I find it strange that we don’t look to our private lives for insights on how to manage in the workplace. And yet it is often in our personal lives that we confront our real self - not the performing self. It’s when we are hit on an emotional level in our personal lives that we are most profoundly confronted with how to manage ourselves and the situation.
My contention is that we are more likely to learn new skills when we are confronted with the hardest of issues – and those issues are almost always connected to our emotions. I would say we are lazier or resume our worst practises with those we love, often falling into behaviours that would never be tolerated in the workplace.
This description of course seems not very convincing when I say that our personal lives provide the fodder for good leadership and management practises. My reasoning is that we are more likely to see ourselves in our personal lives with some clarity in terms of our feelings and perhaps our failings. If we can somehow figure out how to move outside our egos in our private lives and resolve the issues, then we have gained valuable skills to take into the workplace.
The book , “The Goal” by Daniel Goldblatt is a good example of the reverse. He describes a process where the main protagonist discovers how he has mismanaged processes in manufacturing and, learned to find those obstacles, work with people and generate a productive but engaging workplacein the end. Because his own marriage was suffering as well he took many of the lessons he learned home only discover that he could build a better life with his family from what he learned about himself in the workplace. Not a bad concept.
I know that when I’m dealing with the complexities of my personal life I struggle to be mature, to let go of my ego/vanity, my defensiveness. I want everyone to know I’ve been wronged almost more than I want a solution. Yup it’s true. And yet it is in these moments that I learn the most about thinking objectively, what the more appropriate outcome should be and how to get there. Let’s face it our principle issue in the workplace is less about the technical stuff and hell of a lot more about how to work together for a common purpose. By honing the work we do at thinking about the problem, arriving at solutions in both our work and personal lives, each can benefit and we must learn to take the skills we learn in one area to the other.
Contributed by Dr. Helen Ramirez -- Senior Partner
Tuesday, September 7, 2010
Tuesday, June 15, 2010
Why creative thinking fails
It’s been awhile obviously since my last entry and my excuse is none other than I had too much on my plate that didn’t allow me to think through ideas.
I wonder how often people in organizations feel this way. Are people running from one moment to the next from one crisis to the next with hardly a breath in between?
How much time is there for actual analysis of what’s going on in terms of organizational structure or processes?
Well if my work life is an example and to my utter shame even though I’m supposed to know how to prioritize tasks, I have done a pitiful job of juggling all my responsibilities and thinking. In recent weeks, I have found myself gasping for time to sleep much less time to analyze or think through new ideas.
What’s the problem here? It’s not just a question of time management it’s a question of how organizations are run. Too much of what happens is based on crisis management. People are rounded up to attack the most recent problem and get it solved before the next emerges. In these moments, they have to leave their own work to solve an issue that usually cascades into another. The end result is that their own work is rarely completed, the real problems are never addressed and everyone is stressed.
Please tell me what kind of good thinking can occur under such circumstances? It can’t and it doesn’t actually happen.
Now there are a multitude of systems to measure what’s going wrong in an organization. Reports are given and sometimes even discussions are held but the actual resources to move the organization from one of what is quite simply incompetence to competence is rarely done.
Doing so requires a different kind of commitment. This commitment says as an organization we aren’t going to fire fight any more and we’re not going to drain our people resources or overburden them. In these times of labour control, downsizing, being more “efficient” (I find this almost comical because efficiencies so rarely occur when it involves people) we are actually asking people to do more with less time.
Too often we act quite literally like chickens with our heads cut off. The first question when a new demand is made on another should be “what do you have on your plate?” Then the next is, “What can be moved off?” and “What can I do for you to make it possible?”
Here’s my other pet peeve. Organizations don’t really want a lot of innovation not when it comes to organizational development. They don’t mind it if it makes a process faster but not if it requires a true restructuring of processes that include opening avenues for groups to discuss ideas in a real atmosphere of creativity and commitment to changing the course.
The other flaw in good thinking is the organization’s habit of always calling on the same limited group members to address an issue. This is taxing of this group and the more they have on their plate the less likely they’re going to be able to add something inventive. And, the rest of the organization is left out.
People with good ideas are never identified and others in the organization are locked out from learning how to be creative thinkers. So good inventive thinking which in my lexicon is difficult, damn difficult is left to a few tired, over worked individuals who just want to come up with the fastest solution so that they can back to their other pressing priorities.
