Recent Trends in Social Learning and Implications for Leadership

Many of us may wonder if the recent trend in social networking and learning is a fad that’s going to deepen further or fade away! Though social learning is no new thing but given the context and meaning with the widespread reach of networking tools, it’s being hotly debated. Many of the old-guard organizations (read GE and IBM among others) along with their more contemporary and networked peers are embracing enterprise social use. However, even a greater number of corporates and their leaders are staunch nay-sayers!

A recent global survey^# of 10000 respondents from 38 countries by Microsoft does throw open very interesting observations and key learning on enterprise social use. It provides a certain roadmap for today’s leadership in organizations.

 Let’s sample a couple of observations made by these information workers and what these mean for the leaders of today?

      Impact on Productivity: These respondents felt that use of social tools have improved their productivity at work. Most notable observations were from China, India, Turkey, Mexico and Russia. Their mean % respondents who agreed (70% of all) on ‘greatly to somewhat increased’ productivity outstrip the average of 46%

      Social tools at work resulted in higher order collaboration among the employees.

Despite the above upsides that the respondents opined, there were some critical concerns when it comes to organizational perception of social tools at workplace.

§  Disclosure of sensitive information:  While in Japan where social tools are not as widely used, respondents claim that their employers have a lower fear of disclosure. In contrast, in India where social tools are relatively more encouraged by employers, survey reveals that employees often get into trouble for using these tools at work.

§  Workplace distractions: Respondents claim their employers view such tools as workplace distraction.

§  Concerns with workplace productivity: Respondents claimed that their employers view enterprise social tools having productivity impact than influencing efficiency at workplace.

Given these somewhat apparent concerns, let’s critically analyze what they mean and how the glass

can be viewed as half-filled rather than half-empty. Various socio-economic and political developments have established beyond doubt the power of social tools such as Facebook, Twitter and their clans. Who can forget Arab spring and Occupy Wall Street so easily?

·         Revealing organizational proprietary information is a sensitive matter, however, such behavior is more of an attitudinal and values issue rather than an outcome of use of social networking. Moreover, a disgruntled employee has possibly many other avenues to affect such damage.

·         Organizations across the globe face sub-optimal employee engagement and productivity through various workplace behaviors such as gossiping, politicking and absenteeism among many others. Informal chats and water-cooler discussions are major learning sources and help shape organizational culture and help change management initiatives.

·         Studies and surveys have established the role of social tools at workplace in fostering collaboration and innovation. These platforms harness the power of collective intelligence and help unlock tacit knowledge that might be residing in employees head.

Business Application                                                        

Rise of social networking tools has been transformational in many ways and this trend is going to intensify further. Smart and suave organizations are already reaping benefits with these innovations. In this backdrop, organizational leadership is assuming a new format. As author and founder of Altimeter Group, Charlene Li claims in her book ‘Open Leadership’ that social technology can transform the way leaders lead their organizations.

The key is to educate your employees on technology, use and certain codes of behavior rather than regulating these tools. A tentative road map in adopting enterprise social tools might look as under

·         Engage and Educate your employees regarding right use of such platforms

·         Create Champions in your organizations who will take the initiative and create the critical mass and momentum for your initiatives

·         Start small, Scale up

·         Integrate with mainstream learning platforms to drive sustainability of interventions

·         Showcase early wins!

As Gartner projected that by 2018, almost half the organizations will have Facebook like enterprise tools, such a disruptive change is demanding a new leadership approach that’s more open on collaboration and collective intelligence.

(^# Source: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/download/presskits/enterprisesocial/docs/ESCResearchSum)

International Coach Federation: What do I need to know about Neuroscience as a Coach?

International Coach Federation: What do I need to know about Neuroscience as a Coach?

Social Media Tools: Icing on Your Learning Cake!

Look inside any publications or resources of workplace learning & performance and chances are that you’ll be surprised to see social media featuring with almost unprecedented regularity. Questions that might crop up in a learning professional’s mind could sound like-

Is it yet another fad? Is the trend sustainable? Are we going for a overkill?

And possibly, some more like these!

Speak to people in the fraternity and possibly you find the opinions divided. But no one seems to disagree on one thing- Social media’s compelling trend has already set in the workplace and one can ignore it at one’s peril!

Still few companies encourage their employees to go active on social media and harness its power for organizational effectiveness. Majority of them, in fact, hold a cynical outlook towards such platforms. Generational gaps make things even more distinct- Baby boomers downplay social media and its power to transform workplace whereas Gen Y employees will go to the extent of snubbing off companies as prospective employers who hold unfavorable social media policies at workplaces!

I was pleasantly surprised hearing one of the hiring managers narrating this interview process wherein she was literally quizzed by one of the interviewees asking about her company’s social media practices when she offered the candidate to ask any questions if he had at the end of the interview. This is just an example and a precursor of things to follow in coming years at workplace.

