around, such as Maslow’s Hierarchy and Situational Leadership, which have little if any empirical support.
So is the learning pyramid a true model of how people learn? Certainly, any model is an imperfect simplification of more complex realities. Allowing for this, it may be better to ask whether is is a) helpful and b) grounded in reality. I have found no research supporting the percentages shown in the leadership pyramid model. In fact, some available research shows very different percentages. Nor have I found any research that supports that the teaching approaches at the lower part of the pyramid result in greater retention than those at the top. Rather, I found research that shows direct instruction (such as seeing and hearing) is often a more effective method of teaching, particularly when the learners have little existing experience or expertise.
So the short answer is no, it is not a valid model. It may have helped highlight the limitations of the dominant academic model of learning, which I would agree is somewhat limited with regard to knowledge acquisition. It also drew attention to some very useful (and at the time, new) teaching techniques such as discussions, practise and learning through teaching others. There is indeed some research that these techniques can be quite effective. However, they are not universally superior to other forms of teaching as the learning pyramid implies. Rather, as I outline in my book, the Keys to Successful Leadership Development, different strategies are suited to different circumstances (e.g., the goals of the training, the prior experience of participants, etc.).
If anyone has or knows of any contrary, verifiable research, please let me know. Our community seeks to educate HR and L&D professionals with evidence-based advice, and I am happy to include any evidence-based support for alternative opinions.
Keeping A Learning Journal
Two recent studies reported in Harvard Business Review listed a “failure to learn from past mistakes” as one of the most common reasons that leadership careers stall or, in some cases, end.
The problem was not that these leaders made mistakes, but rather that they failed to learn from the mistakes that they made and therefore repeated them again.
“Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”
—Albert Einstein
Fortunately, there is a simple and inexpensive way to help managers learn from their mistakes (and even their successes). Get them to keep a learning journal.
Put simply, a learning journal is a central place where leaders record their observations, thoughts and ideas. You can use any notebook as a learning journal, or you may even choose to keep it as an online blog. There are many ways a learning journal can help managers to become better leaders. Yet, when it comes to preventing career derailment and learning from mistakes, two methods are particularly useful.
Technique 1: Recall, Reflect, Connect
Managers should use this technique whenever they experience a failure, setback or unexpected crisis of some kind.
- Start by recalling what has happened. You need to stick to the facts rather than your interpretation of them. What happened? What did you do? What did you fail to do? How did you feel? What did other people do or not do? How did they feel?
- Now reflect on why you believe things happened the way that they did. Craft your ideas into generalized models and theories about what it means to lead well within the context of this event. Occasionally, your models will become refined enough to warrant sharing. Once in a while, take the time to write them as short snippets of advice such as “Four Ways To …, Five Steps To …, or Three Things To Avoid When …”
- Finally, look at ways to connect your experiential wisdom with other situations and knowledge sources. Where will you use your wisdom in the future? How do your ideas fit with your previous beliefs about leadership? How do they differ? Where might you apply these lessons in the future?
Technique 2: Using the Past to Help You Right Now
The second technique involves drawing on past lessons to help you successfully meet a challenge that you are currently facing.
- Start by defining the challenge. What are you trying to achieve? What do you want to avoid or prevent?
- Now compare how this challenge is similar to previous challenges that you have faced.
- Finally, write down what you learnt from those past challenges that may help you make the best choice in your current situation.
by admin on June 10, 2009
in General
HR and L&D professionals often need to pitch their ideas for a leadership development initiative to senior managers and colleagues. This short presentation on the Business Case for Leadership & Its Development may help. Please feel welcome to use it for non-commercial purposes.
Chris Argyris, a professor of education and organizational behavior at Harvard, and the late Donald Schon, a professor at MIT, pioneered the idea of double-loop learning.
Single Loop Learning
Drawing on earlier work by John Dewey, Kurt Lewin and others, Argyris and Schon use the term single-loop learning to describe how people learn to adjust their actions in response to natural feedback on the success of those actions in achieving a desired result. They liken this style of learning to a thermostat that adjusts the degree of heating or cooling depending on the temperature of the room.