If we want good thinkers we have to reduce the stress of people, commit to real change, and engage more people in the process. If we’re so keen on succession planning, we should be doing succession in terms of who can be brought in to learn these “thinking” or “brain storming” processes.
Cross thinking allows us to ask questions like “have you thought of this” or “what if we did this”. It’s fun and it’s certainly more valuable than the usual painful ways we sit around and think that seems to suck the blood out of us.
When people in an organization are overworked or their stress levels are out of sight then good thinking is not going to happen. When more than one person is feeling more than a little taxed then the organization is not positioned well. In this case, the issue is not the individual but how the organization is run.
Now I need to get back to keeping all my 4000 balls in the air. Until the next time....
~ Dr. Helen Ramirez
I wonder how often people in organizations feel this way. Are people running from one moment to the next from one crisis to the next with hardly a breath in between?
How much time is there for actual analysis of what’s going on in terms of organizational structure or processes?
Well if my work life is an example and to my utter shame even though I’m supposed to know how to prioritize tasks, I have done a pitiful job of juggling all my responsibilities and thinking. In recent weeks, I have found myself gasping for time to sleep much less time to analyze or think through new ideas.
What’s the problem here? It’s not just a question of time management it’s a question of how organizations are run. Too much of what happens is based on crisis management. People are rounded up to attack the most recent problem and get it solved before the next emerges. In these moments, they have to leave their own work to solve an issue that usually cascades into another. The end result is that their own work is rarely completed, the real problems are never addressed and everyone is stressed.
Please tell me what kind of good thinking can occur under such circumstances? It can’t and it doesn’t actually happen.
Now there are a multitude of systems to measure what’s going wrong in an organization. Reports are given and sometimes even discussions are held but the actual resources to move the organization from one of what is quite simply incompetence to competence is rarely done.
Doing so requires a different kind of commitment. This commitment says as an organization we aren’t going to fire fight any more and we’re not going to drain our people resources or overburden them. In these times of labour control, downsizing, being more “efficient” (I find this almost comical because efficiencies so rarely occur when it involves people) we are actually asking people to do more with less time.
Too often we act quite literally like chickens with our heads cut off. The first question when a new demand is made on another should be “what do you have on your plate?” Then the next is, “What can be moved off?” and “What can I do for you to make it possible?”
Here’s my other pet peeve. Organizations don’t really want a lot of innovation not when it comes to organizational development. They don’t mind it if it makes a process faster but not if it requires a true restructuring of processes that include opening avenues for groups to discuss ideas in a real atmosphere of creativity and commitment to changing the course.
The other flaw in good thinking is the organization’s habit of always calling on the same limited group members to address an issue. This is taxing of this group and the more they have on their plate the less likely they’re going to be able to add something inventive. And, the rest of the organization is left out.
People with good ideas are never identified and others in the organization are locked out from learning how to be creative thinkers. So good inventive thinking which in my lexicon is difficult, damn difficult is left to a few tired, over worked individuals who just want to come up with the fastest solution so that they can back to their other pressing priorities.
If we want good thinkers we have to reduce the stress of people, commit to real change, and engage more people in the process. If we’re so keen on succession planning, we should be doing succession in terms of who can be brought in to learn these “thinking” or “brain storming” processes.
Cross thinking allows us to ask questions like “have you thought of this” or “what if we did this”. It’s fun and it’s certainly more valuable than the usual painful ways we sit around and think that seems to suck the blood out of us.
When people in an organization are overworked or their stress levels are out of sight then good thinking is not going to happen. When more than one person is feeling more than a little taxed then the organization is not positioned well. In this case, the issue is not the individual but how the organization is run.
Now I need to get back to keeping all my 4000 balls in the air. Until the next time....
~ Dr. Helen Ramirez
Arduous Journey of Change
We are an odd combination as humans in the Western World. On the one hand, we see ourselves as being more democratic, more technically advanced, more moral than other parts of the world.
I’ll tell you why I think this kind of evolutionary thinking is a problem. We become used to big ideas and notions of progress without noting the problems of such thinking. We live in a culture that believes that big movements of change are not only possible but a mandate of our conception of progress and civilization.
