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Making Learning Environment a Key to Success

What Is Learning Climate?

Learning climate is the psychological “feel” about learning in the organization. A fundamental principle of adult learning is that adults must feel psychologically safe to learn. Learning can be risky, since mistakes can be made during the learning process. Older adults are less willing to lose face than younger workers. They are thus generally more emotionally invested in how they perform in learning situations and in how others perceive them when they make mistakes. For this reason, learning climate is critical to the success of adult learning in workplace settings (Van Horn, Krepcio, and Heidkamp 2015).

Learning climate has to do with answers to questions such as whether individual workers feel that they are encouraged or discouraged from:

• Developing themselves professionally

• Learning in real time to solve work-related problems

• Declaring their career goals and pursuing them, even when they are not aligned with their supervisors’ expectations

• Using work time and organizational resources to enhance their knowledge, skills, and attitudes to achieve higher performance and productivity

Rothwell (2000) conducted research on learning climate, interviewing more than 100 people from different industries and nine different levels of the chain of command. He identified numerous factors that can be measured regarding learning climate. (See Figure 7-1.)

Learning culture, on the other hand, refers to the taken-for-granted assumptions about learning. Noted culture authority Edgar Schein, now a retired MIT professor, defined corporate culture as the sum of acquired experience of an organization or group of people. It is the acquired wisdom that results from successful or unsuccessful work experience. From experience, people learn what they should do, how they should do it, and what to expect from what they do. Assumptions based on that experience form the culture. Learning culture is thus formed by assumptions based on what approaches to learning work best or not so well.

Figure 7-1. Conditions That Encourage Workplace Learning

How Does Learning Climate Affect Individual Learning?

People will generally do what they believe they will be rewarded for and avoid doing what they believe they will be punished (or simply not rewarded) for doing. The same principle applies to learning climate. If people feel that work-related learning is not encouraged, they will be less likely to engage in it. It seems reasonable to expect that executives, managers, and supervisors should set out to build and sustain a learning climate that supports learning to solve practical work-related problems or seize work-related competitive opportunities. By doing so, leaders are encouraging efforts that will help to achieve organizational strategic goals and competitive advantage.

Unfortunately, there is sometimes a difference of opinion among workers and managers about just how supportive the learning climate is. One way to find out is to ask workers and managers separately and then compare what they said. Talent developers can talk to them individually or in focus groups and ask questions such as:

• How much do you feel that this organization encourages people to learn to solve work-related problems?

• How much do you feel that people are given sufficient time, money, and resources to learn to solve work-related problems?

• What learning experiences are most effective in achieving higher productivity in this organization, and how supportive are managers of providing the necessary time, money, and resources for workers to participate in these learning experiences?

What Are Learning Competencies?

A learning competency is any characteristic that leads to successful or superior learning. Individuals can build their competencies in doing their jobs, and they can also build their competencies in learning how to learn. Learning competence centers on how well people learn. Some call it learning agility (see Flaum and Winkler 2015; Mitchinson and Morris 2014). Organizations should focus on building their workers’ learning competencies so that they can more effectively keep pace with the dynamic, and arguably increasing, rate of change.

Exploratory research conducted by William J. Rothwell indicated possible learning competencies (Figure 7-2). The research study was based on five industry categories and nine levels of the chain of command. Individuals from each level and each industry category were interviewed, and then the results were coded. While the study results have not been validated with a very large group, they do provide an initial starting point for considering learner competencies.

Figure 7-2. Workplace Learning Competencies

How Do Learning Competencies Relate to Job Competencies?

Job competencies consist of the knowledge, skills, attitudes, and other characteristics that lead to successful or superior job performance. While job descriptions focus on describing the work, job competencies focus on describing the people who do the work or who are among the most productive people who do the work.

Learning competencies are not the same as job competencies. They focus on how people learn how to learn and how individuals can improve their learning skills to tackle work-related challenges. Learning competencies are thus focused on metacognition or the process of learning, while job competencies are focused on the behaviors linked to results or work outputs.

