CHAPTER 7
Applying Social Connections
In the popular Harry Potter book series, Harry and his friends had to learn a defensive spell to ward off evil or harmful spirits. The Patronus spell required a wizard to conjure their most fond and positive memory, which was powerful enough to fight off the dark force. For most people, that spell would involve fond and positive memories of other people. Because we are inherently social beings, connecting to and through others is not only the best way to enhance our learning, but also the most natural way.
Social connections refer to the interpersonal support structure (physical, emotional, and psychological) that enables learning to be most effective. Our brains are wired to make social connections, and our memory is significantly enhanced by the presence of emotion. Understanding how to embed connections with others as part of learning is an essential ingredient for not only recall but also on-the-job application with colleagues.
How to Leverage CLICS
This chapter will explore how social connections help promote learning. This fifth domain of CLICS considers the opportunities in our interactions with other people to reinforce individual learning, as well as the chances for reinforcement of learning from the environment (Figure 7-1).
Figure 7-1. Social Connections Domain of CLICS
In our fast-moving digital world, it’s tempting to focus on speed, scale, and the efficiency of reaching global audiences when conducting a needs analysis. Business leaders are often under pressure to quickly respond to market demands and competitive pressures. There once was a time when business leaders insisted on in-person learning and had to be convinced that a digital learning solution could work. Now it seems that the paradigm has shifted 180 degrees; leaders have to be convinced of the value of in-person learning, as the trade-offs and costs of being away from work can be significant. As a result of the global pandemic, colleagues now understand they can collaborate virtually, but the question still remains: What is the strength of social connections in a virtual environment?
There are clear examples of when relationships are central to business success:
• Building organizational trust
• Collaborating across the organization
• Establishing new relationships
• Repairing old relationships
• Onboarding new hires
• Fostering leadership alignment
• Developing cultural understanding
• Transforming operating models and roles
• Integrating mergers or acquisitions
• Driving rapid revenue growth
• Improving incident response capabilities
• Managing intense negotiations
No doubt attention to social connections is needed in these cases, but we would advocate that all learning is enhanced with social connections, as it’s what our biology craves. Even if the content will be used independently, the use of reinforcement from others on the team can dramatically accelerate the application of new knowledge for their colleagues.
Scientist Spotlight: Jamil Zaki, PhD
Professor, Stanford University; Author; Consultant
In 2016, there were 226 students enrolled in a challenging European engineering program. At the end of their first year, they would take an even more challenging exam, which fewer than half would pass. Who made it through? To predict the answer, you might look to students’ GPAs, or their conscientiousness, and those factors matter. But so did their social lives. Researchers measured the network these students formed in their first year and found that social connections mattered enormously to academic success. Students who passed the exam made an average of 3.8 friends among their classmates; those who failed made just 2.6 friends. Why did this matter? Over the course of the year, friends became study buddies, and learning socially accelerated students’ success (Stadtfeld et al. 2019).
People need social connection like fish need water. Friendships buoy our happiness and mental health. But they are just as important to learning and intellectual development. Social networks are also knowledge networks, and sharing information allows people to process it more deeply, consider different perspectives, and ultimately master material. Our culture often celebrates the lone genius, but advancing learning and knowledge is more often a team effort.
How to Assess Social Connections in the Workplace
When assessing the role social connections might play, it’s helpful to imagine being the learner to determine the interpersonal interactions that would be beneficial. And broadly, there are two very important types of relationships a learner can have in organizations: mentors and peers.
Research Basis: Social Learning Theory
Rosa Parks once said, “Each person must live their life as a model for others.” Role models are powerful influences whom we imitate and from whom we learn. We learn vicariously by watching how role models are rewarded versus punished. The most famous experiment done on social learning is known as the Bobo Doll study. In this study, children watched models who were aggressive with a plastic blow-up Bobo Doll and were respectively punished for their behavior or permitted to do it. Children who observed role models who were punished for their aggression behaved less aggressively toward the Bobo Doll compared with those who observed role models who were not punished for their aggression. Research, and our own intuitive experience, confirms that watching and learning from others directly shapes our own behaviors.
Defining the Role of Mentors and Peers
Mentors are invaluable for a type of instruction called scaffolding. Scaffolding is a technique where a mentor systematically provides support or guidance to assist in the mastery of skills. Mentors first anticipate potential challenges that learners will face and then create opportunities to guide learners through that challenge.
