Self-Directed Learning
What these studies have shown is that adults learn what they want to learn. Other things, even if acquired temporarily (e.g., for a test), are soon forgotten.[27] Students, children, patients, clients, and subordinates may act as if they care about learning something, and go through the motions, but they proceed to disregard it or forget it—unless, it is something that they want to learn. This does not include changes induced, willingly or not, by chemical or hormonal changes in one's body. But even in such situations, the interpretation of the changes and the behavioral comportment following it will be affected by the person's will, values, and motivations.
| Old Program | New Program | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Evidence of Value Added | Self-Management | Social Awareness and Management | Analytic Reasoning | Self-Management | Social Awareness and Management | Analytic Reasoning |
| Strong | Self-confidence | Use of concepts
Systems thinking Quantitative analysis Use of technology Written communication | Efficiency orientation
Planning Initiative Flexibility Self-confidence | Social objectivity
Networking Oral communication Empathy Group management | Use of concepts
Systems thinking Pattern recognition Written communication Quantitative analysis Use of technology | |
| Some | Efficiency orientation
Initiative Flexibility | Empathy
Networking Social objectivity | Self-control Attention to detail | Developing others
Persuasiveness Negotiating | ||
| None | Planning (attention to detail and self- control were not coded) | Persuasiveness
Negotiating Group management Developing others Oral communication | ||||
| Negative | Pattern recognition (verbal) | |||||
| Old Program | New Program | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Evidence of Value Added | Self-Management | Social Awareness and Management | Analytic Reasoning | Self-Management | Social Awareness and Management | Analytic Reasoning |
| Strong | Flexibility | Systems thinking Quantitative analysis | Efficiency orientation
Initiative Flexibility Attention to detail Self-confidence | Group management
Social objectivity Networking Oral communication Developing others Negotiating | Use of concepts
Written communication Use of technology Pattern recognition Quantitative analysis Systems thinking | |
| Some | Efficiency orientation | Negotiating Social objectivity | Written communication | Planning | Empathy Persuasiveness | |
| None | Self-confidence
Planning Initiative (attention to detail and self-control were not coded) | Persuasiveness
Oral communication Networking Group management Developing others | Use of concepts Pattern recognition | Self-control | ||
| Negative | Empathy | Use of technology | ||||
In this way, it appears that most, if not all, sustainable behavioral change is intentional. Self-directed change is an intentional change in an aspect of who you are (the real) or who you want to be (the ideal), or both. Self-directed learning is self-directed change in which you are aware of the change and understand the process of change.
The process of self-directed learning is shown graphically in Figure 14-2.[28],[29],[30] This is an enhancement of the earlier models developed by Kolb, Winter, Berlew, and Boyatzis between 1968 and 1971.[31],[32],[33],[34],[35]
Figure 14-2. Boyatzis' theory of self-directed learning.
The description and explanation of the process in this chapter is organized around five points of discontinuity. A person might begin self-directed learning at any point in the process, but it will often begin when the person experiences a discontinuity and the associated epiphany, or a moment of awareness and a sense of urgency.
This model describes the process as designed into a required course, and the elements of the MBA and executive programs implemented in 1990 at the Weatherhead School of Management. Experimentation and research into the various components have resulted in refinement of these components and the model as discussed in this chapter. For a detailed description of the course, read Boyatzis.[36],[37]
The First Discontinuity: Catching Your Dreams, Engaging Your Passion
Franklin is wrestling with redirecting his career for an old reason. He has been executive director of a foundation for 10 years. Donors, program recipients, and policy makers consider him a distinctive success within the foundation world. His emotional intelligence is considered a model to be emulated by others, as is his incisive intellect. And yet he is restless. During a coaching session that was part of an assessment and development program, he identified two possible career paths for the future: He could leverage his expertise and join a larger, global foundation as executive director, or he could become an executive for a company. The attraction of corporate life would be higher compensation.
When asked if he was feeling pressure from his family about money, Franklin said, “Not at all.” Asked why he considered leaving the arena he felt passionate about—with a deep sense of social mission—and if there were any challenges a company can give him that he did not feel in a foundation, he looked toward the ceiling and shook his head. He realized that he was reacting to the frustrations of his current situation. Once free of considering “doing time” or “paying his dues” in a company as a desirable option, he began to brainstorm ideas for adding to his personal income while leading foundations. He thought of expanding his writing to include books and giving speeches as ways to supplement his income.
