It feels like the first day of school! It’s exciting to think about the new relationships that will develop and the conversations we’ll have with design and development teammates, subject matter experts, stakeholders and members of the target audience. In the “honeymoon stage,” everything is new, conversations are intriguing and ideas are flowing in every interaction. This is an instructional designer’s dream. However, reality can be a rude awakening. People have different points of view of the same process, behaviors, circumstances and conditions. It’s not a surprise that our conversations often reveal conflicting ideas about the root of performance challenges. The question is: Do we see this conflict as an asset or a liability to organizational learning?
Intentionally look to reveal conflicting interests and points of view related to performance challenges
Constructive conflict refers to conflict or disagreement that is managed in a positive and productive manner. You may call this “healthy conflict,” but the bottom line is, conflict exists on the path to not just resolving a problem, but more significantly, identifying what’s at the root of the problem. Though we often recognize the value of the insights that can come out of exploring conflict from different points of view, when the objective is to implement a learning solution quickly, we typically don’t have the luxury of spending a lot of time managing conflict resolution. Consequently, we may find ourselves instinctively suppressing conflict and the benefits it can provide.
Learning and development leaders are uniquely positioned to uncover conflicting points of view within their organization that are negatively impacting productivity across organizations. Ideally, looking at performance challenges from different perspectives and intentionally challenging related assumptions leads to the completion of a more robust learning needs analysis. “Conflict has been shown to be instrumental in creating shared understandings, a key process through which group learning and ultimately organizational learning occurs (Crossan et al., 1999; Senge, 1990).”
But again, realistically, with tight deadlines and heavy workloads, how can learning design teams leverage conflict without losing momentum in learning design projects? Where do we start?
Before designing a single learning experience, get the story straight
Listening to relevant stories from different points of view can accelerate each phase of learning design in your organization. Starting to design before getting the story can take us in the wrong direction due to the lack of vision. Ironically, due to time constraints, instead of prioritizing time to seek out and listen to people who face the challenges we are solving for, we might find ourselves getting stories second hand. For many projects, we rely heavily on one or more SMEs to share valuable insights: characteristics of segments of the target audience, typical work conditions, resource and knowledge gaps and problem-solving strategies. While the expert point of view is essential, we must also be careful to avoid over-relying on experts.
If it’s our objective to design learning experiences that resonate with our target audience, it makes sense to learn about the challenges by listening to their stories. Listening to the story from a variety of perspectives, such as the new hire to the organization looking at the challenge through fresh eyes, or the people managers from different functional areas, provides a more complete picture of what’s happening and why. Without that vision to drive the design, we are likely to struggle to transform disparate content, typically provided in PowerPoint presentations, into a compelling story.
Use authentic stories to create more relevant scenario-based learning
The objective of using scenarios in L&D is to make participants feel like they are a central character in the story. This typically includes activities that provide opportunities for individuals to practice making nuanced decisions that require consideration of various factors. The goal is to help participants gain insight from seeing both positive and negative consequences of each action and decision they make throughout the scenario.
Scenario-based learning is designed to simulate real-world challenging situations:
- Portray authentic and relevant storylines.
- Prompt participants to choose the best course of action given specified conditions.
Ideally, the feedback provided should highlight potential negative and positive consequences.
To help manage conflict to support organizational learning, we can take the scenario a step further:
- Enable individuals and teams to see the unintended consequences of their decisions on other functions across the organization which often can result in a conflict of interests.
In practice, how can we develop compelling scenarios that integrate relevant insights from an individual, team and cross-functional perspective?
Listen and amplify voices to reinforce learning
Everyone has a story. On the surface, the individual choices we make and the reasons why we make them often seem insignificant. After all, if I get the job done, does anybody really care how I get it done? The answer from leadership within most organizations aggressively seeking innovative solutions to complex problems is a resounding, “Yes, we care.”
Centering authentic stories as the basis of scenarios and simulations in learning experiences provides opportunities to amplify the voices of people representing different ranks, functional roles, and tenure in the organization. During interviews conducted during the needs analysis for a learning project, individuals might be asked open-ended questions such as:
- Can you provide an example of when you had to make a difficult decision or have a challenging conversation related to…?
- What would make it less challenging?
- What was the outcome of your decision/conversation?