One way to connect this concept of scaffolding is to think about how to layer (think back to the chapter on Layering). What does the learner already know and what is the best way to layer new content so the learner can acquire new information? When in the learning process would be an optimal time to introduce the role of a mentor or to share insights from those who can role model the desired behaviors?
Peers, along with mentors, can also play a big role in affecting learning in the organization. Research shows that the relationship with peers is highly important and should not be excluded from the learning process. Peers can serve as “social vaccines” to help inoculate against harmful stereotypes and threats. For example, the presence of woman-identifying peers helps prevent gender stereotyping related to STEM subject competency, as they encourage younger women to study and remain in these fields (Dasgupta 2011). Such research shows that those around you greatly matter and can cultivate learning or even inadvertently cause people to leave a field or an industry entirely.
Research Basis: Social Norms
We are all familiar with peer pressure and often think of it as something teens go through. However, research shows us that peer pressure is strongly felt during adulthood, especially inside organizations. The presence of others greatly impacts the way one thinks and behaves, especially if we want to be accepted by them.
Solomon Asch conducted a string of experiments in the 1950s to determine how people are affected by the thoughts and behaviors of those around them. In one classic study, a group of participants viewed a diagram of lines that varied in length (Figure 7-2). The task was to identify the line (a, b, or c) that most closely resembled the prototype (x).
Figure 7-2. Asch’s Conformity Study
Line segments used in Asch’s conformity study: Participants were asked to indicate which line segments (a, b, or c) most resembled the one on the left, line x (Asch 1951).
However, there was a trick in the experiment. Each group of participants had only one true, naive member, while the rest of the participants were planted by the researcher to manipulate the naive member. In this study, the confederates repeatedly and intentionally gave the wrong answer on each trial, pressuring the naive member to conform to the wrong answer.
Asch found that more than 75 percent of participants conformed to group pressure and provided the wrong answer. His study demonstrated the power of the group to influence an individual’s judgment.
Expertise typically resides in some predictable roles, so it’s important to inquire about both the readiness and the capacity of these roles to support workplace learning.
• Subject matter experts (SMEs): Individuals who have the greatest knowledge or skill in the organization. This could be someone in a formal role who oversees a process or a function, but it also could be a key influencer who has developed expertise in a given domain. These individuals serve as the primary source of information.
• On-the-job peers: Individuals who will work together and can reinforce and accelerate learning. There may be differences in experience levels that could be leveraged to help those with less experience develop faster. These individuals serve as an immediate source of support while actually conducting work.
• Managers or team leads: Individuals who set direction and provide guidance over time. Learning often requires a supportive environment where colleagues can experiment and potentially fail as they learn new skills or knowledge. These individuals serve as the main source of feedback, focusing on patterns of success, areas of improvement, and most importantly, progress.
In order to guide the instructional design process, the analysis of social connections should include an understanding of how to leverage the capabilities of SMEs, peers, and managers:
• Degree of expertise the learning solution is attempting to build
• Access to SMEs
• Willingness and ability of SMEs to coach and advise the learners
• Extent that groups will work together on the job
• How a synchronous learning experience would leverage social interactions
Fostering Social Connections
So much of formal education involves in-person learning, where social connections seem to flow rather easily. Inside organizational settings, however, there are different drivers of learning—timelines, budgets, regulatory compliance, market opportunities, health and safety issues; the list is quite long. With the rise of digital transformation and the mobility of the workforce, in-person learning increasingly has become a luxury.
Regardless, we know that interacting with others and experiencing those associated emotions amplifies attention, processing, and recall. Our challenge becomes understanding where the opportunities exist and how to leverage those for more effective learning.
Research Basis: Growth Mindset
Norms can encourage individuals to adopt a certain type of mindset geared to a culture in which it is safe to fail and struggle. Mindsets are lay theories people have about themselves and how the world works (Furnham 1988). For example, some people may believe intelligence is something innate and fixed, whereas others may believe that intelligence is something that can be developed and nurtured. Mindsets matter because they indicate deep, often unconscious assumptions that powerfully motivate people’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. In other words, mindsets shape the meaning that people give to learning events, which then motivates specific responses in alignment with the held mindset.
Mindset often impacts how people apply what they’ve learned in these three ways. It:
• Determines what information you pay attention to in a given scenario
• Determines how your brain handles mistakes—either by activating learning and planning centers or by activating negative emotional responses
• Influences how you interpret and attribute your successes and failures and how you record those events in your long-term memory
People with a fixed mindset focus more—often unconsciously—on proving that they have a lot of ability and are good at what they do. Their experiences are dictated by a cyclical internal assessment of constant judgment, then using information as evidence either for or against evaluations, like whether they’re successful or “good” at something. They see their performance as a test of their competence and self-worth (Dweck 2007).
