LEADERSHIP IN LEARNING COMMUNITIES THAT BREAK THE MOULD

"Learning is what each of us as living, breathing, thinking human being does on our own, sometimes with the assistance of another, every day, all day, and without design unless it's of our own. If we're encouraging people to think differently, with a new mindset, and breaking things along the way, I hope we can also work on breaking the notion we can develop learning for other people. It's as silly of an idea as designing or developing breathing for other people." Marcia Conner responding to a post on Jane Hart's blog (http://bit.ly/pUPzaU ) 

So I’ll continue my series about how to lead online learning communities by asking the question “Where do they need to go?” because leadership implies a destination – or if you like a vision, a goal, an endpoint to be strived for. 

The answer may be short-term and very concrete.  Something about achieving a particular level of personal and collective performance in a defined area by a particular date.  It may be a much longer and more loosely described intention, such as that frequently attached to leadership development initiatives “creating a cohort able to lead the company into a new culture supportive of business strategy”. Maybe it's a Learning Community that will ultimately at some unspecified date become a Community of Practice. 

Whatever the degree of specificity or vagueness associated with the online community, there must always be an element of change involved as a result of its activities, otherwise the community is pointless.  If new awareness, skill, or performance capability is acquired, change will follow. Change theory tells us that however we identify the dimensions of change, if one alters, they all alter. Organisations are made up of people working to a goal within a set of norms, rules and processes. They consist of skills, attitudes and values, individually owned, but expressed within the community that is the organisation. 

When something happens – a learning community forms and begins to express itself in the application of new behaviours – change occurs in the organisation.  In my last post I encouraged analysis of the kinds of community that may typically be found in order to determine the nature of the leadership needed to optimise the chances of success from the pserspective of the make-up of that community. 

In parallel, online communities will only initiate successfully, grow and embed in the organisation if they are set up in a way that will enable them to explore their learning task, and to consolidate and apply their discoveries in an environment that is receptive and supportive. So leadership of an online community needs to pay attention to the cultural, structural and governance “ecology” that surrounds it and the opportunities its work and learning creates.  It is a rare community that succeeds without regard to the constraints that are around it – even if that regard is simply to take note and to challenge on the basis of learning gained.  

So where are we up to now in our exploration of leadership in relationship to online communities?  

We have established that the make-up of the community and its goal are important to understanding its leadership needs. We have also now looked at the fact that change will happen as result of the existence of an active online community. That change needs to be anticipated and planned for in order to optimise the chances of the community succeeding, to minimise disruption to the workflow as a result of the communities and its members' work, and to avoid unintentional negative consequences of the community's work. 

Where does the quote from Marcia Conner fit? What Marcia is saying is that to try to impose leadership on a community or any individual within it is to deny what learning is about. As L&D professionals what we can do as enabling business partners is, either by our own actions or by stimulating others to take the necessary action, to assist in the creation of an environment internal to the community and in its surrounding ecology that enables people to learn in their optimal way. To suggest that we can do more is to deny the learning process and to constrain the choices we each have a right to make. 

Andrew Jacobs asked me in #lrnchat last week if the L&D professional had any part in advising a line manager when a weakness in a business process was noticed. He alluded to the fact that our role is as business people with a particular expertise – that of understanding learning and how people may be helped to optimize their potential. Spotting the need for change, engaging in social learning with line to explore that perception and helping plan action to enable it to happen, and then working with a learning community to express itself and the individuals skills in the changing environment is surely what we are about. 

Considering the leadership needs and how they should be met for a learning community means taking into account both its internal and external needs. We are then in a position to look at what leadership action to stimulate (or from an L&D perspective we can take personal responsibility) in order to move that community forward. One aspect of planning for starting an online community is to include plans to ensure it will have an environment in which it can thrive – supportive management, committed SME’s available to provide assistance, a clear purpose and process understood by all in the environment etc. 

Leadership in a learning community does not always rest with the senior person, the most knowledgeable, the one with the most experience, or even the most noisy or energetic.  It rests with whoever sees what needs to be done and is able to carry the group forward.  Frequently as a community develops and matures the leadership will move between individuals. In L&D we can be observers of those dynamics and be in a position to offer the “gentle hand”. 

We will look at the options for action and the ways in which they may be applied in the next posts in this series. 

1.   Understanding the community we are leading

2.   Understanding the environment in which your learning community is positioned

3 (Next) Understanding the leadership needs of individuals in online learning communities

WHY PEOPLE DON’T ENGAGE WITH LEARNING

Jonathan Miles post “A group of would be friends” (http://bit.ly/pkNUPX) reports a Twitter discussion last week that hinged around reasons why people do not engage with learning.  Jane Hart (@c4lpt) believes it is to do with people not being interested in their jobs, so why should they be interested in learning?  Jonathan was asked to tell his story, which is what his post is about – a great example of a community beginning to thrive when it began to build on its humanity.  Jane is clearly right, but her response, quoted by Jonathan, is only part of the story.

I have discussed before on this blog that the activity of learning is fundamental to our humanity.  It is the core activity that equips us first for survival and eventually for whatever prosperity and fulfilment of our potential that comes our way.  We are, by nature, curious beings who experience, reflect and re-model our behaviour in a continuous and progressive loop. 