Look at our visible proofs. We have unbelievable technology. Technology that is visible as markers of advancement in all aspects of work lives spanning high tech, health care, manufacturing, in fact in any arena you can think of. We see progress.
We can consume progress by updating our own personal technology on a regular basis and it’s easy. We can be hip with the changing world on that level without a whole lot of effort aside from cost and in my case figuring out how to use the technology.
What I’m getting at is that we expect the same clear signals of change for the human side of development particularly in the workplace. We easily become resigned that “nothing ever changes” and that “there’s no point in trying.”
Of course we’re not going to see dramatic change and I feel consultants really do a disservice to their clients when they promise such results. People don’t change dramatically and the processes that we impose do not force any consistent change in human behaviour.
I’ll come back to this point shortly. First though I want to look at change. We live in a world of constant change. Our own lives are in constant flux moved by large human events such as birth and death but also by the strains of economics, and the more minute shifts that are sometimes only perceivable in hindsight. The same is true of the workplace. There is nothing static about it or of the people who work in these organizations.
Organizations do not simply progress; rather they move in many different directions. Often times one department is more efficient and better at generating results than another. An organization is not a monolith where all the parts move in the same direction in unison. Nor are their histories of one steady movement forward. The problem is that while this inconclusive history of change might be the reality, we fail to recognize it as normal because we are surrounded by stories of business heroics. Such stories are then used to build on the rags to riches myth of progress.
We have got to stop looking for one final solution to all our problems. We have got to stop saying things like “....if only so and so would step up to the plate, everything would be okay.” or “if only our president would lead we’d be okay.” But we must also stop saying things like, “nothing ever changes so what’s the point in participating in another training session bound to fail.”
The former statements reduce problems to silly solutions. And because they’re silly we don’t engage in more creative thinking to address problems. The latter set of statements is obviously equally as useless. Both are sure fired ways to ensure failure.
To offset the nihilism of the above it’s time first to recognize where change good, bad or neutral is occurring. We need to stop creating evolutionary kinds of expectations and start doing the better more difficult task of thinking through issues and finding more realistic goals and solutions to work with.
We can only find these solutions however, if we truly observe what the problem is and secondly what we personally can do about it in perhaps even in small measure.
And thirdly, we have to stop expecting big results -- we rarely get there. Finally we have to expect to review our ideas and actions and re-work our plans. The first solution rarely works to our expectations.
So many of the management books bore me because they all propose dramatic change by following their set of steps. Again its all about evolution. So, who’s at fault if we try to follow the steps outline? Apparently we are. The companies noted in these books all seem to have the same story of how they went from a faltering state to one of great power and profit. All other companies are then measured or measure themselves in comparison.
Our current criteria for success is both limiting and a denial of the many organizations that are successful but not successful in the same way that the Forbes 500 list would contend.
Our desire for constant movement forward toward this idealist notion of success is problematic. I know many would counter me by saying that profit is the only measure. Maybe but maybe that too is limiting considering how companies vary widely in their profits and their practises.
Are they doing something wrong. No they’re not. They’re working as hard and as smart as any organization with big a name. Our problem is that we have come to believe that all success is progressive when in fact it isn’t. Not only is our definition flawed but it creates the wrong ideas about progress, the wrong measure. It demoralizes us. It stops us from thinking more clearly. Innovation is all about thinking and this means challenging the myths that put in place only one story of success.
Like humans, organizations are in constant motion. Sometimes they fail entirely, sometimes they experience good times and sometimes they move into very bleak or challenging stages.
Sometimes they are more successful at some things and not others. This reworking of the story of greatness is realistic. We are not all going to be a RIM. But neither do we know what their future holds.
~ Dr. Helen Ramirez
I’ll tell you why I think this kind of evolutionary thinking is a problem. We become used to big ideas and notions of progress without noting the problems of such thinking. We live in a culture that believes that big movements of change are not only possible but a mandate of our conception of progress and civilization.
Look at our visible proofs. We have unbelievable technology. Technology that is visible as markers of advancement in all aspects of work lives spanning high tech, health care, manufacturing, in fact in any arena you can think of. We see progress.
We can consume progress by updating our own personal technology on a regular basis and it’s easy. We can be hip with the changing world on that level without a whole lot of effort aside from cost and in my case figuring out how to use the technology.