On the other hand, those with a growth mindset believe that skills and abilities can be developed and that improving on your skills and abilities is the ultimate goal. With a growth mindset, the internal assessment is not one of judgment but one of constant scanning for opportunities to learn. These individuals are likely to adapt to change and find new ways to take constructive action.
Mindsets do all this, in large part, by changing the way your brain perceives any change that may affect you. A fixed mindset makes you more likely to view change as a threat, which leads to distress. You experience highly negative emotions and an inadequate or disorganized mobilization of physiological resources. Over time, this will lead you to feel less focused and less able to retain information. It may also make it increasingly difficult to learn new things or find adequate solutions to problems. Distress saps your energy and can undermine your mental and physical health in the long term.
Studies show that when you see change as a challenge, you experience eustress, the “good” stress. You experience an efficient and organized mobilization of physiological resources—your heart is more easily able to push blood through your circulatory system. Your ability to focus increases. You can think more deeply, encode new knowledge, and find new solutions.
Case in Point: Kelly Palmer
Chief Learning Officer, Degreed; Author, The Expertise Economy
Why are peer-to-peer networks so valuable?
KP: As my career has progressed, I’ve become increasingly committed to the power of peer networks. People value guidance and input from others with shared experiences, and they trust peers to provide the most relevant information. Peer content is typically focused, digestible, and tied directly to job performance. It’s also an incredibly responsive mechanism to rapidly share information in the flow of work.
Why should learning organizations foster social connections?
KP: Traditional models of instructional design simply aren’t fast enough to keep up with the volume and complexity of workplace demands. Content creator platforms should be an essential component of any learning technology architecture. In addition to peers sharing knowledge, organizations can develop skills in peer cohorts, guided but not controlled by experts. Today’s workforce expects to be hyper-connected to one another.
What role does technology play in social connections?
KP: My career has always been closely associated with the tech sector, so I believe in the potential of technology when it’s used wisely. Technology can close communication gaps, bring people together, foster relationships, and mitigate distance biases that lead to weaker decisions. It also can level the playing field, as it allows everyone to “see and be seen” in ways that promote fairness and inclusion.
How do social connections promote agility and innovation?
KP: There’s nothing like a crisis to make us reassess our choices. One outcome of the COVID pandemic was the acceleration of change. We were forced to become suddenly agile, and we learned how to do things in six days that previously might have taken six months. Leaders were on full display real time, and the need for progress versus perfection ruled the day. Organizations became scrappy and learned how to quickly come together, innovate, and solve problems. We should carry those lessons forward as we continue to reimagine how work gets done.
With in-person learning, social connections happen almost organically. Through small group work, one-to-one feedback, and open dialogue, new relationships emerge and learning is enhanced. In addition, learners frequently spend time together outside of class and often form relationships that last long after class has ended.
While in-person learning is still an option, social platforms that expand collaboration, accelerate innovation, and remove physical distance have added new capabilities (and challenges) to organizational learning.
In a digital world, your analysis of how to foster social connections should explore the potential use of:
• Learning cohorts
• Small-team assignments
• One-to-one commitment partners
• Peer mentors or buddy systems
• Manager coaching
• Ongoing communities of interest
• Leaders as sponsors
• Alumni groups
• Post-program chat forums
Social Connections: An Analysis Application Guide
Using the three example scenarios introduced in previous chapters, you will now walk through the analysis dealing with the domain of Social connections. You can also visit the book website to download an editable version of the tool and apply it to your own or any situation.
The focus of the Social connections domain is that to truly maximize the potential for sustained and effective change, learners require opportunities to practice and apply the learning, but also to do so in an environment surrounded by social norms that reinforce the message and purpose of the change.
This occurs through identifying factors that impact them by asking “How will connections enhance learning?” (learner-relevant) and “How could connections be reinforced?” (workplace-relevant). Use these questions to identify how the change requires interactions with others to practice application of the change, as well as how the organization values and supports the required change by creating an environment of growth mindset necessary to support and reinforce the change.
The Social connections domain row from the CLICS Tool is extracted for reference as we walk through the three practical scenarios that follow (Figure 7-3).
Figure 7-3. Social Connections Domain of CLICS Tool
Learner-Relevant Core Questions
To perform the analysis for the Social connections domain, we ask three core questions:
1. With whom will learners practice?
Helps to identify opportunities for practice and reinforcement of the solution’s behaviors with others.