Franklin was having trouble identifying his ideal work for the future. His deep, inner commitment to the nonprofit world was ignored in considering the attractiveness of the private sector. But these attractions were things others found desirable, not Franklin. The first discontinuity and potential starting point for the process of self-directed learning is the discovery of who you want to be. Our ideal self is an image of the person we want to be. It emerges from our ego ideal, dreams, and aspirations. The last 20 years has revealed literature supporting the power of positive imaging or visioning in sports psychology, meditation and biofeedback research, and other psycho-physiological research. It is believed that the potency of focusing one's thoughts on the desired end state of condition is driven by the emotional components of the brain.[38]
This research indicates that we can access and engage deep emotional commitment and psychic energy if we engage our passions and conceptually catch our dreams in our ideal self-image. It is an anomaly that we know the importance of consideration of the ideal self, and yet often, when engaged in a change or learning process, we skip over the clear formulation or articulation of our ideal self-image. If a parent, spouse, boss, or teacher tells us something that should be different, they are telling us about the person they want us to be. As adults, we often allow ourselves to be anesthetized to our dreams and lose sight of our deeply felt ideal self.
The Second Discontinuity: Am I a Boiling Frog?
Joe started a doctoral program to propel him into his new life. His friends and family thought he was crazy. He owned and ran three healthcare companies, a nursing home, a temporary service agency specializing in health workers, and a small consulting practice. The nursing home had some problems including cash flow and a quarrelsome partner. It was not clear who was the antagonist between the two partners, but the relationship felt like a bad marriage staying together “for the children.” He began teaching management part-time at a local university and loved it. The university made him a full-time faculty member. He was pursuing an executive doctorate in management to refine his research and writing skills. This is a doctoral program designed for scholar-practitioners with typically 20 or more years of work experience, of which at least 10 are in management or leadership positions.
He loved the program but was running himself ragged with all of the responsibilities. When Richard Boyatzis asked him, “Joe, what do you most want to be doing in 5 to 10 years?,” Joe did not hesitate, “I love teaching. I would like to contribute through writing. I can translate complex concepts into language that people understand. I would love to do some research and test my ideas. But mostly, I love teaching.”
“Why are you keeping all these businesses?”
He turned with a questioning look, “What do you mean?”
Pointing to the draft of his essay on his desired future, Professor Boyatzis clarified, “You are a full-time faculty member. You want to be a full-time faculty member. You want to spend more time writing and doing some research. You are currently in a doctoral program. And yet, you are still involved in running three businesses. Don't you think this is too much? Haven't you made a choice already as to which you want? So why the ambivalence?”
He listed the contractual complications and financial implications leading to his conclusion that he must continue all three businesses. But then he added, “I have considered handing the temporary services business to my son, and letting the consulting business drop away to nothing by just not taking any new projects.” Once provoked in this way, he started to consider speeding the timeline. He brainstormed a few steps that would remove him from running the nursing home within a year, and from ownership of the nursing home within two years. Nodding his head with a growing smile, Joe said, “This could work. This could really work! Boy oh boy, do I look forward to two years from now!”
Joe had changed but was confusing his old self with the person he had become. Joe knew that he was not as exciting a leader in his businesses as he had been in the past; while in the classroom, he engaged students using his humor and playfulness. Facing his real self, looking in the mirror was difficult.
The awareness of the current self, the person whom others see and with whom they interact, is elusive. For normal reasons, the human psyche protects itself from the automatic “intake” and conscious realization of all information about ourselves. These ego-defense mechanisms serve to protect us. They also conspire to delude us into an image of who we are that feeds on itself, becomes self-perpetuating, and eventually may become dysfunctional.[39]
The greatest challenge to an accurate current self-image (e.g., seeing yourself as others see you and consistent with other internal states, beliefs, emotions, etc.) is the boiling frog syndrome. It is said that dropping a frog into a pot of boiling water will result in it immediately jumping out. But place a frog in a pot of cool water, and gradually raise the temperature to boiling, and the frog will remain in the water until it is cooked.
Several factors contribute to us becoming boiling frogs. First, people around you may not let you see a change. They may not give you feedback or information about how they see it. Also, they may be victims of the boiling frog syndrome themselves, as they adjust their perception on a daily basis. Second, enablers—those forgiving the change, frightened of it, or who do not care—may allow it to pass unnoticed.
For a person to truly consider changing a part of himself or herself, you must have a sense of what you value and want to keep. These areas in which your real self and ideal self are consistent or congruent can be considered strengths. Likewise, to consider what you want to preserve about yourself involves admitting aspects of yourself that you wish to change or adapt in some manner. Areas where your real self and ideal self are not consistent can be considered gaps.
All too often, people explore growth or development by focusing on the gaps or deficiencies. Organizational training programs and managers conducting annual reviews often make this mistake. There is an assumption that we can “leave well enough alone” and get to the areas that need work. It is no wonder that many of these programs or procedures intended to help a person develop result in the individual feeling battered, beleaguered, and bruised, not helped, encouraged, motivated, or guided.