- In hindsight, what if anything would you do or say differently?
- What advice would you give a colleague facing a similar challenge?
Common threads detected across different stories can help us identify root causes of performance challenges. Successfully implementing a learning design approach guided by listening to these stories requires leadership within organizations to make an intentional decision to not only listen but also uplift accounts of the same challenge from different perspectives. Deep meaningful organizational learning can naturally emerge from amplifying individual voices within an organization.
Help individuals and teams strengthen empathetic listening skills
Learning design teams hear stories related to performance challenges everyday. Implementing a “learning through listening” design approach demands that L&D professionals practice empathetic listening and design learning experiences that enable others to do the same.
Here’s a practical approach to learning through story listening:
- Step one: Interview individuals from different segments of the target audience representing different ranks, functional roles, and tenure in the organization.
- Step two: Ask open-ended questions to encourage individuals to share their point of view of what conditions make the process or task challenging.
- Step three: Document the insights shared to write multiple storylines that integrate the various points of view.
- Step four: Design scenario-based learning experiences that require participants to look at identified challenge(s) from different points of view.
- Step five: Simulate decision points that demand participants consider the different points of view to make the best decision given specific conditions.
- Step six: Use feedback to highlight how different decisions and actions have unintended consequences across functions within the organization.
This learning approach provides more opportunities for individuals to practice empathetic listening skills in a learning environment. Making this a practice within organizations can ultimately result in strengthening the individual experience of “psychological safety” required to help each of us make the shift from a mindset of suppressing conflict to intentionally seeking to reveal conflict. If you want people to share their point of view and engage in conversations that are likely to reveal a conflict of interests, they need to feel their uncensored side of the story is valued.
Conduct one-on-one interviews to reduce the impact of groupthink bias on stories shared
Throughout learning design, one-on-one interviews and group brainstorming sessions are common methods for gaining insight into performance challenges. When implementing learning through a story listening design approach, the individual interview approach can reduce the impact of groupthink bias on the stories we tell, enabling learning teams to identify and document conflicts of interests more efficiently. Individuals can be intimidated by team members of higher rank and longer tenure, resulting in self-censoring as a natural impulse to avoid the conflict we are intentionally seeking. Irving Janisexplored this tendency within a group of people, where the desire to avoid any conflict that might hinder progress results in reaching a consensus decision without critical evaluation of alternative viewpoints.
Relevant stories shared by individuals within the target audience are likely to reveal conflicting ideas about what’s at the root of performance challenges. Why not leverage the emotional connection people have to stories about conflict resolution by designing learning experiences to facilitate dialogue around conflict? Emotions evoked can help to support better recall of related concepts, frameworks and problem-solving strategies reinforced in the learning.
We all want to be seen and heard. Ideally, in scenario-based learning experiences, we should feel like we are a central character in an unfolding story. When we don’t see ourselves and our challenges in learning, it sends a message that more than likely the experience was not designed with our needs in mind. When we do see ourselves, and the experiences on some level evoke an emotional response, this can enable a deeper cognitive connection to key concepts explored in the learning.
Learning through story listening can support consistent knowledge sharing across organizations.
Organizational learning requires insights be shared and ultimately implemented as new processes and frameworks that continue to be analyzed and revised based on continued dialogue, conversation and cooperation. The ultimate goal of a blended learning strategy within organizations is to leverage instructor-led and self-directed learning experiences (formal learning) to help individuals and teams apply strategies and new processes introduced into the workflow (informal learning). Organizations can avoid getting lost in the complexity of optimizing organizational learning by being very intentional about prioritizing embedding a learning through story listening approach throughout the learning design process.
In a previous role as a math and science middle school teacher, I found the constant challenge of trying to meet the unique needs of 20 to 25 students in five classes a day overwhelming. Each child had such different needs and I often felt powerless to tailor learning experiences to meet their unique requirements. However, because I looked each of my students in the eye every day and listened to them, I never stopped trying different instructional and learning strategies that might resonate with one or more students.
It’s no different in the workplace, when we take time to look in the eyes of people that are representative of different segments of our target audience, listen to their stories and amplify their voices, we are better equipped to facilitate ongoing multifaceted blended learning experiences that are seamlessly integrated into the workflow and authentically embedded in the DNA of the organization.