What I’m getting at is that we expect the same clear signals of change for the human side of development particularly in the workplace. We easily become resigned that “nothing ever changes” and that “there’s no point in trying.”
Of course we’re not going to see dramatic change and I feel consultants really do a disservice to their clients when they promise such results. People don’t change dramatically and the processes that we impose do not force any consistent change in human behaviour.
I’ll come back to this point shortly. First though I want to look at change. We live in a world of constant change. Our own lives are in constant flux moved by large human events such as birth and death but also by the strains of economics, and the more minute shifts that are sometimes only perceivable in hindsight. The same is true of the workplace. There is nothing static about it or of the people who work in these organizations.
Organizations do not simply progress; rather they move in many different directions. Often times one department is more efficient and better at generating results than another. An organization is not a monolith where all the parts move in the same direction in unison. Nor are their histories of one steady movement forward. The problem is that while this inconclusive history of change might be the reality, we fail to recognize it as normal because we are surrounded by stories of business heroics. Such stories are then used to build on the rags to riches myth of progress.
We have got to stop looking for one final solution to all our problems. We have got to stop saying things like “....if only so and so would step up to the plate, everything would be okay.” or “if only our president would lead we’d be okay.” But we must also stop saying things like, “nothing ever changes so what’s the point in participating in another training session bound to fail.”
The former statements reduce problems to silly solutions. And because they’re silly we don’t engage in more creative thinking to address problems. The latter set of statements is obviously equally as useless. Both are sure fired ways to ensure failure.
To offset the nihilism of the above it’s time first to recognize where change good, bad or neutral is occurring. We need to stop creating evolutionary kinds of expectations and start doing the better more difficult task of thinking through issues and finding more realistic goals and solutions to work with.
We can only find these solutions however, if we truly observe what the problem is and secondly what we personally can do about it in perhaps even in small measure.
And thirdly, we have to stop expecting big results -- we rarely get there. Finally we have to expect to review our ideas and actions and re-work our plans. The first solution rarely works to our expectations.
So many of the management books bore me because they all propose dramatic change by following their set of steps. Again its all about evolution. So, who’s at fault if we try to follow the steps outline? Apparently we are. The companies noted in these books all seem to have the same story of how they went from a faltering state to one of great power and profit. All other companies are then measured or measure themselves in comparison.
Our current criteria for success is both limiting and a denial of the many organizations that are successful but not successful in the same way that the Forbes 500 list would contend.
Our desire for constant movement forward toward this idealist notion of success is problematic. I know many would counter me by saying that profit is the only measure. Maybe but maybe that too is limiting considering how companies vary widely in their profits and their practises.
Are they doing something wrong. No they’re not. They’re working as hard and as smart as any organization with big a name. Our problem is that we have come to believe that all success is progressive when in fact it isn’t. Not only is our definition flawed but it creates the wrong ideas about progress, the wrong measure. It demoralizes us. It stops us from thinking more clearly. Innovation is all about thinking and this means challenging the myths that put in place only one story of success.
Like humans, organizations are in constant motion. Sometimes they fail entirely, sometimes they experience good times and sometimes they move into very bleak or challenging stages.
Sometimes they are more successful at some things and not others. This reworking of the story of greatness is realistic. We are not all going to be a RIM. But neither do we know what their future holds.
~ Dr. Helen Ramirez
Kill my motivation – micromanage me!
I was talking to a friend recently who was telling me about his experiences with micromanagers. He’s in a senior position and it’s killing him to have to work under such restrictions.
I’ve been thinking a lot about it since our conversation and about my own response. I need independence in my work life. I need the autonomy to do my job. It doesn’t mean I don’t seek out advice! I do, because I know what my own limitations are. But faced with a micromanager... I begin to exhibit behaviours I’m not proud of.
What bothers me most in my work or my personal life is when someone micromanages my movements. In my book, micromanaging says the other person doesn’t trust me to be competent or able. It tells me that they believe they are somehow better at whatever and feel the impulse to make sure I do it their way. I receive it as a judgement of not only myself but of my skills. It becomes very personal. But it does more-- it limits what I can do and how I do it. I stop being inventive or thoughtful, and my own personal frustration increases. I begin not to want to do the job. It is no longer engaging for me and I cease giving it my all. My standards fall – to survival mode -- just getting the job done.
