New Corporate Learning Culture 

- The Korea Times (Part1) http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/opinion/2018/08/162_253695.html

- The Korea Times (Part2) http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/opinion/2018/08/162_253696.html 

Organizations are interested in helping their employees upgrade their work or leadership capabilities. That is why organizations provide a variety of trainings to their employees. However, since it is difficult to accurately measure the effectiveness of these trainings, the satisfaction level of the participants tends to be measured instead. Because of this, many organizations believe that workshops that end with a lot of laughter and positive comments are successful and effective. However, looking more closely at whether participants are actually increasing their knowledge, sharpening their skills, or changing their attitudes, many of those trainings do not deserve compliments. Sometimes, they have no effect at all due to participants’ lack of motivation to change themselves because they were too busy laughing and doing a lot of fun activities. What, then, would an effective training look like?

Trainings without materials

All of the corporate trainings provide training materials and auxiliary aides to help the participants fully understand the topic. Participants themselves add to this wealth of information with their own notes. However, this gives off the impression that the point of the training is to acquire and absorb new knowledge. Participants tend to forget what is truly significant: how to apply what they learn to themselves. Given this, we can easily recognize that participants will learn more when they think about what they need to do and how they need to change instead of just blindly accepting the content. Thus, providing training materials which are filled with information and data will be useless and will actually hinder the participants from thinking about how to use the essential points of the acquired knowledge in their workplace.

In fact, I once conducted a full-day workshop without any materials at all. I didn’t prepare textbooks, handouts, or even a short summary of what we were supposed to learn about; instead, I simply prepared ten topics for discussion. The participants and I talked about current issues and problems in their organization and the opinions that I had collected from them during a diagnosis prior to the workshop. This led to a discussion about the main causes of the issues and what some potential solutions might be. Since there were no right or wrong answers, they were free to voice their own opinions and sometimes argue in order to scrutinize the effectiveness of various approaches. I prepared only several meaningful pictures that I was able to show to help remind the participants of the importance of the topic under discussion. After each round of discussion, we concluded with agreements whose implementation the majority of participants supported.

Trainings in which instructors learn

Many training managers and employees expect the instructors they invite to deliver moving speeches. They tend to believe that when people are moved, they will be more willing to change their behavioral patterns, which will have a positive impact on their organizations. However, this approach also has a downside: the heart-wrenching stories that make up the core of so many of these moving speeches are extraordinary events that do not usually happen to common people. These experiences might be true, and might be inspiring, but are not terribly useful, as they have no application to ordinary situations. How, then, can we help participants think about how they have been doing and what they need to change?

The attitudes and behaviors of instructors are a crucial part of the solution. Instructors should not be making speeches, but rather listening to what others have to say, naming the problems they observe, monitoring the group dynamics, and creating an ambience that is conducive to more lively conversation. Their main roles and responsibilities should be helping the trainees understand and resolve their problems in a supportive manner. Thus, instructors will be not “teaching,” but rather learning about what really goes on in the organization so that they can better guide problem-solving. If instructors are truly experts, then they should be helpful in resolving organizational problems and helping the employees become successful organizational members.

Trainings in which leaders learn

Traditionally, leaders have thought that their employees should be more knowledgeable and more self-correcting. Leaders even tend to think that their employees are the primary causes of their organizational problems. However, exploring organizational issues at a deeper level has usually led me to the conclusion that leaders’ pejorative attitudes toward their employees are causing much larger problems. That is why leaders need to learn not about a new method of strategic planning, a new culture, or new management theories, but about what they are doing and how they need to change. They should learn not only from their own training sessions but from employees’ sessions—even when they are not present. That is, trainings should include frank discussions of leaders without their presence. If leaders are absent when they are being discussed, then employees will feel comfortable giving honest feedback. This requires a lot of courage for leaders, because there may be many truths that are painful to hear. However, if employees give accurate descriptions of what is happening in the organization and why, this perspective could be invaluable. It is true that when employees are free to talk about their leaders’ misjudgments, misconduct, and mismanagement, leaders may not like the result. However, this kind of feedback is the most effective information—much more effective than that given by outside coaches and instructors! After all, employees have been diagnosing their leaders for a much longer time and with a much larger poll size. When what employees want is aligned with what leaders and organizations want, organizations will have bigger successes. That is why leaders need to learn from sessions even when they are absent.

I have visited more than several hundred companies for the past several years. Based on my workshops, consulting services, and casual talks with corporate personnel, almost all organizations have problems that come from not knowing the reality of their situations, what direction they really need to go in, and whether they are truly cohesive. This is not so surprising: usually, truth does not appear without being deliberately sought, since truth is covered under the dust of routine, of work, and of relationships. In order to find true success, companies need look into themselves as opposed to always looking at and trying to copy others. Truths about your organization exist somewhere, even if you cannot see them right now, and trainings can help to uncover them.