2. From whom will learners receive feedback?
Helps to identify relevant sources of input regarding the learners’ progress.
3. How will learners be able to observe role models in action?
Helps to identify the right sources of support or correct guidance for learners to maximize their likelihood of learning the desired skills and behaviors.
Workplace-Relevant Core Questions
To consider what exists in the environment around prospective learners and how the learner-relevant considerations will impact the organization, we ask three core questions:
1. What tools will learners leverage to interact with one another?
Identifies the resources learners will use to connect and collaborate.
2. In what ways will leaders encourage collaboration to accelerate adoption?
Identifies the role leaders will play in fostering learning.
3. How will successes and failures be shared?
Identifies how the culture promotes psychological safety so individuals can share with, and learn from, one another.
Beyond these core questions, you may ask additional questions pertinent to your given situation, but the sets of core questions are designed to capture minimum amounts of detail necessary to inform the design of an impactful solution based on stakeholder requirements.
Scenario 1 (Situational)
Improve business results: Revenue generation. As a reminder, here is some high-level background for this scenario:
Scenario 1: Company Details
Organization Type: Global products and services company
Employees: 25,000 worldwide
Footprint: Offices in North America; South America; Asia; and Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (EMEA)
Stakeholders: • Chief revenue officer
• VP of sales
• Product marketing business unit lead
The Ask: Your organization’s sales figures are not meeting projections, so the three stakeholders ask you to design and deploy training on some revised approaches to selling (such as moving from transactional-based selling to relational-based selling) and some new sales software to better manage the process.
Speaking with your stakeholders, you can direct your questions using the CLICS Tool Core Questions in the table (or download the interactive PDF from the book website and add your own questions based on a real situation you currently face).
Stakeholder Responses on Social Connections
In the table, review the answers our stakeholders have provided.
Scenario 1: Learner-Relevant Considerations
| Domains and Science |  Learner-Relevant Considerations |
Social connections Science: • Social learning theory • Social norms • Growth mindset |
How Will Connections Enhance Learning? Core Questions
Aside from the classes we want to run at the annual sales meeting and refresher sessions at the quarterly town hall, we see the salespeople practicing the relational behaviors on the job in their interactions with clients.
The feedback will be in their results. If they get it, then their numbers will go up. If they don’t get it, then their results will reflect that. From there, we’ll figure out how to get them up to speed or not.
We plan to share ongoing stories of success at the sales meetings and identify the folks who are getting it right. We’ll make sure those individuals speak about what they do that works in those meetings. Additional Questions You Deem Relevant |
With whom will learners practice the solution?Scenario 1: Workplace-Relevant Considerations
| Domains and Science |  Workplace-Relevant Considerations |
|
Social connections |
How Could Connections Be Reinforced? Core Questions
We see the classes as in-person training, and they’ll get to do some run-throughs of the new approach to practice the new process. Also, we are expecting the team to document everything they’re doing with clients in our CRM tool, so we could potentially make that visible to other salespeople.
We plan to set team sales goals as well as individual goals. We hope this will cause folks to help each other out.
On our sales leader boards. Our top performers will be rewarded, and the ones who aren’t succeeding will see themselves at the bottom of the board, which should motivate them to do more. Additional Questions You Deem Relevant |
Social Connections Debrief of Scenario 1
Given the answers and data collected, do you have any potential additional questions?
As we consider the Scenario 1 stakeholders’ responses, there are two areas that stand out as needing more detail.
Spacing for Practice Not Planned
So far, the plan is to dedicate a couple of days to learning at the upcoming sales meeting. The absence of other purposeful practice suggests that the stakeholders do not see the need for practice including spacing and repetition. The sales meeting can serve as an effective immersive environment for the sales team to build awareness of the new behaviors. Unfortunately, a single exposure to the concepts does not account for how most people effectively process new information and adopt new behaviors.
Operating With a Fixed Mindset
The lack of a safe space to practice, receive feedback, and observe role-model behaviors should be discussed further. When stakeholders focus on business outcomes without a balanced concern for building skills and proficiency, this signals their culture might be oriented toward a fixed mindset. To foster individual growth and development, there should be a greater focus on progressive improvement over time. This requires an opportunity to practice, to fail, to reflect, to try again, and ultimately to improve.
Before we can build the right solution for Scenario 1, we should definitely ask more questions to get the details to carry forward into the design of the solution itself. Let’s move next into the Social connections considerations for Scenario 2.
