L&D In Action: Winning Strategies from Learning Leaders - Reflection Culture: Building An Appreciation for Learning by Encouraging Reflective Practice

Episode Date: April 23, 2024

Happy One-year Anniversary, L&D In Action! That's right: We've been delivering L&D insights from the greatest minds in learning for 365 days now--366 thanks to the leap year. In this special-edition episode, host Tyler takes the reins and delivers a brief reflection on the power of... reflection! It's a topic that many guests have covered, the impact of reflection on the learning process. Science supports it, and we've all seen it in action, even if we have to look as far back as our school years. So, use the time saved from listening to this concise episode to reflect on yourself and your own experiences. Thanks for listening and supporting the show!

You're listening to L&D in Action, winning strategies from learning leaders. This podcast, presented by Get Abstract, brings together the brightest minds in learning and development to discuss the best strategies for fostering employee engagement, maximizing potential and building a culture of learning in your organization. Dear listener, we did it. L&D in Action is now one year old. Happy anniversary to us and to all of you who have been with the show since this time last year. With nearly 50 interviews under my belt, I've decided to give a brief personal reflection, that's

some foreshadowing, on what I believe to be one of the greatest meta issues underlying the many challenges faced by the learning and development arena Again, thanks so much for listening Thank you for your dedication to organizational development and the growth of your people and of course Thank you for your commitment to learning now let's dive in I recently attended a small gathering of learning and development leaders where we spent an evening in open conversation about the potential for and power of self-directed learning. All organizations of course have their mandatory trainings for things like technology usage

and compliance. In that realm, formal learning has its own set of issues. In this case, we wanted to focus on learning that is learner-driven in terms of content, timing, goals, outcomes, etc. The first question asked by the host of this chat was the following. In one word, how would you describe the outlook of learning and development this year? I heard a few focus on specific L&D goals. Proof, for instance, as in stakeholders are demanding more proof than ever that learning

is in fact valuable. Another said return, echoing this idea and adding the importance of measurable financial growth. Several folks used words that described insecurity. One said confused, one said scattered, and both were referring to the confluence of challenges, including more difficult markets, increasingly skeptical stakeholders, an influx of over-promising, under-delivering technology, and, of course, the more immediately impactful restrictions on budgets and resources.

I said hopeful, as a sort of cop-out to acknowledge these these difficulties while trying to keep the direction of the conversation positive. Overall, it was abundantly clear that no one in the room felt overwhelmingly good about L&D's prospects, even those from the larger organizations with deeply entrenched teams and best practices. Hey, I guess there's no better reason to be in a room together to have this conversation, right? practices. Hey, I guess there's no better reason to be in a room together to have this conversation, right? One of the first poignant statements as the conversation took off came from prior guest of the show Dr. Rachel Fichter, who pointed out that everyone is learning every single day. At this point, at least one participant gave a sort of soft objection, saying that

while it's possible for everyone to learn daily, of course, she had seen plenty of people apparently regress as their time in a role or at a company wore on. I don't think anyone objected to that sentiment, and I think we've all seen that person in our workplace. It was a brief moment of debate before we began to investigate the question, are we always learning?

I agree with Rachel and with Christopher Lind and perhaps other past guests of this show, among other thought leaders, that yes, every day we work brings new insights. Even if they are micro, teeny tiny observations about our own processes and patterns, we do learn daily. The simplest of droll, repetitive days even, as human beings living lives, 8 hours at work or 16 hours in a waking day, there are always moments from which we can draw valuable insights that contribute to our growth. As long as we reflect. That's the crux here folks. Reflection. It's important and it makes a massive, massive difference. I don't think I need to give you scientific evidence

to support this since it seems there's pretty strong consensus around the power of reflection, but I'll do it anyway. I'll keep it simple and authoritative. One study, which was actually composed of 10 different studies of learning in the workplace from Harvard Business School, I'll link the study in the show notes and keep it brief. Across many different learning contexts in various industries, reflection on

experience was observed to be as effective or more powerful at solidifying and strengthening skills than repeated practice or studying. I'm sure this is intuitive for most of you listening, and in the framework of traditional education, it's already something we practice. Though most of us may have done it reluctantly, homework, paper writing, and tests got us to reflect, to some extent in school, on the material that we were learning. Assessment and learning review in the corporate world, while prominent in many verticals and functions, is by no means as ubiquitous, and for good reason, because that reluctance and disdain caused by the pressure of

