The Performance Improvement Blog

Active and Passive Learning in Organizations

Many of the typical methods of learning in the workplace make the learner a passive recipient of knowledge and skills. Employees are asked to read, watch, or listen to information being dispensed. The method might be entertaining, interactive, and of their own choosing, but fundamentally these methods are passive for the learner. Another approach is to make the learner an active creator of knowledge and skills. In this role, employees (as individuals, teams, or the organization as a whole) receive feedback about what they are doing and how they are doing it and, through individual and collective reflection, learn how to make themselves, their teams, and the enterprise more effective.

Jane Hart has provided us with an excellent list of “passive” ways in which people learn in their workplaces. She includes:

1. Company training (face-to-face workshops and e-learning)
2. Self-directed study of external courses (of their own choice)
3. Company documents (manual, policies, strategy documents etc)
4. Internal job aids (to support use of systems, processes and activities)
5. Working collaboratively within their team (sharing resources, ideas and experiences)
6. General conversations and/or meetings with people (formal or ad hoc)
7. External personal and professional networks and communities(including online social networks like Facebook and Twitter)
8. External blog and news feeds (reading subscribed resources)
9. Content curated from external sources (daily summaries of key articles, blog posts, etc)
10. Google search for Web resources (looking for and using external resources)

Although “active” methods might be implied by some of the items on Hart's list, I think “active” ways of learning should be made more explicit in our organizations. Otherwise, I fear they will continue to be overlooked even though for many individuals, teams, and organizations they are more powerful learning methods and more likely to result in organizational improvement than the “passive” methods.

Here are ten of these “active” ways of learning in organizations that I would add to Hart’s list:

1. Action learning (structured reflection on one’s own actions and experience)
2. Logs, diaries, and journals (recording reflections and learning as it occurs)
3. Simulation and debrief (group exercises to test assumptions, beliefs, and attitudes about processes and systems)
4. Shared visioning (whole organization identification of collective values and goals)
5. Large-scale events (whole organization system change)
6. Appreciative inquiry (identifying strengths of individuals, teams, and organizations)
7. Dialogue (conversation that seeks mutual understanding of beliefs and values)
8. Coaching (facilitating an individual’s self-awareness and performance improvement)
9. Learning histories (structured group reflection about the meaning of past events)
10. Benchmarking (comparing processes of one organization to those of another)

 

How to Keep Talent from Walking Out the Door

Are you worried about employee turnover in your company and how it might get worse once the economy improves? If you aren’t worried, you should be.

It has been estimated that as many as a third of employees are looking to change jobs. Now that the recession is easing and more companies are beginning to hire again, these employees will start acting on this desire.

My friend and colleague, Bernie Donkerbrook, retired Ford Motor Company program manager and now executive coach, places responsibility for retaining talent on the shoulders of an employee’s supervisor or manager. Bernie believes that there is much those managers can do to keep their employees engaged and productive. He writes:

In today's sluggish economic environment, companies operate lean, demanding more of employees in the process. Many are focused on surviving, not thriving. While uncertainty in the marketplace may keep employees loyal today, when the economy improves, they may be more apt to seek out career opportunities elsewhere. If organizations ignore the retention issue today, they will undoubtedly regret it tomorrow.

You should be asking yourself, “What am I doing to ensure that my key talent remains once the job market improves?” and, concurrently, “What am I doing to strengthen loyalty and build a positive work force, positive people, and good relationships with their immediate bosses?”

Here are actions you can take to increase employee retention (all of which are behaviors that can be coached, trained and developed in supervisors and managers):

• Improve relationships between employees and their immediate bosses. Many employees leave because they perceive that they are not appreciated, recognized, and valued by their immediate bosses.  Here is what you can do:
  • Have HR determine if there are supervisors/managers that have a higher than normal turnover rate in their units. Provide them with a coaching process for understanding and dealing with difficult issues. The supervisor’s/manager’s behaviors need to be understood and changed. There is usually a reason some bosses have higher turnover rates than others.
  • Make it clear to supervisors/managers that employee retention is part of their job and that long-term development of employees is part of their job, too...and part of their evaluation.
• Revitalize your organizational culture to include employee appreciation, recognition, and valuing.  “People honor a culture that honors them.” This is incredibly important…honoring, valuing, respecting and recognizing your people.  It makes a big difference in building loyalty to the company and also is definitely teachable.

• Remind your managers and supervisors of the power of the “Golden Rule” of behavior at work.
  • How would THEY like to be treated by their bosses?
  • What would THEY like to experience in their jobs?
  • How would THEY like to be recognized, appreciated and thanked for their efforts?
  • How long will THEY want to wait to be appreciated, recognized and valued?