Micromanagers are highly emotional people. They can be wound up or easily stressed, they can lack confidence or live in fear that they are losing control. They can be easily threatened by others and can sometimes be volatile. They can rely on gossip in the organization and seek out misinformed comments from others and then feel they have the right to act. Even if they appear to hold no emotional history don’t be fooled – even the most controlled are working on their emotions and not on the well being of working relationships, the team or the organization.
So what to do about micromanaging?
There are some people who will never change. You can try to understand what their insecurities are – and my experience tells me they generally have a mountain of issues of their own. Issues I rarely want to figure out or even want to address with the person. I just want them to change the behaviour that most affects how I perform.
Here’s what I do. I ask them what they need. I tell them I need them to go away and not to call or to try to improve on what I’m doing, or undermine my authority.
Then we negotiate a middle point on what they will do and what I will do.
If the agreement is breached by either party then the issue is revisited simply and concisely: i.e. You did this. WE agreed not to…I understand your position but let’s not to do it again while this project is being developed. I have learned that with micromanagers you must essentially negotiate everything.
I know it sounds exhausting and it can be, but expecting them to back off for good is expecting too much.
~ Dr. Helen Ramirez
I’ve been thinking a lot about it since our conversation and about my own response. I need independence in my work life. I need the autonomy to do my job. It doesn’t mean I don’t seek out advice! I do, because I know what my own limitations are. But faced with a micromanager... I begin to exhibit behaviours I’m not proud of.
What bothers me most in my work or my personal life is when someone micromanages my movements. In my book, micromanaging says the other person doesn’t trust me to be competent or able. It tells me that they believe they are somehow better at whatever and feel the impulse to make sure I do it their way. I receive it as a judgement of not only myself but of my skills. It becomes very personal. But it does more-- it limits what I can do and how I do it. I stop being inventive or thoughtful, and my own personal frustration increases. I begin not to want to do the job. It is no longer engaging for me and I cease giving it my all. My standards fall – to survival mode -- just getting the job done.
Micromanagers are highly emotional people. They can be wound up or easily stressed, they can lack confidence or live in fear that they are losing control. They can be easily threatened by others and can sometimes be volatile. They can rely on gossip in the organization and seek out misinformed comments from others and then feel they have the right to act. Even if they appear to hold no emotional history don’t be fooled – even the most controlled are working on their emotions and not on the well being of working relationships, the team or the organization.
So what to do about micromanaging?
There are some people who will never change. You can try to understand what their insecurities are – and my experience tells me they generally have a mountain of issues of their own. Issues I rarely want to figure out or even want to address with the person. I just want them to change the behaviour that most affects how I perform.
Here’s what I do. I ask them what they need. I tell them I need them to go away and not to call or to try to improve on what I’m doing, or undermine my authority.
Then we negotiate a middle point on what they will do and what I will do.
If the agreement is breached by either party then the issue is revisited simply and concisely: i.e. You did this. WE agreed not to…I understand your position but let’s not to do it again while this project is being developed. I have learned that with micromanagers you must essentially negotiate everything.
I know it sounds exhausting and it can be, but expecting them to back off for good is expecting too much.
~ Dr. Helen Ramirez
Thoughts on consulting
I remember learning to drive a standard with my eldest brother when I was only sixteen. It was a scarring experience. He was impatient and I, of course, fell into the trap of bungling the entire exercise because I felt at risk of appearing incompetent. To this day, it’s best I don’t drive with him in the passenger seat.
I have felt reduced to that same sixteen year old experience recently not only with my kid who is more technically savvy than me but with my partner who happens to be the smartest technical guy around.
As a teacher and coach, it’s humbling to be in a learning position again. It has allowed me to revisit what learning constitutes, blocks to learning that are quite frankly physical, or connected to brain activity but clearly very emotional. Why do we forget that learning is more than “talking” to someone about a new technology, an idea or a system? The assumption is that if the “student” pays attention he or she should learn. As a teacher, I forget that how I teach might be impeding the learning process.
Technology is for me like math was when I was in high school. I struggled with math. My dad who seems to innately hold a mathematical mind could never understand my questions or why I found it so difficult. Our sessions together often ended in outbursts of frustration.
