Stever Robbins wrote:
> (*) The replies to my postings on the "Teaching Smart vs. Not" thread
> mostly seemed to boil down to: "learning in teams works best when you
> choose people who want to learn and want to work in teams." My question
> here follows from that: given that many people don't inherently want to
> learn, and may not care incredibly much about their job, what can we do to
> get them learning? The main answers that come to mind are: threaten them,
> reward them, entice them, construct a situation where IN THEIR MINDS, they
> perceive the need to learn. How one does the latter is far from obvious
> to me.
Stever, I have experience doing the latter. My role was that of an Army
Drill Sergeant at Fort Jackson, SC. My mission was to take civilians,
remove most of the superficial trappings of their civilian culture by
immersing them into a bewildering, exhausting and isolated (from home)
environment--then substituting discipline and training for thinking
(thinking comes later--after training). To do this we used intimidation,
rewards, and basically inculcating those who survive the experience into
the military model.
Now, many of those young people were quite bright and motivated to learn.
They also wanted to be challenged, and many appreciated the structure
imposed by military discipline and traditions. There are many examples of
learning organizations at the team level within the military; and the
finest examples occur during combat when men and women who've mastered the
discipline and art of arms find themselves exemplifying LO.
My experience, though, is that motivation comes from within a person.
Sometimes trainers and leaders have to help people find the source of
their motivation, but it always came from inside. I remember appealing to
their self-esteem; their pride in home, family, neighborhood, ethnic or
cultural background; whatever source of pride or esteem that they might
have. Sometimes it was their refusal to let me see them fail. Whatever
the source, though, it belonged to them. And when they made it through,
they made it by dint of their own effort and the collaborative efforts of
their team.
Personally, though, I don't favor these methods for nonmilitary
application. In the teams we're developing in my current organization, we
have people who don't want to participate in the learning. I've fostered
an "hands-off" approach that recognizes their right to be intransigent.
They make up about a fourth of the organization. The rest are motivated
by their own sense of what's right and necessary to be successful. Our
agreement is that we'll replace those who leave with those who want to
learn. In the meantime, I think that we'll develop a culture of learning
that will eventually influence those intransigents who continue to stay
with us. Meanwhile, as long as they contribute to the operations within
the parameters of our performance agreements, we'll let them express
themselves as they wish.
-- Richard C. "Doc" Holloway, Limen Development Network - olypolys@nwrain.com" Man's destiny, then, is primarily action. We do not live to think, but the other way round: we think in order that we may succeed in surviving."
-Jose Ortega y Gasset
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>