Scenario 2 (Priority-Driven)
Change management: Hybrid work model. As a reminder, here is some high-level background for this scenario:
Scenario 2: Company Details
Organization Type: National consumer products company
Employees: 60,000 nationally across the US
Footprint: Offices in New York, Atlanta, Dallas, Salt Lake, Los Angeles, and other facilities spread regionally
Stakeholders: • Chief operations officer
• Chief HR officer
• Chief information officer
• Business unit leads
The Ask: Your organization is looking to enable hybrid ways of working following recent office closures due to the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as achieve long-term goals of enabling future-focused strategies of the workforce. As a result, training and change management is needed on new systems, processes, and behaviors among employees, as well as on how to interact with clients.
Speaking with your stakeholders, you can direct your questions using the CLICS Tool Core Questions in the table (or download the interactive PDF from the book website and add your own questions based on a real situation you currently face).
Stakeholder Responses on Social Connections
In the table, review the answers our stakeholders have provided.
Scenario 2: Learner-Relevant Considerations
| Domains and Science | Learner-Relevant Considerations |
|
Social connections Science: • Social learning theory • Social norms • Growth mindset |
How Will Connections Enhance Learning? Core Questions
They’ll be practicing this with everyone as those employees that participate in hybrid work will still interact with those who aren’t. We don’t see this as needing a lot of practice as it’s more about giving people the information, tools, and clearance from their managers to work this way.
Because when working remotely, an even higher need for visibility and communication exists, learners will receive feedback on how the hybrid approach is working from their managers, but also from their peers and colleagues.
Learners will have access to stories from individuals and teams who are successfully operating in a hybrid work environment. Additional Questions You Deem Relevant |
Scenario 2: Workplace-Relevant Considerations
| Domains and Science | Workplace-Relevant Considerations |
|
Social connections |
How Could Connections Be Reinforced? Core Questions
We plan to roll out broadly the Microsoft 365 applications to enable virtual communication and collaboration. This includes Teams, SharePoint, OneDrive, Whiteboard, and Planner. We will obviously need to ensure we have access to the relevant how-to training and documentation on these applications.
Leaders will use team meetings to plan and launch hybrid work for their teams. We also intend for leaders to provide regular feedback to employees on how they manage the freedom of hybrid work relative to their overall productivity.
We see successes being shared via team meetings and failures shared via one-on-ones when leaders need to let employees know their productivity is not meeting expectations. Additional Questions You Deem Relevant |
Social Connections Debrief of Scenario 2
Given the answers and data collected, do you have any potential additional questions?
Similar to Scenario 1, the stakeholders in Scenario 2 appear to view this solution as raising technical awareness and not behavioral in nature. Successfully navigating sustained, hybrid work requires establishing social norms of expected behaviors and practices, both individually and within teams. To that end, here are a couple of areas of opportunity for further exploration.
Leaders Ill-Prepared to Support Desired Social Norms
The stakeholders comment that managers will be providing feedback in team meetings and in one-on-ones, but there are not clear behavioral expectations, and there’s no standard for “good” behaviors that a manager can use to provide feedback. Further definition in both of these dimensions is needed.
Stakeholders continue to assume that managers are prepared to provide feedback and are on board with the new program. This is evidenced by the stakeholder comment, “We don’t see this as needing a lot of practice,” signaling they see it as more of a tools and process implementation. The solution would need to include enablement for managers to lead, as well as for learners to perform, in the new hybrid work model.
Missing Culture of Safety to Learn From Mistakes
The stakeholders’ comment about not “needing a lot of practice” as well as how they discuss successes and failures are also issues. On the surface, this has the appearance of being respectful of their learners. However, from a social learning standpoint, more effective long-term learning happens in environments where learners have the opportunity to feel safe failing so they can learn from their mistakes and the mistakes of others.
Accepting and learning from low-risk failure first requires establishing a culture where learners feel it’s safe to try new behaviors and know that they will not be penalized if they fail.
In large-scale change management initiatives, defining the social norms of how to work and lead effectively is critical. This situation deals explicitly with how the learners will work and interact with one another, which at its core is about social norms. The analysis for this scenario should include to whom the learner can turn for help, whom learners are encouraged to observe as roles models, and clarity about how one person’s behavior will affect others in the enterprise.
Finally, let’s look at the considerations around the Social connections of Scenario 3, which concerns the launch of revised company values with a focus on inclusion.
