It’s Learning at Work Week 2018, an important reminder from the Campaign for Learning of the importance of learning at work.
Since it’s launch in 1999, there’s been a growing awareness of what makes learning at work effective and I thought I’d take this opportunity to reflect on some of the most important developments I’ve witnessed over the years.
The Decline of the Boring Expert We’ve probably all experienced those courses where an ‘expert’ at the front of the room delivers training in a lecturing style armed with thousands of PowerPoint slides, which often resemble a script.
Fortunately, a growing awareness of the importance of learner-led learning has created an environment where you’re just as likely to experience learning that is engaging, fun and interactive; where the learner is given the opportunity to learn from new experiences and reflect on those he/she has already had. Our passion for engaging the learner led us to create Trainers’ Library and Managers’ Library; helping trainers and managers around the world achieve just that.
Line Manager as Leaders Training was once seen as the responsibility of the learning and development department, or in some cases HR. If someone was underperforming, or needed to develop new skills or behaviours, they were sent on a course with the expectation that they’d be ‘cured’ and returned as a cloned version of a ‘perfect’ employee.
Workshops and group training still provide vitally important opportunities for learning because they provide a great space in which to learn together, work to solve shared problems and learn from each other’s experiences, but learning doesn’t end with these events.
When we become a manager, we’re no longer responsible for just our personal outputs, but on what we achieve through others. That realisation should put leadership and people development at the heart of the manager’s role, as more and more organisations are recognising. It’s why we developed Managers’ Library, a rich library of resources to help managers develop their leadership skills and the skills and abilities of their teams. In short, it can help them become better at fulfilling the vital part they each play in learning at work.
It’s not a Once A Year Event! Ironically, this week serves as a good reminder that far from being something that needs to happen once a year, learning at work is a continuous process.
A greater awareness of learning as a continuous journey has also led to a greater awareness of how people learn and how they access learning. Whilst group work still provides a vital part of the learning mix, so does 1:1 coaching and mentoring. And, of course, self-facilitated learning, like that provided to managers by Managers’ Library and by the many resources in Trainers’ Market, is important too.
Feedback It’s easy to overlook just how important effective feedback is to learning at work. (There’s some great material on effective feedback in Managers’ Library.) Good feedback not only helps individuals and organisations understand their strengths and weaknesses, but also how they can improve.
And that applies to us too! Our mission is to enable people by providing a library of effective resources that help make learning at work effective and fun, and you can help us continue learning at work by giving us your feedback.
There’s loads of ways to let us know how we’re doing and share your ideas for the future development of any of our services. You can respond to this email, give us a call or contact us through the website, to name just a few. We’d love to hear from you.
Until next time… |