Learning what technology is about and what it might do for me is a bit like the old days of learning math. I need it but don’t understand what really makes it tick and how it use to my advantage. The difference is that I do want to learn and I want to be able to use it to so that I can expand my world and what I can do in it. I want technology to address my imagination and not have me be controlled by it.
In the last few weeks with a new chic mac my learning deficit has become glaringly clear particularly as I find myself wondering how I might use the technology more. My overly zealous partner is already at the finish line -- his imagination is enhanced by technology not limited by it.
I’m jealous and being a bit competitive now I too want to see how technology can serve my objectives by allowing my creative juices to flow through the porthole of technology. But first I have had to address how I learn so that I can be open to the complexity of the technology. The way I see a screen on a computer is different from others. I have to focus intently to see what others see so easily. I need to both see and do but to trust that doing both may take several tries. I need to be in a completely free of judgement environment.
What will prevent me from learning is myself. I will feel defensive if the technology appears to be out of my depth or too easy for others and so obviously difficult for me. I need time to register what I’m learning so that I can remember it.
If I’m an instructor or a coach to others, learning must be about empathetic teaching. It means moving out of my own space of just telling and evaluating to determine how I can make the learning the experience of the other valuable.
I have worked with many organizations where individuals have been dismissed because as the organizations contend, “they have done everything within their power” to provide the needed resources. Well undoubtedly this is true sometimes,but I am now wondering how flawed our teaching might be. How conscious are we of the person we’re working with and their personal inhibitions to learning. How equipped are we in terms of our own capacity to adjust our training techniques to their learning?
Are we losing people or keeping our expectations low because we have failed to find a consistent approach to teaching that invites the learner to participate in a way in which they can be fully engaged and excited about the possibilities. How do we identify the more elusive emotional or political barriers to learning. By political I mean the reasons the training has become necessary.
Are people being introduced to technology that perhaps they are resentful of but being forced to use?
Are people being forced into a coaching relationship because they have just received a poor performance review and they’ve gotten the message that unless they change they’re out? Are people so inundated with pressures that they can’t find the solitude to think through what they need to learn?
I find it interesting teaching first year university students. There is a huge divide in terms of us and them. I know that the more I can lessen the divide between us and them without ever breaching the boundaries of professionalism, the more able I am to enhance the learning outcomes.
When I can ask and listen more attentively to my students and my clients I am more able to reflect on how I need to change my approach and the content of my speech to meet their needs.
The cues are multi layered. I watch, I ask, I inquire about the experiences of others, I ask what they might need and I challenge as well. Perhaps the hardest part for me is working at the pace of the learner and not my pace. Where I want they to be is not always where they are ready to be.
Can the organization wait? I don’t know it depends on how what the goals are. But all training sessions must begin with very simple questions because of time, energy and money that must be invested. Is the organization truly committed to the importance of the training and the particular training of this individual? Will the training be valuable beyond the present and well into the future?
What about those people who have no barriers to learning except their own absolute interest in consuming all and everything they can think of? They aren’t stunted by feelings that if they don’t do it perfectly they shouldn’t do it. My partner’s step father is such an individual. I think of him as a pioneer.
A man who can use a computer, write ballads, build bathrooms, farm, make sausage, hunt, fish, survive in the outdoors, cook and knit a mean sweater. Here’s a guy who is fully confident in himself and not contained by rigid notions of what a man should be. He doesn’t appear to be intimidated by the the judgements of others. His thirst for knowing far outdistances any nervousness he might feel It’s his own quest to learn that propels him.
When we are open to learning everything changes. An organization grows with new ideas, people change, they grow in confidence and knowledge and expertise and skill. These skills don’t remain isolated in the workplace they become who we are and therefore infect all aspects of our life.
Our job until we can openly embrace a learning culture is to learn how to make learning an open and accessible experience for everyone.
~ Dr. Helen Ramirez
I have felt reduced to that same sixteen year old experience recently not only with my kid who is more technically savvy than me but with my partner who happens to be the smartest technical guy around.
As a teacher and coach, it’s humbling to be in a learning position again. It has allowed me to revisit what learning constitutes, blocks to learning that are quite frankly physical, or connected to brain activity but clearly very emotional. Why do we forget that learning is more than “talking” to someone about a new technology, an idea or a system? The assumption is that if the “student” pays attention he or she should learn. As a teacher, I forget that how I teach might be impeding the learning process.