How Do Learning Competencies Affect Individual Learning?

Learning competencies are essential to learning how to learn and improving how one learns how to learn. Yet schools and training departments continue to focus on teaching people subjects (the what) rather than equipping individuals with the learning competence they will need to keep their knowledge, skills, and attitudes current as conditions change over a working lifetime that may encompass several half-lives of all human knowledge (the how). Workers of the future will have to be effective in taking initiative to keep their own knowledge, skills, and attitudes current, and that will require them to demonstrate learning competencies or learning agility.

Many organizations have focused attention on the competencies associated with effective training and how effective talent developers achieve results. However, fewer organizations have focused on learning competencies or learning agility. While talent developers are certified in the United States through ATD and other groups, nobody certifies learners. And yet, which is the larger and more important group?

How Is the Talent Developer’s Role Influenced by Learning Climate and Learning Competencies?

The talent developer’s role is clearly influenced by learning climate and learning competencies. What the talent developer does—and should do—is influenced by the background or backdrop in which the training occurs (the learning climate) and how well people have learned how to learn (learning competencies). While no clear guidelines exist on how to use learning climate, learning styles, and learning competencies together to increase the impact of training, it is worth reflecting on how to do so.

Talent developers should therefore ask themselves such questions as these (among others):

• How can the learning climate be made most supportive for a learning effort?

• How much learning competence have the learners demonstrated?

• How could learning competence be developed or improved?

What Is a Learning Organization?

The learning organization is not the same thing as the learning climate. The term learning organization was first used in the 1980s to refer to organizations that tried to experiment with new ways of functioning in the fiercely competitive, dynamic environment that has characterized the global business environment since that time. It has to do with establishing a culture in which learning is valued.

What Is Organizational Learning?

Organizational learning should not be confused with learning climate or learning organization. Organizations cannot learn, of course, in the same way that individuals can. (In fact, thinking that is possible is to be guilty of the fallacy of anthropomorphism—giving an inanimate object or entity the characteristics of human beings.) However, organizations can engage in new experiences and store, in institutional memory, the fruits of those experiences in the memories of individual members and in rituals and artifacts. Changing organizational culture means encouraging organizational learning, since culture is a byproduct of experience. A ritual is a set of actions with some kind of symbolic meaning. An example of an organizational ritual might be the rite of passage that newcomers must go through. This might include hazing by experienced organizational members. An artifact is an object that has meaning. Examples of organizational artifacts may include job descriptions, policies, procedure manuals, and documented work processes, since they embody institutional memory. Culture is embodied in rituals, artifacts, and in the collective institutional memory of workers.

Organizational learning has become a focus of great interest in recent years, just as the learning organization has. A key goal is to leverage organizational learning to achieve improved organizational performance. Numerous authors have written about organizational learning, including Argyris and Schön (1978), Cyert and March (1963), Dodgson (1991), Fiol and Lyles (1985), Levinthal and March (1993), Levitt and March (1988), March and Olsen (1975), Senge (1990), and Smerek (2017).

What, then, is the difference between the learning organization and organizational learning? Organizational learning tends to focus on the process by which individuals and groups acquire and interpret information. The learning organization is about the culture established to encourage or discourage learning.

What Is Small-Group Learning?

Small-group learning has generally been treated separately from learning climate, learning organizations, and organizational learning. Small-group learning focuses on individuals learning in small groups. This can occur in classroom-based training through experiential learning activities such as case study analysis, role plays, games, simulations, brainstorming activities, and any other break-out session in which a small group of learners collectively works together to achieve a learning goal. It can also occur in electronically mediated training, such as online instruction or blended learning, in which learners participate in small groups online to achieve a goal. For instance, learners may meet in a chat room to work on an activity. Small-group learning can also occur in action learning sets in which individuals are matched up to achieve both a work goal and a learning goal. Learners are intended to benefit from each other as they carry out a work-related activity, such as solving a real-world problem (such as reducing customer complaints, increasing customer satisfaction, or identifying and eliminating work process bottlenecks). Finally, small group learning can occur in real time on the job as members of a work group huddle to solve a problem or establish a goal.

