This is the the 7th post in a series of blog postings about how L&D departments need to change to meet the needs of today’s Smart Worker.
In my previous post I looked at how individuals really learn how to do their jobs – by doing their jobs – and how that happens mainly through social interactions with others in the workflow. In this post I want to take a look at how human contact and interactions are also important in more structured learning approaches.
It is clear that there will always be a need for more formal approaches to learning in the workplace – in particular to bring people quickly up to speed on a topic, or to pass on important knowledge or skills. And of course the traditional role of training/L&D departments has been to provide workshops and training sessions for groups of individuals to do just that. But as companies have seen the value of replacing face-to-face training with self-paced online, content-focused, courses (aka e-learning), the social aspect of learning has begun to disappear.
Although some people are very happy to have the ability to work on online courses at the time of their choosing and at their own pace; others do not enjoy having to sit at their desk ploughing through hours of online content. In particular they miss the interaction with others to discuss and bounce ideas off , that they get in the face-to-face workshop.
David Pollard, in a recent posting, has also pointed out that there are limitations to what you can learn online or alone, and in fact came up with a list of things that included:
- the social skills and capacities of getting along well and effectively with others (e.g. empathy, facilitation, conversation, collaborative skills, consensus, invitation, conflict resolution, improvisation, elicitation, story-telling).
- competencies and capacities that require real-world practice (e.g. empathy, facilitation, conversation, collaborative skills, consensus, invitation, conflict resolution, improvisation, elicitation, story-telling).
In Dave Pollard’s case his interest was in learning to meditate, and he therefore came to the conclusion …
“So if I’m serious about learning to meditate and become present, not only am I going to have to turn off the computer and get with other people in real space and time, I’m going to have to try a new style. I may have to be perseverant and studious, learn to accept and follow instruction, follow a prescribed curriculum, get results-orient, and practice, a lot, even when it’s no fun. Ugh. Do I really want to learn this that badly?”
In the workplace, the need to help people acquire new skills is one reason why face-to-face workshops do continue to be offered – or at least provided as a “blend” of online and face-to-face instruction. But in many cases, these are frequently “event-based” activities, and it is clear that to really learn skills, of the kind mentioned by Dave Pollard, requires practice and ongoing help from a supportive “expert” – something which organisations are often reluctant to provide, since the whole rationale for e-learning is in many cases to reduce trainer costs.
But another recent piece by Andre Klein, How private teachers and tutors are transforming today’s education, points out that ”our school system has turned into an Assembly Line approach: students are treated as goods going in and out of the “knowledge factory” and explains how the old idea of private tutoring is now very much in fashion. Kirsten Winkler in a similar post, Is 16th century teaching the future of education? Learning Ruby on Rails with a private tutur are the new violin lessons, quotes Christopher Dede of Harvard University as saying “Still, one-to-one tutoring is the learning method proven time and again to sharply improve a student’s measured performance”.
So what does all this have to do with workplace learning? It implies we should be thinking much much more about how we can support these personal human interactions in learning – both in one-to-one and group-based approaches. So let’s take a look at these in a little more detail.
One–to-one coaching and mentoring has been high on the agenda of some organisations for some time now. But with social media it is now much easier to support this more widely and more effectively, and there are now many external providers that provide coaching and mentoring in this way. For instance, I offerindividual social media coaching globally using the very same tools under discussion, and there other providers who support online coaching for many other business areas.
But you don’t have to rely on external providers. Why not get your own people to help one another in this way? Why not get the experts in their field to pass on their knowledge by becoming mentors. As Wikipedia points out, “effective transfer of tacit knowledge generally requires extensive personal contact and trust”. So rather than trying to carry out the difficult, if not impossible, task of codifying a Subject Matter Expert’s (SME’s) knowledge in an online course, ask them to be recognised as part of a Subject Matter Network (SMN) – a concept that Mark Oehlert discussed in this posting - where they can share their knowledge in more effective ways.
And in return for passing on “know-how”, why not consider a “reverse mentoring” programmes; this is where older workers share their experiences in the business with newcomers in return for support and help with using social media tools – something that benefits all parts of the organisation. (See this Mashable post, Why your business should consider reverse mentorship, for more on this).
