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Learning attitude determines growth of individual, organisation
Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of (self and) others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so.
Douglas Adams, author of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
Success is what one aspires for in everything one is doing or wants to do. All of us involved in the rat race of today’s economy fill our bags with the valuable technical learning we have and plunge into the race. Our bag of technical knowledge is what is going to get us where we want to be and hence it is the most valuable thing we have. Many a times we fail to recognise the missing value of things which are not there in our bag. We fail to recognise that something more needs to be added. Organisations put in their best efforts to help employees to add the enriching non-technical skills and in the same breath admit to their ineffectiveness in the training efforts. So where is this slip between the cup and the lip? One of the core reasons is the lack of a learning attitude.
The first person who stops us from developing the required learning attitude is yourself. Your incapability to see through a different window or the inability to unlearn a bit in order to learn new things. Your ego which says I am superior in age, experience and position and hence know much better or your refusal to think and look for solutions or for developing an ability to find solutions. Your constant search for immediate results without a long-term perspective or your refusal to notice the other competencies required to broad base one self. You assume your busy schedule leaves “no time for learning and your scepticism about the usefulness of learning through training.
One needs to recognise that one’s knowledge, skills and competencies are required to get wider than what one has applied in the past and more profound than what is just about necessary to complete the tasks assigned. Irrespective of one’s numerous years of experience one must put in the effort to learn further for the simple reason of expanding one’s horizon and not become obsolete in the ever-expanding knowledge economy.
The second thing that hinders development of a learning attitude is the organisation itself. Disjointed and non-goal oriented training efforts creates a negative perception and approach among employees. Focus is on the narrow technical resource development rather than a holistic human resource development. This leads to treating training as a source of information and not as a knowledge or skill enrichment platform. In addition, obsolete training processes and methodology, add to negative experiences and thus employees lose interest and faith in the process of training. Lack of opportunities in the workplace to put into practice the new learning and receive structured and supportive feedback completes the misconception.
An organisation can promote the development of a learning attitude among employees only when they are more cohesive, with resolute correlation made between the organisational, personal, social and cultural objectives and the learning and development strategy. Employees, team leads, managers and HR need to be involved in this coalescing process. Organisations need to recognise the significance of new learning, both in its own right and as a path to formal, structured learning.
(The author is a senior HR professional)
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ANURADHA H R
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