Epic Think Tank
Leading Change and e-learning
Part 2: How can e-learning be used to develop these skills?
Having split over the top-down/bottom-up question when it came
to leadership, our delegates were virtually unanimous in backing
the bottom-up option when it came to learning:
'I don't believe leadership can be taught, period. You can't
put the fire in their belly if they don't have it there already.
Throwing a box of matches at them won't work.'
Scorn was poured on organisation-wide programmes that make learning
around leadership mandatory. This was seen as 'imposing behaviours
on the organisation'. Any true leader, it was suggested, would be
bound to ask, 'what's in it for me?'.
The question of motivation came up, as it has time after
time in Epic Think Tanks. Many of our discussions have highlighted
the central role of motivation in making learning work. Where learning
cannot be imposed, the obvious alternative is that it has to be
marketed. Learning has to be aligned with the interests of the individual,
and made attractive. This is particularly so in the case of managing
(or rather leading) knowledge workers, where a 'hands off the steering
wheel' approach was felt to be the most effective. So where lies
the secret of making learning attractive to self-motivated leaders?
Hobby power
'If we could tap the energy people put into their hobbies…' said
one of our delegates, opening a topic that provided considerable
food for thought. After all, hobbies involve mastering skills and
very often acquiring a body of information, and can be the subject
of intense, even lifelong interest.
The root of the motivation problem, for one delegate, lay with
the troublesome fact that work is compulsory, whereas hobbies are
not. You can walk away from a hobby if it gets boring or repetitive,
but you can't walk away from a sticky situation at work.
With the focus of networked technologies being to push things closer
and closer to the user, which naturally tends to blur the distinctions
between work, leisure and learning, we could envisage a new model
of learning, aided by technology, which would bring the individual's
interests and their work into line in productive ways.
Add into the mix the collaboration factor (hobbies almost invariably
involve joining a community of interest) and you have something
that looks very much like a community of practice.
Following this logic, two things begin to look like very good ideas:
- Communities of practice based around leadership, sponsored or
enabled (but definitely not imposed) by the organisation
- A communities-based approach to change programmes
Next>>
Introduction
Background
Part 1 When do managers become
leaders?
Part 3 Role of e-learning in a
change programme?
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