The question that needs to be asked of learning and performance professional is - ‘How do you usher in Social media in workplace learning with least disruption and resistance?’

Before I try to answer the question, let me provide a perspective on social media. Social media is a broad term that encompasses wikis, blogs, LinkedIn, Facebook, twitter, Pinterest of the world. They are the creation of web2.0 technologies. Despite their apparent omnipresence, an article from T+D magazine cites ‘So far, only a minority of firms are actual “power users” of Web 2.0 technologies for the purpose of enhancing learning. Just 9 percent of learning professionals surveyed said Web 2.0 technologies play a major role in the learning function in their company.’ So it’s evident that when it comes to formal learning plans most of the L&D professionals would rather fight sigh of these platforms.

Think of company intranet and Sharepoint sites- if there were any studies conducted to establish how motivated employees are visiting and taking formal classes, participating on discussion boards, posting comments and seeking work-related solutions, I am sure results would be far from encouraging for those running such LMSs.

 Let’s try to understand the factors behind such an attitude.

·         Learning through such platform is perceived to be too formal and rigid in format- Andragogically not very encouraging.

·         They appear to be intruding into learners space

·         They’re uni-directional in the sense that content flows in one direction- from company repository towards learners. Little scope for collaboration in learning!

Now let’s attempt to see how social media platforms such as micro-blogs, twitter etc. overcome the above challenges. By the very nature of being informal learning platforms they are received more openly by the learners if positioned in a right manner and with due seriousness accorded by executives.

Why so? One need not split hairs to see the logic-

§  Once given right thrust, these media are informal and less time consuming- they are ‘non-intrusive’ as one executive summarized them

§  Learners have the freedom to collaborate on any given topic- in a sense, co-create the whole learning experience. One gets a sense of being creator and contributor

§  Learners are motivated to learn from peers’ experience and offer their own solutions to people who need them

What kind of learning is most suitable to such informal tools?

While formal and structured learning would continue to be delivered through various traditional modes- class-rooms, e-learning or blended, these social media will play out synergy in terms of reinforcement tools thereby enhancing learning sustainability. They add learning effectiveness of such formal tools. The challenge for learning professionals is to strategically integrate such informal tools into their mainstream training.

A critical success factor here would be buy-in from executives and functional leaders. The seriousness will be top-down and initial success will largely depend on how committed are your executives and leaders in driving such learning collaboration. Many executives have natural penchant for such new technologies and avenues while even bigger population of theirs will have love-hate relationship with social media. The key is to know their disposition towards social platforms and try to work around it instead of rushing in with such tools blindly.

Culture and beliefs do change albeit slowly.

Go on and read the following real-life experience of a mind-shift. Names and identities have been changed to keep anonymity.

An initiative to bring about a mind-shift in coaching & mentoring using micro-blogs: A case study

MedDevice is a 163 years old medical equipment and devices company with global operations. Traditionally, the company had been a pioneer of several medical equipments and enjoys tremendous equity among medical fraternity. Recently, it has entered into Indian market and has strategic commitments to grow the market which contributes miniscule to its global sales. The start-up in India has a team of 65 sales consultants with 12 people managers. Keeping up with its strategic vision, they have hired professionals from various established competitors and the team brings in diverse background experiences and practices. Managers have different experiences when it comes to people management and practices in coaching & mentoring people. In order to achieve strategic objectives both on business and people front, the country leader realizes the importance of bringing a uniform people coaching and mentoring culture within the unit.

After a thorough consultation with business leaders and identifying the training needs, a two-day formal course on Coaching is developed in house and delivered by its L&D function to all people managers.

The course comes with a pre-work survey, pre-read and pre-work materials. The workshop got local and global praise and recognition for being meticulously designed and effectively delivered.

The head of L&D of MedDevices, however, is far from being contended. His work has just begun. Sustaining initial excitement and learning of participants is the litmus test. After all, it’s similar to bring about cultural changes, shifting established mindset of leaders and creating a self-sustaining drive for coaching and mentoring. He contemplates Social learning tools such as micro-blogging and discussion boards. After initial thoughts, he zeroes in on existing BlackBerry technology that every manager has access to. Using BlackBerry messenger, he creates a platform titled ‘Confluence: The convergence of ideas’. To initiate, he started with a particular discussion query pertaining to Coaching & Mentoring over Confluence to which participants are expected to express their thoughts and comments. Gradually but steadily, all participants are drawn into this micro-blogging activity and the momentum builds up. Six months later, there is a definite shift in the mindset of all people leaders with their coaching roles. The qualitative improvement of all people managers in their interactions with team members is all there to see. This innovative effort was also recognized through a best practices entry in a training award category of a reputed magazine.