• Tell your best people they ARE your best people. It is highly motivating to know you are well thought of. Let your best people know you want to keep them, to retain them with the Company.  Really… it makes a difference. Imagine yourself being told by your boss, or your boss’s boss, that you are important to the Company and they are counting on you.
• Ask employees what they need, want, would like to be doing. No promises, but it shows you are interested and want to make it work for them and the company.  For your best and key people, make sure they have a career development plan. This is so obvious but managers and leadership are so busy they often fail to take this seriously.  And, there is often no corporate plan to set this up.
• Ask employees for feedback on YOUR management behavior. How can you improve? What would they like to see more of and less of from you? Are you helping too much or not available often enough?
• Carve out one-on-one time with your employees.  Much successful retention and employee loyalty comes from, simply, one-on-one time with the boss.  Regularly demonstrate personal care and concern for individuals, their life and family, and what is important to them.  (Bosses may need coaching/mentoring on how to do this effectively.)
• Put people to work where they are their best.  Allow them to work at what they already do well, where they have excelled, and what they are excited about.  Ask them.  Everyone wants to be doing what they know they are good at and what they enjoy doing.
• Find out what inspires, motivates a person.  What is that person passionate about? Find that person work in these areas if at all possible.  At least, let him or her represent the company externally in the areas where there is passion.  This builds the corporate brand and demonstrates corporate engagement with the local community.    
• Find out if career growth opportunities are available for employees.  Do they have opportunities for development, growth, new challenges, and promotion? You may answer, as the manager, “Yes, of course.”  But what do your employees say about this?  There is often a disconnect between what employees experience in career development and what the company policy is said to be.  Do this:  Check it out. Find out what employees believe and what they experience on the job relating to career development. Most often, you, as the boss, will not like what you hear.
• Ensure that compensation is competitive. Eliminating any gap in compensation with the market is a great short-term neutralizer of negative energy.
• Pay for performance.  Do you reward better performance or is everyone at a similar grade-level paid about the same?  If everyone is paid the same, it is not very enticing for the highest performers when they know they are not appreciated in a financial way for their unique contribution to the organization. [Note: Plan pay-for-performance very carefully; these plans can have little or no positive effect if structured in the wrong way.]
• Pay attention to your stars, your top-performers.  Really! Stars will not wait around to be given authority, more responsibility, the opportunity to make decisions, or be promoted.
• Communicate, communicate, and communicate.  Find ways to let employees know you care about them as individuals.

Evaluate Learning Process

As organizations evaluate their programs and services they need to pay attention to process as well as outcomes. Catherine (Brehm) Rain, of Rain and Brehm Consulting Group, Inc., writes this in aea365:

Process evaluation ensures you answer questions of fidelity… did you do what you set out to with respect to needs, population, setting, intervention and delivery? When these questions are answered, a feedback loop is established so that necessary modifications to the program or the evaluation can be made along the way.

Life is a journey—and so is a long-term evaluation. Stuff happens. However, it is often in the chaotic that we find the nugget of truth, the unknown need, or a new direction to better serve constituents. A well-documented process evaluation assists programs to ‘turn on a dime’, adapt to changing environments and issues, and maximize outcome potential.

The problem with much of the evaluation that goes on in organizations, whether that’s evaluation of training and development programs, communication programs, marketing campaigns, a new sales approach, or strategic planning, is that the process is not examined. You might discover what participants thought of the program from “smile sheets” and you might even know how participants applied what they learned if you are fortunate enough to do a follow-up assessment, but none of this tells you what happened and what could be changed to achieve greater impact in the future. This is what process evaluation does.

If you tell me that you provided coaching, or diversity training, or emotional intelligence training, or relationship selling, that doesn’t tell me what actually happened. These interventions could be very different from organization to organization, from department to department, or from day to day. Even if an organization implements a highly structured program such as The Fish! Philosophy with its video, guidebook, playbook, and accessories, the experience could be very different for participants in different organizations with different facilitators at different times. To assess its value to the organization and improve the program for future audiences, we have to know what happened and how that was experienced by participants.

It’s like a friend telling you that she went to Las Vegas, Nevada for a vacation and had a good time. If that’s all you know, then you don’t know very much about her trip. You couldn’t replicate her experience or improve on it for yourself. Maybe she stayed on the Strip and spent every waking moment gambling in casinos. Or maybe she stayed downtown and spent each day on Hoover Dam, Red Rock, and Grand Canyon sight-seeing trips without ever setting foot in a casino. Both experiences might receive a “five” on the vacation evaluation form but that data would be useless to you until you knew what “Las Vegas Vacation” means in her case.

