Free Article By Paul Glen of C2
Consulting
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Learning With Peers
(This article originally appeared in
Computerworld USA.)
If you want to grow as a leader or help others
to become leaders, it's important to think carefully about the process of
learning.
Have you ever been in a great conversation and
been surprised by something you said -- whether it was your own insight, your
own language or the source of your comment?
These events happen to me every once in a while
and are the source of some of my most cherished learning. And the things I learn
in these conversations often become the bedrock of my understanding of a range
of ideas. They tend to be things that reorder my thinking, make connections
between ideas I previously considered discrete or unearth values that are held
dear but were previously unarticulated.
Such epiphanies are often followed by a quick
reaction. "Who said that?" or "Where did that come from?" or "I didn't know that
I believed that."
These conversations are usually followed by
exhaustion, satisfaction and reflection. It's almost as if mental energy were
converted into the matter of ideas and everyone involved was drained in the
process. The Promethean moment passes into admiration of a new thought.
I've noticed a few things about these
conversations. Most of them share some common characteristics.
Everyone involved seems to enter a state that
psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi has dubbed "flow." Time seems to stand
still as everyone loses himself in the challenge of keeping up with the
discussion. Everyone feels challenged to think in new ways and to pay attention
to the issues at hand.
Ideas take center stage. If the participants
brought individual agendas to the conversation, those seem to fade and give way
to the excitement of following the flow of ideas. Social posturing drops out.
Many conversations, especially those at work,
have subtexts of swagger. People try to establish dominance relationships, prove
their superior intelligence or reinforce formal social hierarchies. But in these
conversations, pretensions are temporarily put on hold.
And usually these conversations take place
within or between groups of peers. I don't remember ever having this sort of
experience during a lecture from some expert, whether that was a learned
professor, a boss or a sage. Mind-blowing insights usually seem to come from
interchanges among fellow explorers, not from the passive reception of
information. Even the best personal feedback rarely reorders thinking in this
way.
This is the experience of learning with peers
-- not from them, but with them. And the opportunities for this are much too
rare. Several obstacles seem to get in the way, especially when managers may
have to expose weaknesses to learn from them.
Too often, we think about learning as a
solitary activity or a passive one. We focus on receiving information, mastering
conceptual material or building some new skill. Books, lectures, e-learning and,
yes, even magazine articles reduce learning to a solo sport. Of course, you can
learn things alone, but significant insights seem to grow out of interchanges
with others.
Managers rarely engage in these peer-to-peer
exchanges. Sadly, too often, managers consider their peers to be only
competitors. Peers are competitors for promotions, for budgets, for talent and
for the attention of those already in power. In the corporate world, viewed
solely through this lens, a conversation about ideas with peers would be insane.
One would risk sharing important information or exposing a personal weakness
that could be exploited by opponents. So, many managers forgo their most
promising source of insight and advancement.
And who has time for ideas at work? We're all
too busy doing things to stop and think about them. Reflection is for
retirement. Understanding is for sissies. Thinking is for ivory-tower academics.
Even long sentences are seen as the enemy of profit. Activity breeds success.
But in fact, facilitating cooperation in
activity and learning is part of the leader's job. Things are not black and
white, and managers must balance competition with collaboration in order to be
personally and collectively successful.
When it comes to insight, there are things that
can be learned but can't be taught. Sometimes, the best thing a leader can do to
develop subordinates is not to tell them what to believe, but to create an
environment in which they can figure out what they believe for themselves.
Next month, I'll write about how to create an
environment in which peers learn from one another. But I'd like to include your
ideas. E-mail your experiences of learning with peers to me at info@paulglen.com.
© Copyright 2006 by Computerworld Inc., One Speen Street, Framingham, MA, 01701. Reprinted by permission of
Computerworld. All Rights Reserved.