A Case for Spreading Training Lingo among Business Leaders!

A Case for Spreading Training Lingo among Business Leaders!

Talk of the effectiveness of learning interventions, level-4 & ROI and you see workplace professionals scurrying for covers. With business leaders getting more demanding about the returns on every dollar spent, it’s getting tighter.

But, what’s the real issue? Most of the learning professionals will admit that training effectiveness for business leaders means business impact of any form of training on their business metrics. ‘They are interested in seeing impact on numbers only!’ would be the most common refrain. No wonder, long ago ‘Abraham Maslow said, “If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail.” Has ROI become that hammer?

I see this as more of a symptom than a well diagnosed root-cause. It doesn’t take the brain of a genius to trace back the origin of such a cause. We, as workplace learning professionals, keep the effectiveness measures and metrics too closely guarded.  Ask any learning professional and chances are that he assumes that the measures of effectiveness for any learning initiative for him and the business stakeholders are in the same currency. For you, it’s more to do with behavioral impact (read level-3) while for the stakeholders it’s all about higher orders- level-4 and 5 (read ROI according to Jack Phillips model). The topic of discussion here isn’t about various models of evaluations and their eternal debates of superiority but it is centered around the ‘disconnect’ between learning & development professionals and their business stakeholders.

So, where does lie the real disconnect?

Training professionals really live in a secluded world when it comes to training effectiveness. We have debates and discussions around various models- their pros and cons either as a community or even among professionals within an organization. If we poll such professionals regarding the awareness of such models and metrics among all stakeholders they cater to, the result will be abysmal.

The moot point here is- how knowledgeable are our stakeholders about the very yardsticks that we intend to apply for measuring training effectiveness? Various papers and authors have concluded that possibly ROI and stuff of that nature could even prove to be an exercise in vain and at times counterproductive.

Tony Bingham, President and CEO-ASTD, in his extensive interviews with prominent business leaders of the world found them expressing their clear expectations from learning interventions- these are more to do with sustained impact on behavioral front rather than an effort to showcase business improvement results. These leaders surmise that any sustained behavioral modification post training, will eventually lead to business improvement.

Question then needs to be asked is how do we bring our stakeholders on a common language for training effectiveness?

Several years of performance consulting with key stakeholders has made me believe that the following approaches might be of help

• §   Educating business stakeholders about various metrics of evaluating training effectiveness. They should make all levels of measure part of their vocabulary when it comes to learning intervention. Business has its lingo like MS%, Evolution Index, Growth, CAGR etc. which we are expected to be well versed with , hence, they must reciprocate adopting and adapting to the language of Level-1, 2, 3, 4 or 5 as well wherever required.
• §   Begin with the end in mind- Setting a clear expectation of training outcomes in terms of impact on behavioral parameters of desired performance. How does the success look like?
• §   Making leaders realize their contribution to the table when it comes to sustaining a certain behavioral modification from individuals. It’s a team game and immediate managers are the primary drivers of such change initiatives.
• §   Last but not the least, ask a lot of incisive and thought-provoking questions pertaining to the core business issues rather than settling with whatever symptomatically they infer. Ask enough, ask deeper.

The challenge and onus then, are with us as a community of workplace learning professionals. Appreciation of our worldview of training effectiveness will greatly be enhanced by making business adopt and align with this vocabulary.

Are you ready to rework your stakeholders’ vocabulary the next time you are consulting with them?

Learn to Question!

Socrates was one of the greatest teachers the world has ever seen. Teaching the pedagogic way by means of asking questions was his hallmark. He would never provide answers to the questions his pupils asked, instead, hurled back a question to make the student think and reflect. The outcome was a deep learning and in the process, a skill building for the pupil to learn to question. Thus born the art and science of Socratic Questioning!

Cut to the modern times- personal and professional lives!

In an era of communication, where listening and questioning skills are at a premium, we find many a professional struggling when it comes to asking impactful and incisive questions. Leaders, people managers, sales professionals, students name them and this takes epidemic proportions.

We see modern managers interacting with individuals prescriptively. Sales professionals struggling to put forth the right questions to their customers to get them reveal their preferences and motives. Teachers showing a bias towards the students who come up with fitting answers and worse even, admonishing those minorities who ask frequent questions in classes! What's gone wrong?

Let's be bold enough in admitting that many of us even as performance professionals dread this skill while coaching, engaging and consulting with stakeholders! This seems deep rooted.  We like to talk matters down rather than listening about it as a discourse.