There are four major “learning points” from the first two discontinuities in the self-directed learning process: (a) engage your passion and create your dreams; (b) know thyself; (c) identify or articulate both your strengths—those aspects of yourself you want to preserve—and your gaps or discrepancies of your real and ideal selves—those aspects of yourself you want to adapt or change; and (d) keep your attention on both characteristics, forces, or factors—do not let one become the preoccupation.
The fourth learning point—keeping a balanced attention on your strengths and gaps—ensures you are not becoming “weighed down” with your gaps or overly confident with your strengths. Further, it encourages you to leverage your strengths in an effort to minimize your gaps.
All of these learning points can be achieved by finding and using multiple sources for feedback about your ideal self, real self, strengths, and gaps. The sources of insight into your real self can include systematically collecting information from others, such as the 360-degree feedback currently considered fashionable in organizations. Other sources of insight into your real self, strengths, and gaps may come from behavioral feedback through videotaped or audiotaped interactions, such as collected in assessment centers. Various psychological tests can help you determine or make explicit inner aspects of your real self, such as values, philosophy, traits, motives, and such.
Sources for insight into your ideal self are more personal and more elusive than those for the real self. Various exercises and tests can help by making explicit various dreams or aspirations you have for the future. Talking with close friends or mentors can help. Allowing yourself to think about your desired future, not merely your prediction of your most likely future, is the biggest obstacle. These conversations and explorations must take place in psychologically safe surroundings because in such settings, you are less likely to be inhibited from really exploring your dreams and aspirations.
The Third Discontinuity: Mindfulness through a Learning Agenda
Karen was describing her career goals during an MBA class. At 27, she was energetic, poised, and ready to take on the world. She identified her long-term career goal to buy or open an art gallery in Chicago or in another big Midwestern city. When asked why an art gallery, she admitted with embarrassment that she loved art but could not paint or sculpt.
Karen explained that she would approach her career goal by working for a large bank for a number of years to learn more about finance, not to mention make some money. Others in her class thought it made sense until the professor said, “So in order to learn to be an entrepreneur in the arts, you want to work in a large, bureaucratic organization that values conformity, where most people wear gray or blue suits with red ties or scarves, and managers demand adherence to policies, rules, and regulations? In this environment, you might extinguish the entrepreneurial spirit and confidence that you have and need to run an art gallery successfully.”
Karen's original draft of her learning plan would not have led to her desired future. She had absorbed an image from her reference group of fellow students and her general image of business—she thought she needed to master finance to be an entrepreneur. MBA mythology has placed banks as one of the best places to work to master finance. So Karen had written her original plan to work in an organization that was not of interest to her. Later conversations with her professor resulted in a learning plan more directly aimed at a future toward which she had passionate commitment.
The third discontinuity in self-directed learning is development of an agenda and focusing on the desired future. While performance at work or happiness in life may be the eventual consequence of our efforts, a learning agenda focuses on development. A learning orientation arouses a positive belief in one's capability and the hope of improvement. This results in people setting personal standards of performance, rather than normative standards that merely mimic what others have done.[40] Meanwhile, a performance orientation evokes anxiety and doubts about whether or not we can change.[41]
As part of one of the longitudinal studies at the Weatherhead School of Management, Leonard showed that MBAs who set goals desiring to change on certain competencies changed significantly on those competencies as compared to other MBAs.[42] Previous goal-setting literature had shown how goals affected certain changes on specific competencies,[43] but had not established evidence of behavioral change on a comprehensive set of competencies that constitute emotional intelligence.
The major learning point from this section crucial in self-directed learning is: Create your own, personal learning agenda.
A major threat to effective goal setting and planning is that people are already busy and cannot add anything else to their lives. In such cases, the only success with self-directed change and learning occurs if people can determine what to say “no” to and stop some current activities in their lives to make room for new activities.
Another potential challenge or threat is the development of a plan that calls for a person to engage in activities different from their preferred learning style or learning flexibility.[44],[45] In such cases, a person commits to activities, or action steps in a plan that require a learning style that is not their preference or not within their flexibility. When this occurs, a person becomes demotivated and often stops the activities, or becomes impatient and decides that the goals are not worth the effort.
The Fourth Discontinuity: Metamorphosis
Bob wanted to build a portfolio of manufacturing companies in which he would have significant ownership and meaningful involvement in the management. A passive approach to providing venture capital was not enough. But Bob knew he was often impatient and not as sensitive to others as he would like. He wanted to develop a style that was collaborative with others, not one focused on simply managing them. Too many companies acquired by venture capitalists languish from inattention or falter from too much “help.” Bob said, “An owner will be reluctant to sell his or her business to someone with whom they have a poor rapport, and the envisioned 'advisory group' will become dysfunctional.” So he wanted to build his empathy and patience with others as a stepping stone to a more collaborative leadership style.