Small groups cannot learn any more than organizations can. Groups are not individuals—only individuals can learn. But small groups can influence learning climate. Consider this: How much are co-workers and supervisors supportive or unsupportive of individual and group problem-solving efforts by which people can learn? Small groups can also undertake their own learning activities. For instance, a work team may attack a work problem, and the process of solving the problem leads to learning, as well as achieving a work result. Individuals, and the group, are developed in the process. The small group can also embody institutional memory (How did we solve these problems in the past? On what basis were previous decisions made?) and can influence individuals based on the unique aspects of a microculture. A microculture is the unique culture of a small group within an organization. For instance, the HR department has a microculture that can be distinctly different from that of the accounting department, since members have been socialized in different ways and have different occupational backgrounds.

Small group learning also includes communities of practice. These are understood to be special, informal networks of individuals who share interest in a common problem, issue, vision, or goal (Weber 2019; Wenger 1998). They may also share a common passion, enthusiasm, sense of purpose, or set of goals, and may even pursue a common line of investigation to seek results. It is a means by which a group can pursue a learning project, comparable to what Tough discussed in his seminal work (1971). Communities of practice may exist on or off the job and may focus on work-related or personal issues. Communities of practice are quite flexible. They may meet online, in person, or in a combination of the two. Adults who pursue learning efforts to meet their own social needs will find communities of practice an effective venue by which to meet their learning needs and social needs at the same time.

Relating Learning Climate, Learning Organization, Organizational Learning, and Small-Group Learning to Adult Learning Practice

Adult learners, as individuals, do not learn in a vacuum; rather, they learn within a larger context. That context greatly influences how willing people are to learn and how willing they are to apply what they learn back in workplace settings. Transfer of learning is influenced by multiple contexts, including the external environment, the national culture, the organizational culture, the community, the department, the supervisor, and the work group. It is also influenced by individual issues, such as expectations of rewards for learning, career goals and aspirations, and individual life cycle stage. The previous chapter emphasized the importance of the national culture as one context. But the organizational culture also influences how people learn. See Figure 7-3 for a depiction of the contexts that may influence individual learning.

Figure 7-3. The Contexts in Which Adult Learning Occurs

Learning climate frames how people feel about the relative support for their learning in the organization. When that climate is less than supportive of learning, individuals will not engage in it unless they are forced to do so to achieve work results. If they do pursue learning in an unsupportive environment, they may pay for it themselves, conceal it from their supervisor or employer, and even use sick and vacation time to engage in it. It is thus important for organizational leaders to assess the climate for learning periodically and take steps, when necessary, to improve it. This is especially true if organizational leaders claim that “people are our greatest asset” and emphasize the importance of talent in achieving organizational results.

The potential of talent is only realized when a supportive learning climate encourages people to exercise their talents and realize their potential.

Organizational leaders should pursue the promise of the learning organization. After all, the learning organization is an ideal that can be pursued but may never be fully achieved. They should take steps to pinpoint what business goals or measurable objectives are to be achieved from an effort to build a learning organization, clarify which characteristics are most desirable to be achieved (such as self-mastery, mental models, shared vision, team learning, systems thinking, or others), establish an action plan to implement efforts to cultivate those characteristics in a systematic way, continuously pursue the effort over time, and measure results along the way. By working on realizing the promise of a learning organization, organizational leaders should also be building a learning climate that supports individual learning.

Additionally, organizational leaders should focus attention on organizational learning with the goal in mind of improving organizational performance and productivity. They should identify what rituals, artifacts, and corporate cultural conditions embody organizational learning and work to intensify the identification and transfer of organizational knowledge, skills, and attitudes.