So too with learning interventions, whether classroom, online, or informal, we need to know the actual process of learning (anticipated and unanticipated) in those situations in order to improve the experience for other learners and maximize impact on organizations. It is insufficient to know outcomes without knowing what happened to achieve those outcomes. 

I’ve evaluated employee training programs that included follow-up coaching. Some participants used the coaching and some did not. Some coaching consisted of several, hour-long sessions and some consisted of 15 to 20 minute sessions. Some coaching was done by phone, some was done online and asynchronous, and some was done face-to-face. Some coaching was learner-centered and some was coach-centered. Without knowing how the actual coaching process was delivered, we shouldn’t be making decisions about the program.

Lately, the trend in the employee training and development industry has been to emphasize measurement of results and ROI. While I applaud this recognition that end-of-program, smile sheets are an inadequate measure of the quality of programs, I think measuring outcomes without describing the factors that contributed to those outcomes is also inadequate. We need both process and outcome evaluation. 

 

Investing in Training in Downturns and Upturns

The U.S. is emerging from a training drought that occurred during the worst economic period since the Great Depression. At least, that’s what’s indicated by organizations that do this kind of
research. ASTD reports an increase in spending on L&D in 2010 (latest year for which data is available); they estimate companies spent about $171.5 billion. Bersin & Associates reports that corporate spending on training increased 9.5% in 2011 – the largest gain in three years.  And Training magazine’s research found a 13% increase in spending on L&D in 2011. Each of these studies uses a different method for calculating spending. However, the trend is undeniable: spending on employee training is increasing.  

With this increase in spending comes a great opportunity to do things right. In our book, The 5As Framework, Sean Murray and I wrote that most training programs significantly impact only 10% to 20% of their participants. This represents a huge waste that no organization can afford any longer. As the worldwide recession comes to an end, organizations must use every dollar very wisely. Garry Marsh, director of the U.K. company THM Business Simulations, gives us some thoughts about best ways to use those dollars. Here are those seven ideas with my spin on each one:

• Get it right first time – Think in terms of what learners need, not the latest training fad (content or delivery). Only provide experiences that will help learners improve performance and contribute to achieving the strategic goals of the organization – no more and no less. Pay attention to the quality of content and quality of the learning intervention.
• Keep employee satisfaction high – Involving employees in opportunities to learn is an effective way to increase engagement. Many employees value learning more than a pay increase. To keep engagement high, make continuous learning part of the culture of the organization.
• Train your managers – Many managers did not reach that position because they were great managers of people. This is something that all managers need to keep learning. And if organizations want to prevent their top talent from leaving as the economy improves, they must give managers the opportunity to learn and grow.
• Focus on customer experience – All organizations should have the improvement of customer experience as one of their top strategic goals. To achieve this goal, they will have to train employees in how to create a better experience. Learning about the customer experience should be on every manager’s agenda.
• Spend less, get more – Organizations should not rely on the usual suspects and usual methods for delivery of training. It’s about learning; it’s not about glitzy programs. It doesn’t have to cost much to develop talent. Maybe a manager will become a more effective team leader with the help of a mentor. Maybe a manager will become more effective at giving performance feedback with the help of a coach. Maybe a manager will become better at financial management by attending the CEO’s “open-book” meetings.
• Be ready for the upturn – As the economy improves and companies start hiring again, the best talent will look elsewhere. They have stayed only because nobody else was growing and hiring. Unless managers continue to see opportunities in their current organizations and they feel respect from their leadership, they will be gone. Organizations should do something about these conditions now.
• Look after yourself – Many resources are available to help any organization be successful while keeping costs low. Look for help internally and externally. Use what the organization already owns when that makes sense and then go outside to peers, consultants, and training organizations when they can help you improve performance and achieve your business goals.

 

Deep Listening

This is a guest post from Bernard Donkerbrook:

The term you used in your last post, "deep listening", in context with employers (bosses mostly) connecting/communicating with employees on a personal level, made a big impact on me because this is such a compelling theme for me in working with clients or mentees at EQmentor.com. I understand that you are making a distinction between "deep listening" and "active listening".

My view of "active listening" is that it is a mechanistic process, as one of a set of listening tools/techniques. Active Listening is for me synonymous with paraphrasing, conveying back what you thought you just heard, both in content and in emotions/feelings.  I love the concept of 'deep listening' embodying caring, genuineness, empathy, self-awareness and  being other-person focused. A tall order for many managers, sadly.