During my early career as Trainer in a high powered science research environment I was once involved in an experiment to try to determine how creativity gets lost in our make-up as we grow up.  At what stage in life and what was the cause for the natural inquisitiveness and creativity with which we are born becoming so muted? Why is it that many of the proud products of the education and training system and of our childhood and adolescent lives have lost the ability to notice what is going on around them, to analyse and reflect on it and to make plans to succeed in the environments in which they find themselves? 

The shocking answer from that experiment was that the blockages begin to appear very early in life and are already well and truly evident by the age of about 7.  Parental behaviour, societal norms, schooling systems (thanks Roger Schank for crusading on this point!) and everything surrounding young lives seems to conspire to knock out of them the ability to think out of the box and conceive the extraordinary.  I remember a colleague of mine expressing huge indignation that her child’s teacher had forbidden the telling of fairy stories in infant school “How dare they” she screamed “deny my child the ability to fantasise and to dream?” 

So what’s this got to do with non-engagement in learning in the workplace or in college and university?  If we have become used to not learning and our environment makes no distinction between those who learn and those who don’t, what incentive is there for people to re-awaken their fundamental and in-born skill?  If the person who learns gets the same reward as the person who “is just here for the beer” then what is the point, where is the stimulus. 

I want to combine the hypothesis that learning is part of our humanity, and couple that with the oft quoted premise that the successful organisation of the next decade is the one that can harness the knowledge and skills of the people who work within it. Surely then it is important for organisations, their business leaders, their HR and L&D functions to find ways of enticing, encouraging and supporting their people to learn and to perform better. 

Jane says quite correctly that if people don’t care, they won’t learn.  Jonathan says what many of us experience repeatedly – that even good programmes fall flat and people do not engage.  The story in his post then goes on to exemplify what I believe lies at the centre of this problem.  If the environment is not right, then however good the programme, however strong the incentive, however powerful the individual urge to learn, it will not happen.  Get it right and remarkable progress is made. 

Dick Beckhard’s famous so-called Change Equation (http://bit.ly/BJdko) provides the clue.

D x V x F > R

Three factors must be present for meaningful organizational change to take place. These factors are:
D = Dissatisfaction with how things are now;
V = Vision of what is possible;
F = First, concrete steps that can be taken towards the vision;

If the product of these three factors is greater than
R = Resistance,

then change is possible. 

In a situation where people are not learning and don’t care about their jobs, something has to happen to alter the situation to prevent a slow and terminal decline in the individual’s capacity and that of the organisation to perform. Beckhard’s Change Equation says that change is dependent on three factors that must all be present for anything to happen – and that the combination of the three must be strong enough to overcome the emotional resistance to change that is a part of the nature of every human being.  Therein lies the paradox.  We are all programmed to learn, but at the same time our security needs make us resistant to take risk and to explore once we have a place of safety in our lives. 

A dissatisfaction with where we are now, a vision of a better place somewhere out there, and some idea of how to get from the unpleasant now to the better future are the components. 

How does this apply to L&D and to our learning communities? 

·         Complacency and too great a comfort with our current skills levels, our performance and a lack of ambition, if not challenged in an environment that is supportive but firm (tough love) lead to switch off and entrenchment – and rejection of anything to do with learning and trying to do things better

·         A failure to describe, in ways that are easily understood and which excite, that a future that involves learning and change and that will offer more than the monotony and hopelessness of the current situation, is sure to prevent people even looking at the possibility that with a bit of effort there might be something better out there.

·         Presenting those who we seek to assist with methodologies, platforms and content that are alien to their lifestyles, are inconvenient, not timed to be relevant, and which lack support in applying new knowledge (whether from manager, coach, subject matter expert, mentor, or work colleagues) is not the way to re-kindle the desire for learning, difference, change and improvement. 

In L&D in-house trainers. vendors and educators have become extremely clever at devising content and packaging it in ways which from an academic perspective are ground breaking and worthy of great praise. Every day my mail is full of new offerings incorporating every new tool, application and gismo that can be imagined. But if they are not used in an environment in which the individual is comfortable and is motivated to try them out, embrace them and apply the learning they can undoubtedly generate, then it is like having a magnificent space satellite without a rocket to put it into orbit.  It is worthless. 

Our role in L&D must be to partner with our organisation leaders and managers to create that environment in which people will see a world of possibilities.  Then we have to show the skill and sensitivity to encourage people through the workplace networks and communities of which they are part, and through the learning communities we initiate, foster and invite them to join, to take some steps to try for themselves what might be out there for them.   

That’s hard enough on a face to face basis and requires the focussed efforts of everyone who influences the workplace environment.  For it to succeed with the online communities that are now part of our social world and are rapidly becoming our working world requires us to plan carefully for those communities and to show great skill in making them places that are personal, warm, welcoming and supportive.  Organisation culture, learning platforms, hardware and software accessibility, technical support, personal encouragement and forward thinking stimulation of the communities are all part of the job of the Learning Leader in our new and incredibly exciting world. 

There is every reason to be optimistic that the tools we now have at our disposal can make a real difference if we are able to ignite the spark that lights the desire to learn in those around us.  The good news is that the availability of the wirearchy, the social media and its empowerment of people to social learning and working smarter makes it a responsibility of everyone and a possibility for everyone – not just the L&D function. 

Jonathan’s story is an inspiring one of taking some small steps and seeing some unexpected and extraordinary results – thank you for sharing it!