Small group learning is an important means to the end of establishing a supportive learning climate. Most adults have the closest connection to their employer in their family groups—that is, their immediate co-workers and supervisor. Consequently, efforts to build learning climate should be geared toward establishing and maintaining a supportive learning climate in family groups as well as in the organization generally.

The learning organization is an important goal for organizational leaders and others in organizations to pursue. By doing so, they will encourage a culture that supports learning. They will also encourage individuals to try new things that may enhance competitive advantage and that they may learn from.

Organizational learning is about enhancing how people carry out the process of learning in groups and then store and pass on that wisdom through rituals, artifacts, and corporate culture. Improving organizational learning will enhance the ability of individuals to learn from their own experience as well as from others’ experiences.

How Learning Climate Influences Adult Learning

How people feel about the learning climate has a major influence on how motivated they are to learn and how willing they are to apply what they learn.

Learning climate consists of more than one place. It includes:

• The training setting (such as the classroom setting in which the training is delivered or the online site in which the individual accesses instruction)

• The work setting (such as the work setting in which the individual functions, including their immediate supervisor and co-workers)

• The individual (such as the family, spouse, children, and others significant in the individual’s life)

If any one of these learning climates is not supportive of individual learning, adults will generally not feel comfortable enough to engage fully in the learning process. The result will be lower-than-expected transfer of training.

How Is Learning Climate Improved?

Action should be taken to improve the learning climate at all three levels—in the training setting, in the work setting, and in the personal setting.

Improving Learning Climate in the Training Setting

Instructors and facilitators should encourage a positive learning climate as quickly as possible, whether in a classroom setting or in an electronically mediated setting. They can do this by encouraging introductions so that people know each other, emphasizing that every question is worthwhile and there is no such thing as a “stupid question,” and explaining that all people are expected to participate. Be sure to explain why the training topic is important to the organization and to the participants. Ask learners what they hope to learn and what expectations they may have of the setting—and of each other. If time permits, ask learners to set ground rules for how they will interact and how they will deal with mistakes or misstatements to preserve the dignity of everyone.

Improving Learning Climate in the Work Setting

The learning climate of the work setting is influenced at every stage of the worker’s lifecycle. Workers gain early ideas about it from questions and comments made during the selection process; they learn about it in the stories they hear and the gossip that is told by co-workers; and they gain experience with it based on comments casually dropped, and formally presented, by their supervisors. Organizational policies and procedures—such as how requests for time to pursue professional development are answered—give individuals a sense of the learning climate.

The supervisor plays a key role in establishing and maintaining a supportive learning climate. If the organization’s leaders seek to change learning climate, they must start by focusing attention on supervisors. If organizational leaders truly value learning and professional development, they will establish formal goals—such as key performance indicators—to be achieved by supervisors and their workers at every level of the organization’s hierarchy. By doing this, they will establish an accountability system and will also embed consequences for action and nonaction in the system. This will give the organization a new experience, thereby potentially changing corporate culture to be more supportive of learning.

Improving Learning Climate in the Personal Setting

How much do individuals value learning and professional development? How supportive are individuals’ family members, friends, or significant others of their efforts to learn and develop? While organizational leaders may not be able to change unsupportive family members or friends directly, they can create incentives that will provide powerful reasons to pursue learning and development. Organizational leaders can also show they care about family opinion by asking about it.

Getting It Done

In chapter 7, you learned how to define learning climate, learning organization, organizational learning, and small-group learning. You also considered what the relationship is among adult learning and learning climate, the learning organization, organizational learning, and small-group learning as well as how learning climate influences adult learning and how learning climate can be improved.

1.   How could you assess the learning climate of your organization? Brainstorm some ideas.

2.   How could you improve the learning climate of your organization?

3.   If you asked employees about what the organization does to discourage their real-time, on-the-job learning, what might they list as possible obstacles to learning?