I believe that a manager's core listening should include these quite-teachable skills:

• Nonverbal attending
• Open-ended questions
• Reflecting feelings
• Listening for understanding
• Active listening/paraphrasing
• Supportive communication/supportive feedback in the moment

The ability of managers (I use that phrase generically to represent any management level person who has people working for them, such as supervisors, executives, and other leaders.) to recognize, appreciate, and demonstrate that they (and even the company) personally value what employees are doing and contributing (and learning, growing, exploring, etc... all these kinds of things) is powerfully influenced by a manager's "deep listening".  'Deeply listening' is a way of demonstrating respect and genuine appreciation for another person. The list goes on and on of the power, influence, and value of deeply listening to people, one-by-one.  And the good news is that good listening skills by a manager can be learned! 

"People honor a culture that honors them."

Deciding as a manager to really deeply listen, deciding to be authentic and genuine in understanding what people are saying who work for you (and with you), is a powerful way to build relationships that are so critical in getting business done and in demonstrating that you value and appreciate employees as individuals and as contributors to meaningful work. 

 

High Touch vs. High Tech

Technology is putting up barriers to the kind of deep listening that helps two people learn from each other. This is especially true in healthcare. Medical patients, often nervous, scared, and in pain, are comforted by the personal caring and touch of their doctors, yet technology (and time pressure) is getting in the way of that relationship. Abraham Verghese, Stanford University physician and best-selling author, argues that the tendency today is for doctors to order tests before or in lieu of conducting a thorough physical exam. By doing this, they risk missing information that can help them make a more accurate diagnosis and enhance the patient experience. He makes that point in this TED talk:

 

An emphasis on “high tech” at the expense of “high touch” is happening in other workplace situations as well. We seem to be moving away from closeness and the expression of caring between employees and their supervisors. The work relationship has become automated and digitized, putting more distance between people who should be continuously learning together. Email, texting, conference calls, and Skype meetings are replacing face-to-face conversation. The efficiency of these technologies is wonderful; I couldn’t accomplish nearly as much if I didn’t have them.  But something is lost when performance feedback is emailed and difficult conversations are held over the phone.

The effect is limited when performance reviews are reduced to an annual exchange of evaluation forms between employee and supervisor. Employees are more likely to respect the sender, hear the message, and change behavior when the encounter between these collaborators is in-person and over a dedicated and sufficient amount of time. Maybe it doesn’t require physical touch, but proximity and deep listening, especially in western culture, conveys a level of respect and caring that cannot be felt from the latest communication technology.  

 

Mirror, Mirror On The Wall; I Don’t See Myself At All.

As leaders, we tend to overestimate our abilities and underestimate the amount of help we need in order to improve. It’s like looking in a mirror and not seeing yourself the way others see you. Wally Bock, in his post about a Development Dimensions International (DDI) study of front-line leaders, draws three major implications:

You can't trust your mirror. No more excuses. After reading this post you can't fall back on the "nobody ever told me I overestimated my abilities" excuse.

You must commit to the rigorous and discomforting process of getting the true picture of who you are and how you're doing. Seeking feedback must become a habit. Hearing the feedback and acting on it, hard as it is, must be part of your plan. You can get some help from Mary Jo Asmus' excellent post, "The Value of Knowing Exactly Who You Are."

You must commit to the difficult habit of getting better. As you grow and develop, that target will move as Marshall Goldsmith wrote in What Got You Here Won't Get You There.

The process for “getting a true picture of who you are” and for “getting better” is best facilitated by a coach. Bill Ryan, consultant to foundations and nonprofit organizations and research fellow at the Harvard University Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations, in an interview with Ruth McCambridge, Editor-in-Chief of The Nonprofit Quarterly, describes coaching as helping an executive answer this question: “If my organization wants to get to Point X, what do I, as a leader, need to do to build on my strengths and manage my weaknesses to help it get there?” If a leader doesn’t want to ask this question or won’t act on the answer, that person is not a good candidate for coaching. If a leader is willing to learn and to change behavior, then that person will likely benefit from coaching. For video examples of how coaching can help leaders change their behavior see the Evelyn & Walter Haas Jr. Fund site. 

Other modes of learning and change could also be beneficial to executives having a more realistic understanding of themselves. Carol Kauffman and Diane Coutu draw distinctions among consulting, coaching, and therapy. Based on a survey of coaches, Kauffman and Coutu created the following model to show the differences and commonalities.  



I think the researchers should have included "counseling" in this model. Professional counselors help people deal with normal life development, such as career, family, and avocation, with the intent that people learn how to successfully manage these common life challenges.  I would put “counseling” between coaching and therapy in the model. It overlaps with coaching in that counselors are “paid to ask the right questions” and counseling “tackles difficult issues at work and at home…focuses on individual behavioral change…explores subjective experience.” Counseling differs from therapy in that it tends to focus on the present, is short-term, and deals with normal life development problems.