Although mentoring schemes like this are usually initiated in a top-down fashion in organisations, ”ad hoc” mentoring/coaching/ tutoring activities that take place at the grass roots in the organisation are just as powerful (i.e by simply “buddying” up with someone to pass on experience) – so this type of sharing of knowledge- and skill-sharing could also be encouraged.
Additionally, whereas most coaching and mentoring sessions are scheduled well in advance, there is also a good case for promoting “on demand” mentoring; after all (as mentioned in previous posts) the Smart Worker needs immediate solutions to his/’her performance problems and his/her first port of call is usually his/her trusted network of friends and colleagues - so who better to help solve problems than the mentor.
Learning communities, on the other hand, provide opportunities for groups of individuals to come together to learn from one another – formally and informally – and might include “mentoring groups”. With the advent of social media technologies, it is possible to build online learning communities that support far wider and deeper participation than before.
Unfortunately, formal online learning communities are all too often “bolted-on” - as an after thought – to existing e-learning content, and when this is the case they don’t tend to work that well, if at all, since learners don’t like moving back and forth from content to community.
The most effective online learning communities tend to be those where any content is well integrated within the community or is co-created by the community, and where the emphasis is placed much more on the interactions, sharing and conversations between the participants. Content provided (top-down) can set up the framework for discussions and interactions. In my Smart Working programme hosted on my Share&Learn platform, the framework comes in the form of a daily assignment consisting of some reading and a short activity, but the real value comes from the participants sharing their thoughts, experiences and resources with one another. (See Steve Bachelder’s write-up of his 30 day journey of discovery, firsts and new connections). Note, that as the facilitator of this programme I see myself more in the role of “guide on the side” rather than “sage on the stage” in this learning community.
Ad hoc online learning communities are also valuable experiences for learning from one another. For example the Twitter and Learning Week that took place recently on Share&Learn was focused around daily discussions on how Twitter could be used in different aspects of learning – although the group itself is open for continuous sharing of resource, ideas and experiences around this topic.
Learning communities also don’t need to be set up top-down by L&D departments. Rather, groups of individuals with a common interest in learning about a topic should be encouraged to develop their own group space where they can hold discussions and share what they know with one another – as many Smart Workers already do in Facebook or LinkedIn groups.
But one key aspect of supporting online learning communities in the workplace is that they need to be as close to the workflow as possible, so that learning – either formally or informally – is a part of everyday working activity, and not something separate from it. Individuals should easily be able to set up groups and invite colleagues to join them. In my previous post, I suggested that groups should be able to choose their own group tools to do this, but where privacy is a concern and enterprise tools are preferred, then the most appropriate technological infrastructure would be some sort of social and collaboration (intranet) platform – rather than a dedicated learning platform.
The key to identifying an appropriate enterprise platform is to ask the question: How easy is it for an individual to set up a group space, and for them to invite others to join it? If the answer is that it requires an administrator to either give them permission to do this, or else set up the group for them, then this is likely to be a show-stopper. On the Social Web the Smart Worker is used to having control over such things, and won’t be interested in having to apply to do something he/she can do very easily with consumer tools. Autonomy is a key motivator for Smart Workers – and will be discussed in a future posting in this series.
UPDATE!!
This series of posts has now become part of a major new resource called NEW Workplace Learning: Meeting the needs of today's Smart Workers and preparing for those of tomorrow. Visit this page to read more.
Social media is affecting all our lives – it has disrupted countries and it is unsettling organisations.
Blog Post: A group of would be friends 
This is the 6th post in a series of postings on how L&D departments can move forward from their traditional role of creating, delivering and managing formal learning – to one that supports the wider needs of Smart Workers in the organisation. This post looks at L&D’s approach to the wider concepts of informal and social learning in the organisation.
This is the 5th in a series of postings about how L&D departments can move forward from their traditional role of creating, delivering and managing formal learning - to one that supports the wider needs of Smart Workers in the organisation. In recent postings I focused on how L&D can support the content needs of the Smart Worker, but in fact it is clear, that most people first try and solve their problems by calling upon the people they know to help them, so this is the topic of this posting. A recent article in the WebWorker Daily, 