Scenario 3 (Competency- or Role-Based)
Leadership development: Inclusivity. As a reminder, here is some high-level background for this scenario:
Scenario 3: Company Details
Organization Type: Global financial services
Employees: 100,000 globally
Footprint: Offices in North America; South America; Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA)
Stakeholders: • Chief executive officer
• Chief talent officer
• Chief diversity officer (newly hired)
• Board of directors
The Ask: Your organization is looking to support and empower broadscale updates to its corporate values in support of current DEI realities. The objective, and hope, of your stakeholders is to help the organization to attract and retain the top talent in the world around financial services. This includes the recent hiring of a chief diversity officer, who will be leading the delivery of this mandate from the CEO and board of directors.
Speaking with your stakeholders, you can direct your questions using the CLICS Tool Core Questions in the table (or download the interactive PDF from the book website and add your own questions based on a real situation you currently face).
Stakeholder Responses on Social Connections
In the table, review the answers our stakeholders have provided.
Scenario 3: Learner-Relevant Considerations
| Domains and Science | Learner-Relevant Considerations |
|
Social connections Science: • Social learning theory • Social norms • Growth mindset |
How Will Connections Enhance Learning? Core Questions
The new values will be put into practice each day by everyone at the company as they interact with one another and our clients.
Employees will receive feedback from their managers and their peers on how effectively they are living and demonstrating the new values.
Employees will have access to success stories based on the new values via the company intranet as well as in team meetings, where leaders will share informally. Additional Questions You Deem Relevant |
Scenario 3: Workplace-Relevant Considerations
| Domains and Science | Workplace-Relevant Considerations |
|
Social connections |
How Could Connections Be Reinforced? Core Questions
We will use virtual collaboration tools to build relevant communities of practice. Once deployed, they will give employees a place to discuss situations relevant to the values and how those values are demonstrated.
Leaders will actively participate in group discussions with their team to ensure understanding and successful demonstration of the values by their staff.
Team and individual successes will be shared throughout the organization by our corporate communications group. We plan to announce our new values on our external website as we want to be transparent with potential employees and clients about who we really are. As for failures, we will work to identify those internally and seek to correct the situation as quickly as possible. Additional Questions You Deem Relevant |
Social Connections Debrief of Scenario 3
Given the answers and data collected, do you have any potential additional questions?
This scenario deals with new company values of inclusion, and how important it is to have a clear understanding of the desired behaviors that will demonstrate successfully achieving and living those values. With social connections and the need for clearly defined behaviors to be described to learners in mind, there are two areas of opportunity for more consideration.
Missing Mechanism to Practice Behaviors
The stakeholder responses for both the learner and workplace considerations do not provide sufficient detail about how the learners will actually practice the behaviors that align to the values. This is likely because the behaviors haven’t been identified yet. Taking the stakeholder responses at face value, it would seem their desire is to launch the new values and have learners practice those values exclusively in their day-to-day performance of assigned job responsibilities.
For effective learning of what the new values mean in practice, the participants need the space to understand how the values translate into behaviors, and then have an opportunity to put those behaviors into practice with their peers. With access to role models and a safe space for feedback, individuals will be able to learn from mistakes, not just their successes. The opportunity to practice with peers is an area to define more with the stakeholders, and it leads to the next area of opportunity below.
No Allowance for Mistakes and Growth
The stated plan from the stakeholders in this domain focuses exclusively on successes, sharing them openly via multiple channels. Conversely, mistakes and failures would appear to be something to handle discreetly and quietly. A growth mindset and continuous learning culture would focus on improvement, not perfection. For learners, understanding how to improve requires being able to meaningfully look at not just the times they got it right, but also when they didn’t. In terms of social connections, it is equally important mistakes are shared publicly and are communicated as lessons learned so others can see what doesn’t work just as readily as they can see what does.
It is important in this situation to go back and ask the stakeholders for more information about how the solution will support their desired objectives, taking these principles of effective social connections into account.
Before going on to chapter 8, where we look at the CLICS Tool in total, let’s review some key takeaways from the Social connections domain when using CLICS to analyze your stakeholders’ requests.
Key Takeaways: Social Connections
• Social connections: the interpersonal support structure (physical, emotional, and psychological) necessary for optimal learning
• Relevant science concepts
◦ Social learning theory
◦ Social norms
◦ Growth mindset
• Analysis in action
◦ Identify who will provide feedback and reinforcement
◦ Discuss how successes and failures will be shared among colleagues
◦ Determine how leaders will model support and encourage collaboration