Coaching differs from consulting, counseling, and therapy in that the focus is on each executive’s success in the work setting. Coaching is similar to these other professions (consulting, counseling, and therapy) in that they all rely heavily on skillful listening to clients (executive) and reflecting back what is heard and what is meant so that clients can achieve deeper self-understanding and learning. Then when they look in the mirror, they should see themselves, warts and all. 

 

Google's Search for Good Managers

Managers have a critical role to play in the learning and development of the people who report to them. In fact, that relationship is more critical than anything the HR or Training departments can do to improve performance. This is born out in Google's internal study of good management.

In this self-study, Google identified eight things that “good” managers should do. These imperatives are listed here in order of importance:

1. Be a good coach
2. Empower your team and don’t micromanage
3. Express interest in team member’s success and personal well-being
4. Don’t be a sissy [I don’t know what this means.]; Be productive and results-oriented
5. Be a good communicator and listen to your team
6. Help your employees with career development
7. Have a clear vision and strategy for the team
8. Have key technical skills so you can help advise the team

Adam Bryant, in an article he wrote about this study for the New York Times, points out that while there is nothing new in this list, Google managers pay attention to these behaviors because they are based on Google data. Another important aspect of this internal research is that having technical skills, while important, is at the bottom of the list which might be surprising to some given the technical nature of the business. Bryant writes:

technical expertise — the ability, say, to write computer code in your sleep — ranked dead last among Google’s big eight. What employees valued most were even-keeled bosses who made time for one-on-one meetings, who helped people puzzle through problems by asking questions, not dictating answers, and who took an interest in employees’ lives and careers.

Apparently, managers are successful in Google, not because of their technical expertise, although that’s important, but because of what they do to help team members learn and develop and achieve success. In the 5As Framework, we call this relationship: “alliance”. The alliance of manager with team member is a critical factor in employee learning and performance improvement.

 

Retaining High-Impact Employees

As we crawl out of the recession, high performing employees will be in greater demand than ever (See blog post: The Coming Turnover Storm.). What are you doing to keep them? Kelly Goldsmith, professor of marketing at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, and Marshall Goldsmith, executive coach and author, offer excellent advice for retaining these valued employees. They contend that companies need to do essentially six things to keep their talent: 1) show respect for them; 2) create a work environment in which they can thrive; 3) provide ongoing training and education to them; 4) develop a coaching relationship with them; 5) provide continual feedback to them; and 6) involve them in decision-making.

They make the case that developing these “high-impact” employees is strategically important to a company. They write:

Developing people is a strategic process that adds value to both the employees and the bottom line of the organization. Highly committed, highly competent people create financial rewards for the organization; organizations that develop their people and provide opportunities for growth are sought-after by high-impact performers. Great leaders know this simple formula. They understand it and strive to create an environment that supports it. And the result is success!

The tendency of executives is to assume that employees are motivated by money and that if they are paid well, they will stay with a company. Money is a motivator but it is not the only motivator and often it is not the strongest factor in retention. The opportunity to develop one’s skills and abilities, to continue to learn, and to feel respected and valued, are stronger drivers of retention for many high performing employees.

And this is not only true for high performers; all employees are happier and more productive when they feel respected, are developing their abilities, can contribute to the success of the organization, and are involved in making important decisions. The Goldsmiths' recommendations for retaining high-impact employees are also the characteristics of a high performance organization. 

 

How to Have a Learning Conversation

Employees learn best when they have guidance, support, and performance feedback from someone they trust and respect in the organization. Ideally, this is a boss, supervisor, coach, or mentor who knows why that learning is important and how it aligns with strategic business goals. Managers, at all organizational levels, should have regular learning-focused conversations with the people who report to them. In these conversations, described in our book, The 5As Framework, managers should ask:

1. What do you need to learn in order to help this organization achieve its business goals?
2. Given what you need to learn, what should be your specific learning objectives for the short-term and long-term?
3. How will you and I know if you are making progress toward and achieving those objectives?
4. How can I help you get the most out of your learning opportunities?
5. What resources do you need and how can I help you get them?
6. What should be our schedule for regular conversations about your progress?
7. What do we need to change about this plan?

The key to making this a successful relationship is to keep the focus on how the employee’s learning and performance improvement will contribute to achieving business goals. Companies can no longer (as if they ever could) afford to allow employees to participate in learning activities simply because they are an enjoyable break from the routine, a motivating perk, or conveniently scheduled. Managers must make sure that the time, effort, and money invested in their direct reports is contributing to the organization being successful.