Steven Dineen is the Founder & President of enterprise learning platform, Fuse.
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Many people, myself included, are “freedom” learners. We tend not to thrive in formal learning environments because the expectation to learn in a predefined, sequential way makes us go a little stir-crazy. As a student in a classroom, my attention is constantly wandering. In contrast to that, I love bite-sized learning, tapping into tacit knowledge when I need to solve a problem or source the answer to a question. There is likely an equal number of people like me as there are the people who want to learn in a more structured manner.
The majority of people don’t sit at one end of these two extremes, though, but rather sit somewhere in the middle, preferring to blend elements of both formal and informal learning. There’s no right or wrong way to learn because just as people are different, so too are our individual learning preferences, and we all have different needs in context to every moment we want and need to learn.
While it’s crucial to build all of these variables into modern learning design, it’s important to recognize a number of key commonalities too. We all learn from other people, for example, and we all regulate our own behavior based on the environment and people around us. It’s a point that reminds us of the inherent link between learning and the psychology of human behavior — a link that needs to tie into every element of learning design.
Let’s take a closer look at the psychology behind learning success. Here are four things to factor into employee learning programs:
1. Nurture a value for learning.
To nurture positive and habitual learning behaviors, business leaders first need to lay the right groundwork. By regularly communicating and reinforcing the message that learning is both valued and valuable, employees can assume permission to prioritize their learning and development for improved performance.
This comes with a key caveat, though. Denoting permission — or even better, an expectation — that all employees become continuous, everyday learners should not equate to a one-size-fits-all learning path. Rather, the intended purpose is to reassure employees that learning is valued, at the same time encouraging people to share in that value and advocate for active, on-the-job learning. That creates a great foundation, and it’s key to effecting positive and lasting learning behaviors.
2. Support psychological safety.
So the initial foundations are in place, but are employees able to ask questions when they’re stuck and put forward ideas without fear of rejection or ridicule?
This is a big one. Google’s Project Aristotle, a study carried out in 2012, revealed an undeniable link between high performance and psychological safety, a term coined by Harvard Business School professor Amy Edmondson, to describe the critical importance of trust between team members. Psychologically safe teams are free from interpersonal risk. Employees can freely admit when they don’t understand something or need help, and they’re able to make mistakes (and learn from them) without being judged or penalized. Take psychological safety away, though, and people’s natural behavioral response is self-protection and self-preservation.
It doesn’t take a genius to work out which of these two scenarios leads to better learning and performance outcomes.
3. Learning is a social activity.
The importance of trust highlights another key point: the fact that learning is an innately social activity.
Not only do we all learn from other people, but it is in fact these very relationships that spark us to actively engage in learning — whether that be jumping into a how-to video from a trusted subject matter expert (SME) or attending a training session delivered by a senior company leader. The common denominator here is trust. The learner trusts that there is value to be gained from engaging with a particular expert, and it is this that creates the habit for more.
Looking at it through this lens, it’s clear that human connections — and the engagement, coaching, feedback and mentoring benefits that these deliver — are essential to learning success. Not only do they determine how we engage, but whether we decide to engage in the first place.
But how do we factor these vital connections into learning design?
We create community, both in person and by virtual means, and we deliver value by facilitating access to SMEs and their tacit knowledge — that is, the implicit know-how locked away in their heads. This is how we encourage and enable learners to engage time and time again.
4. Trust in the technology.
People often think of learning technology as the mere facilitator, yet it too plays a central role in driving positive learning behaviors. Just as learners need to connect with SMEs, they also need to connect with the technology itself if they are to keep engaging with it.
That goes well beyond facilitation and emphasizes that as humans, we need to trust that the technology we’re using is going to help us solve a problem, either now or in the future. Without this, it will be extremely difficult to create adoption, and nigh on impossible to create ongoing engagement that supports upskilling, reskilling and wider business performance.
Ultimately, both learning and learning technology must be designed in line with an understanding of the fundamental drivers of human behavior — a point that comes right back to the fact that psychology sits at the heart of learning success.
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