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