Single Loop Learning
The Way We Represent Reality
To understand double-loop learning, you first need to understand a little about how the human mind represents reality. We all carry within us beliefs about the world around us. These beliefs are like maps because they approximate reality without ever being a completely accurate and comprehensive picture of reality itself. Within the workplace, we hold generalized beliefs about “what is valued in this organization” and “how things get done around here”. We also hold more specific beliefs about events and people. These beliefs are important because they influence and constrain what we do and don’t do in the workplace.
Double-Loop Learning
Double-loop learning requires not only adjusting one’s actions, but also surfacing, challenging and adjusting the governing variables that are usually taken for granted—i.e., our beliefs or “mental maps of reality”. For example, in the thermostat example above, responses are limited to adjusting the frequency and length of time that your heater or air conditioner work to maintain the desired temperature. However, within the double-loop learning model you may also explore:
- Passive heating and cooling strategies such as insulation
- Dress codes to better suit the natural temperature
To engage in double-loop learning, you must look beyond the familiar methods of approaching the challenge at hand to embrace novel and creative solutions. Furthermore, you must be willing to let go of assumptions about “what and how things should be done”.
Double-loop learning adds a powerful dimension to previous experiential learning cycles. In previous models, learning was achieved through reflection on the success (or failure) of your actions. However, in the double-loop model, learning is realized through reflection on the validity and usefulness of your beliefs.
Double-Loop Learning
Implications For Leadership Development
For HR and L&D professionals interested in the practical implications of this model, you need to incorporate strategies such as those listed below into your learning interventions:
- Discern what leaders currently believe about leadership and the organization. Note that there is often a large gap between what leaders publicly “espouse” and the real beliefs that guide their actions. Identifying real beliefs requires observing how leaders act and then deducing why they acted that way.
- Involve leaders in co-analyzing their own behaviours and co-constructing a map of beliefs that they are willing to own. You can use both inquiry and confrontation to help leaders build and own their true maps of belief.
- Engage leaders in testing the accuracy and usefulness of their beliefs. Inquiry and confrontation work together.
- Help leaders to monitor the effect that their newly framed beliefs have on their actions, and in turn the impact these actions have on the results that they produce.
Influential psychologist Jean Piaget published his first paper at the age of 11, was offered the curatorship of the Geneva museum’s mollusc collection whilst in high school, and achieved his doctorate at 21. Piaget theorised that people learn from different experiences in different ways. Specifically, we either assimilate or accommodate the lessons experience teaches us.
When we experience success (or at least when we are satisfied with what is going on around us), we interpret our experience in a way that assimilates new information into our existing beliefs and understandings. Yet, when we experience failure (or at least unexpected or undesirable results), we are forced to accommodate the experience by challenging and changing our beliefs about the situation, effective leadership and people.
Piaget's Experiential Learning Processes
This dichotomy has major implications for leadership development, because so much of the way people go about the work of leadership is guided by their beliefs.
Beliefs Drive Action (or inaction)
It is beliefs that drive our actions, and it is beliefs that keep from us acting in a different way. Imparting knowledge and developing skills will lead to nought if people do not believe they need to change or if their existing beliefs pull them back into familiar ways of leading.
The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.
—Marcel Proust
Piaget pioneered the idea of surfacing and challenging existing beliefs as a way of promoting deep learning. His work underpins many later theories such as Argyris’s work on double-loop learning, Senge’s articulation of mental models and Schon’s loss of the stable state.
Throughout history, great people such Leonardo DaVinci, Anne Frank and James Cook have all kept logs or journals as a central place to capture their observations, thoughts and ideas. Journaling also helps adults to learn; this is especially true of leaders. But it is only since the advent of Web 2.0 that researchers have studied the impact that blogging has had on leadership development.
Web 2.0 technology allows all of us to easily publish material on the web with no knowledge of computer programming at all. Wikipedia, My Space and LinkedIn are all examples of Web 2.0 technology. So, too, are blogs.
Blog is short for web log. It is very similar to an online journal, except that what you write is normally published for all to see. Your leadership blog is a place where managers can write about their experiences, offer advice, record ideas, summarize readings, distil their thinking, share opinions and analyse complex aspects of leadership.
Blogging helps managers to become better leaders because it:
- Captures their thoughts in one place, where they (and others) can draw on them at any time.
- Requires managers to critically reflect on their leadership behaviour, which in turn helps them to close the gap between knowing what to do and doing what you know.