I attribute two intrinsic reasons to this syndrome

§  Societal practices

§  Personal preferences

As a society, we encourage and promote kind of superiority for answers and solutions. We love to be branded as a 'go- to-answer' man, 'knows it all' persona. Since childhood, we are accustomed to hear from our parents as to how we fared answering questions in classes or exams. Very few would recollect their parents enquiring them if they had asked good questions to their teachers or friends.

Neil Postman once said 'Children come to school as question marks but unfortunately leave school as periods'. Apathy and fear towards questioning start taking toots from the beginning of our childhood.

As human being, we love to hear our own voices rather than listening to others and this preference marginalize a culture of discourse. Exploring through questions takes a back seat. As we grow up and climb ladders of success many of us develop a 'tell-mode' approach to work and life. No wonder, listening is equally a challenging skill as Questioning.

Growing body of evidences and best practices suggest that effective leaders are good teachers who engage their people through series of thought- provoking questions and storytelling. Contrast this with an average manager who seldom asks any incisive question to his team and monopolizes conversation. General wisdom will tell that the more you make others talk and reveal, the better equipped you are in terms of knowledge and information about the person and the situation.

How do we then gain mastery over the art of questioning?

Like any other skills, it requires self- awareness as spring board to start off.

1.       Know your current questioning skills and styles - A self-aware soul will do better and go further

2.       Build your repertoire of questioning styles - Gaining a practical understanding of various types of questions and their relevance in communication. Open- ended, Closed- ended, Leading, Exploring and Rhetorical questions are the ones mostly used for effective engagement.

3.       Take a genuine interest in the person or the subject you are engaging with - your questions will appear solution-driven rather a probe.

4.       Allow the person to respond and clarify - Don't just assume and interpret. Trust in communication starts from here.

5.       Be open to clarify and rephrase to elicit desired response - At the end of it, the meaning of your communication is the response that you get.

6.       Encourage respondents with warmth and positivity – A friendly environment will add to your confidence and flow.

7.       Match your questioning skills with a deep listening skill -You'll be reciprocated.

8.       Match your questions with suitable body- language - They play out synergy.

9.       Ask for feedback - Your progress will be amplified with nuggets of feedback from colleagues and friends

10.   Practice it the right way! Seek help from others who do it better.

Questioning skills and its mastery will determine the richness in our relationship, communication and leadership. Questioning should be matched with an astute sense of listening. Leaders and their organizations will reap disproportionate benefits by cultivating and promoting a questioning culture. Examples of a position of Chief Questioning Officer in some German companies are few but make real business sense.

Let the tribe grow!

Life-wide Learning for L&D professionals

Workplace Learning and Performance professionals (WLP) exist for building capabilities of enterprises and individuals. But who builds theirs?

The question might sound too simplistic to give a second thought but as a WLP professional what are your current intervention and how is that built into your long term growth plan? What are the dynamics in your organization when it comes to individual learning? Is the workplace conducive and does it create an environment to promote individual learning? All these questions and many more such should cross your mind every morning you get up from the bed. Our own credibility largely remains with how we learn and apply newer insights back to workplace. Yet, many professionals either have second-rated initiatives or efforts directed to this end or mired in daily functional issues to such an extent that they hardly care a damn about it. 

I am sure you wouldn't like to be one!

Are you in command of your own self-development? Is your organization providing enough stimulus and focus to develop you?

If yes, then go ahead and face the world with all courage and confidence. If something is amiss then buckle up and make it the priority. The world will distinguish and reward those WLP professionals who are the leading edge of their own learning and put this into their genetic built.

Customize your learning plan aligned to your goals and stick to that. Make yourself future-ready. Learning and behavior change will help you command a premium over others.

Life-wide learning is here to stay.

Bias for talent management in an organization

Organizations of today have two queens to deal with- Customers and the Employees. We all knew the old saying 'Customer is right!', what about the employees?

Unlike in the past, talent (read, employees) is in command of affairs and she takes it to wherever deemed fit. Hence, pro-actively engaging your in-house talent is the real challenge for many business leaders and specifically the HR function. The average shelf-life of talent in organizations are turning out to be 2-3 years. No wonder then that the wisdom shared by Vinit Nayar, CEO of HCL, through his book "Employees First, Customers Second: Turning Conventional Management Upside Down" is finding echo in the corporate corridors so profoundly.

Like a CFO who strategically manages and engages corporate wealth in value creation for its stakeholders (hence called a strategic business partner) the HR and business leads are expected to manage its human capital through various measures- career pathways, succession planning, managing bench-strength, work-groups focused on special projects among many others.

Employee retention and loyalty then becomes a function of pro-active employee engagement, meeting individual career aspirations and aligning the same towards organizational goals.

Transparency and unbiased approach towards employee engagement comes as defaults in the entire game-plan in successful management of organizational human capital.

If you are biased, talent has the uncanny habit of being biased in selection for the next workplace.

HR and business leaders listening?