To experiment with this enhanced or new talent in understanding others, he decided to start with an opportunity closer to home—actually, at home. Bob's relationship with two of his children, in particular his two daughters, should be more fun and supportive than it had been recently. He saw a way to work on his leadership style while rebuilding family relationships.
Bob declared a learning goal to “identify an activity of mutual interest that I can do with my daughters on a routine basis (i.e., two or three times a month).” He knew they had expressed interest in two sports: golf and horseback riding. Bob talked to his daughters; more important, he opened up the possibility and listened to their responses. They then set up a schedule to go riding and golfing on a monthly basis. He committed to watching movies with them that they wanted to see and even watching MTV with them.
The fourth discontinuity is to experiment and practice desired changes. Acting on the plan and toward the goals involves numerous activities. These are often made in the context of experimenting with new behaviors. Typically following a period of experimentation, the person practices the new behaviors in actual settings within which they wish to use them, such as at work or at home. During this part of the process, self-directed change and learning begins to look like a “continuous improvement” process.
To develop or learn new behavior, the person must find ways to learn more from current, or ongoing experiences. That is, the experimentation and practice does not always require attending courses or a new activity. It may involve trying something different in a current setting, reflecting on what occurs, and experimenting further in the same setting. Sometimes, this part of the process requires finding and using opportunities to learn and change. People may not even think they have changed until they have tried new behavior in a work or real-world setting.
Dreyfus studied managers of scientists and engineers who were considered superior performers.[46] Once she documented that they used considerably more of certain abilities than their less-effective counterparts, she pursued how they developed some of those abilities. One of the distinguishing abilities was group management, also called team building. She found that many of these middle-aged managers had first experimented with team-building skills in high school and college, in sports, clubs, and living groups. Later, when they became bench scientists and engineers working on problems in relative isolation, they still pursued using and practicing of this ability in activities outside of work. They practiced team building and group management in social and community organizations, such as 4-H Clubs, and professional associations in planning conferences and such.
The experimentation and practice are most effective when they occur in conditions in which the person feels safe.[47] This sense of psychological safety creates an atmosphere in which the person can try new behavior, perceptions, and thoughts with relatively less risk of shame, embarrassment, or serious consequences of failure.
The Fifth Discontinuity: Relationships that Enable Us to Learn
Our relationships are an essential part of our environment. The most crucial relationships are often a part of groups that have particular importance to us. These relationships and groups give us a sense of identity, guide us as to what is appropriate and “good” behavior, and provide feedback on our behavior. In sociology, they are called reference groups. These relationships create a context within which we interpret our progress on desired changes, assess the utility of new learning, and even contribute significant input to formulation of the ideal.[48]
In this sense, our relationships are mediators, moderators, interpreters and sources of feedback, support, and permission of change and learning. They may also be the most important source of protection from relapses or returning to our earlier forms of behavior. In 1999, Wheeler analyzed the extent to which Weatherhead MBA graduates worked on their goals in multiple “life spheres” (e.g., work, family, recreational groups, etc.).[49] In a two-year follow-up study of two of the graduating classes of part-time MBA students, she found those who worked on their goals and plans in multiple sets of relationships improved the most and more than those working on goals in only one setting, such as work or within one relationship.
In a study of the impact of the year-long executive development program for doctors, lawyers, professors, engineers, and other professionals mentioned earlier, Ballou et al. found that participants gained self-confidence during the program. Even at the beginning of the program, others would say these participants were very high in self-confidence. It was a curious finding. The best explanation came from follow-up questions to the graduates of the program. They explained the evident increase in self-confidence as an increase in the confidence to change. Their existing reference groups (e.g., family, groups at work, professional groups, community groups) all had an investment in them staying the same, but meanwhile the person wanted to change. The Professional Fellows Program allowed them to develop a new reference group that encouraged change.
Based on social identity, reference group, and now relational theories, our relationships both meditate and moderate our sense of who we are and who we want to be. We develop or elaborate our ideal self from these contexts. We label and interpret our real self from these contexts. We interpret and value strengths (i.e., aspects considered our core that we wish to preserve) from these contexts. We interpret and value gaps (i.e., aspects considered weaknesses or things we wish to change) from these contexts.
The major learning points from the fourth and fifth discontinuities critical in self-directed learning process are as follows: (a) experiment and practice and try to learn more from your experiences, (b) find settings in which you feel psychologically safe within which to experiment and practice, and (c) develop and use your relationships as part of your change and learning process.