Technology is for me like math was when I was in high school. I struggled with math. My dad who seems to innately hold a mathematical mind could never understand my questions or why I found it so difficult. Our sessions together often ended in outbursts of frustration.
Learning what technology is about and what it might do for me is a bit like the old days of learning math. I need it but don’t understand what really makes it tick and how it use to my advantage. The difference is that I do want to learn and I want to be able to use it to so that I can expand my world and what I can do in it. I want technology to address my imagination and not have me be controlled by it.
In the last few weeks with a new chic mac my learning deficit has become glaringly clear particularly as I find myself wondering how I might use the technology more. My overly zealous partner is already at the finish line -- his imagination is enhanced by technology not limited by it.
I’m jealous and being a bit competitive now I too want to see how technology can serve my objectives by allowing my creative juices to flow through the porthole of technology. But first I have had to address how I learn so that I can be open to the complexity of the technology. The way I see a screen on a computer is different from others. I have to focus intently to see what others see so easily. I need to both see and do but to trust that doing both may take several tries. I need to be in a completely free of judgement environment.
What will prevent me from learning is myself. I will feel defensive if the technology appears to be out of my depth or too easy for others and so obviously difficult for me. I need time to register what I’m learning so that I can remember it.
If I’m an instructor or a coach to others, learning must be about empathetic teaching. It means moving out of my own space of just telling and evaluating to determine how I can make the learning the experience of the other valuable.
I have worked with many organizations where individuals have been dismissed because as the organizations contend, “they have done everything within their power” to provide the needed resources. Well undoubtedly this is true sometimes,but I am now wondering how flawed our teaching might be. How conscious are we of the person we’re working with and their personal inhibitions to learning. How equipped are we in terms of our own capacity to adjust our training techniques to their learning?
Are we losing people or keeping our expectations low because we have failed to find a consistent approach to teaching that invites the learner to participate in a way in which they can be fully engaged and excited about the possibilities. How do we identify the more elusive emotional or political barriers to learning. By political I mean the reasons the training has become necessary.
Are people being introduced to technology that perhaps they are resentful of but being forced to use?
Are people being forced into a coaching relationship because they have just received a poor performance review and they’ve gotten the message that unless they change they’re out? Are people so inundated with pressures that they can’t find the solitude to think through what they need to learn?
I find it interesting teaching first year university students. There is a huge divide in terms of us and them. I know that the more I can lessen the divide between us and them without ever breaching the boundaries of professionalism, the more able I am to enhance the learning outcomes.
When I can ask and listen more attentively to my students and my clients I am more able to reflect on how I need to change my approach and the content of my speech to meet their needs.
The cues are multi layered. I watch, I ask, I inquire about the experiences of others, I ask what they might need and I challenge as well. Perhaps the hardest part for me is working at the pace of the learner and not my pace. Where I want they to be is not always where they are ready to be.
Can the organization wait? I don’t know it depends on how what the goals are. But all training sessions must begin with very simple questions because of time, energy and money that must be invested. Is the organization truly committed to the importance of the training and the particular training of this individual? Will the training be valuable beyond the present and well into the future?
What about those people who have no barriers to learning except their own absolute interest in consuming all and everything they can think of? They aren’t stunted by feelings that if they don’t do it perfectly they shouldn’t do it. My partner’s step father is such an individual. I think of him as a pioneer.
A man who can use a computer, write ballads, build bathrooms, farm, make sausage, hunt, fish, survive in the outdoors, cook and knit a mean sweater. Here’s a guy who is fully confident in himself and not contained by rigid notions of what a man should be. He doesn’t appear to be intimidated by the the judgements of others. His thirst for knowing far outdistances any nervousness he might feel It’s his own quest to learn that propels him.
When we are open to learning everything changes. An organization grows with new ideas, people change, they grow in confidence and knowledge and expertise and skill. These skills don’t remain isolated in the workplace they become who we are and therefore infect all aspects of our life.
Our job until we can openly embrace a learning culture is to learn how to make learning an open and accessible experience for everyone.
~ Dr. Helen Ramirez
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