- Builds their personal reputation, which in turn increases their capacity to influence others, a central tenet of great leadership.
Furthermore, because most blog posts are published (you can keep some private), blogging creates a shared pool of first-hand knowledge about how to lead well. Blog articles mix theory with real life examples to offer practical insight that other leaders can relate to. The fact that articles are published also forces the author to put more thought into what they write, promoting deeper insight than is typically achieved in private journals.
Best of all, blogging is free. There are many sites, including WordPress and Blogger, where one can open a normal blogging account at no cost. There is now even a site designed specifically for leadership blogs, The Between Leaders Community, where managers can share their thoughts and interact with managers from across the world.
David Kolb’s learning styles grew from Kurt Lewin’s four-stage model. Kolb believed that to be truly effective, learning requires moving through all four stages in the model. In each stage, one must use a distinct set of learning strategies. In the context of learning to be a leader, the strategies apply as follows:
- Experiencing what it is like to be a leader.
- Reflecting on what you have experienced and observed.
- Forming beliefs about what it means to lead well.
- Testing the usefulness of these beliefs in new situations.
To enact and learn from each strategy, you need to draw on different abilities, including:
- Being disciplined enough to execute ideas and turn good intentions into action.
- Being open to reflecting on what you have experienced from a variety of perspectives.
- Using inductive reasoning to distil your reflections into mental models of what it means to lead well.
- Using intuition and deductive reasoning to identify situations in which you can experiment with these ideas.
These four abilities can be represented as two pairs of polar opposites:
Kolb's Polar Dimensions of Learning
Just as some people are more comfortable writing with their left hand, each of us has a preferred learning style. You can determine your learning style by identifying two preferences:
- Learning through concrete experience or reflective observation
- Learning through active experimentation or abstract conceptualization
Kolb's Learning Styles
Your learning style describes your preferred way of learning. However, Kolb argues that deep learning involves moving through all stages of Lewin’s model. Therefore, to maximise your learning requires breaking out of your preferred style. The importance of such versatility is even more apparent when you incorporate Dewey’s claim that stages can sometimes occur simultaneously and that you may need to move back and forth between stages in response to the situation before you.
Kolb developed the Learning Styles Inventory (LSI) to help people determine their learning style. You can purchase this tool in either online or paper formats through the Hay Group.
Marshall Goldsmith refers to the World Wide Web as the global mind—a culmination of collective knowledge. These days, if you want to know more about any topic from mountain climbing to making roast pork crackling, you can just Google it. There is a virtual sea of information out there that anyone can access. However, this flood of information has given rise to a new problem.
For a busy manager trying to get a little guidance in how to be a better leader, it is easy to drown in a seemingly endless sea of information. The web is information overload on a grand scale. To make matters worse, much of what is written on the web is little more than pop psychology and unfounded opinion. Using the web as a quick way to find trustworthy information has been fraught with danger, at least until now.
That’s where you come in. I’m assuming that as a HR or L&D professional, you have some expertise in what it means to lead well. Couple your expertise with that of your colleagues, and you have a small panel of intelligent critics who can easily sort the wheat from the chaff. And now, thanks to the Web 2.0 revolution, you can actively and easily connect your managers to those nuggets of wisdom that pass muster.
What is Web 2.0? Put simply, Web 2.0 refers to the suite of applications that have allowed even the most technophobic of us to publish material on the internet. Facebook, YouTube, eBay and Blogger are all examples of Web 2.0 in action. You can easily post information about yourself, upload items for sale or keep an online diary. This article is about one specific Web 2.0 application that not only can help your managers become better leaders, but also costs nothing to use. It is called Squidoo.
Squidoo allows you to highlight what you consider the best resources available on a particular topic. It is a place where you can help managers cut through the fog of misinformation and shine a light on some recommended reading. People can create Squidoo pages about any topic, but for our purposes I am talking about collating a resource page (called a Lens) about current hot topics in leadership. You can view a sample lens here. It is about Emotionally Intelligent Leadership and was created by a colleague of mine. However, we don’t want you to simply rely on our lenses. Rather, you should create a bank of your own. Then publicise your lenses among your managers to help connect them to high quality knowledge in areas that interest them.