learning is sure to come surging back. We often call our people learners, which ironically can be a source of ire. After all, they are employees, well they're programmers, salespeople, marketers, writers, managers, et cetera, who learned all their lives to get to this point where action informed by that education gets them paid. Thus breeds the dilemma of developing a learning culture. I've spoken about it with almost every single one of my guests on the show,

because it is L&D's manifestation of the end game. It's the holy grail, learning culture. Get your people to enjoy learning, to seek it out, to value it as beneficial to their own well-being and to that of the company, and to provide such resources and systems that not only do your people feel as if they have a means to solve problems as independent agents, but they also are capable of innovating and producing ideas and things that push your organization headlong into an increasingly complex and unsure future.

I guess that run on was my layman's definition of a learning culture. I think my guests would probably add that learning cultures prioritize sharing, teaching, collaborating, and anything else that seeks to develop relationships with knowledge at the core. And that's a hard thing to do because all those things that my counterparts at the conversation described that I already mentioned, stakeholder skepticism, decreased resources,

AI and the tech revolution, et cetera, et cetera. At the risk of overextending my knowledge and experience, I'm going to do the thought leader thing here and propose a reframing of the central issue we all face. Rather than working toward a learning culture, what if we prioritized a reflection culture? Boom. Hell yeah, that's the title of this episode. We did it guys. Reflection culture doesn't have to replace learning culture. Perhaps it's a progenitor or a prerequisite, but I do see it as absolutely critical. To convince our folks that learning is deeply important,

we have to remind them that learning is for them. Don't get me wrong, corporate learning is corporate learning and the benefits and origin are of and for the organization, of course. But with enough resources and time, anyone can craft a wonderful learning journey that is fulfilling both personally and professionally. Resources and time,

would that we had them without conflict, this would all just be so easy, of course. So let's start with our built-in resources, which everyone has, the brain, and what time the average person has, little to perhaps none. With that as our arsenal, I would like to offer an action item, dear learning professional. It doesn't take much to reflect, and it shouldn't take too much to teach your people the power

of reflection and some simple ways to do it effectively, to optimize the functioning of that main resource we all possess, our brains. The Harvard study I mentioned defines reflection as the following. The intentional attempt to synthesize, abstract, and articulate the key lessons taught by experience. Okay, I wouldn't hit your learners with this definition right off the bat, lest we make them hate learning even more. But the next time you design and deploy a course, module, or training, ask the recipients maybe to journal about what they learned. Just recap the key points or predict

how they might apply the learning in the future. Even put everyone in pairs to have short discussions. More than anything else, don't let them consume the material and then just discard it and return to business as usual. Now far be it from me to tell you how to do your job, I'm sure that you have used systems or tools dedicated to reflecting on learning in some capacity. You've almost definitely done this before. You can undoubtedly create a proper system to encourage synthesizing, abstracting, and articulating. I'm sure ofulating. But let's push this. Set up an internal communication campaign about reflection, specifically, or push stakeholders

to create dedicated time for it. Tell people to reflect on their most boring of days. What went well, what they could have done differently, what they enjoyed, how their conversations went. Let's all reflect more. I don't need to tell you how caught up in the hustle and bustle everyone is. No one has time to breathe because business these days is conducted with such severe urgency. We've truly lost our ability to look backward because we've become so addicted to

the future. But if we all just follow any one of those platitudes about slowing down. Stop and smell the roses. Slow and steady wins the race. As my dad used to say as my sports coach, just take a dang deep breath. Designate a little bit of time regularly to observe and synthesize. There's ROI in this practice. I truly believe this. The first step to getting people to love learning is getting them to appreciate reflection. Reflect on progress and on processes, on what was pleasant, on what was painful. Reflect on how you were and how you are and why that change took place.

Record your observations to make these reflections clearer and cleaner as pieces of data so you can better reflect in the future. Very few things are as satisfying and motivating as demonstrable growth. Reflection can help people see progress in themselves and therefore be a self-sustaining vehicle for growth. Strive to be an advocate for reflection and you'll soon be an unstoppable catalyst for learning. I promise you Thanks so much for listening and happy one year L&D in action. We'll catch you on the next episode Cheers, you've been listening to L&D in action a show from get abstract Subscribe to the show and your favorite podcast player to make sure you never miss an episode And don't forget to give us a rating, leave a comment, and share the episodes you love.

Help us keep delivering the conversations that turn learning into action. Until next time.