I’ve always remembered a statement made by one of my graduate school professors during a session of an organizational behavior course: “Practitioners would be well-advised to keep in mind that employees are human beings first and workers second.”
One aspect of being human that significantly impacts learning and development is the innate need for freedom and autonomy. In a range of settings within organizations, providing learners with the most freedom possible—defined as having and making choices—can have a strong positive impact on learning quality, with clear benefits for individuals and organizations. Those benefits can result from the energy, focus and commitment that come when people operate in an environment of freedom.
What the research says
A range of disciplines, including philosophy, psychology, political science and economics reveal that freedom is essential for positive human outcomes like well-being, motivation, performance and growth. Similarly, several studies on learner autonomy point to its positive impact on motivation, engagement, achievement and skill development.
Other studies identify limitations to the effectiveness of providing autonomy, including learner readiness, entering skill level, the potential for cognitive overwhelm, accountability for results and the required level of instructional support needed based on topic complexity or unfamiliarity. Those findings confirm the benefits of learner freedom and highlight the need for careful consideration of learner characteristics, instructional design and learning context. Key questions resulting from those findings for learning designers, instructors and facilitators, as well as the learning leaders who guide their efforts, are what the right balance is and how to achieve it.
Practitioner perspectives
The research findings on limitations to learner autonomy are important considerations in how far organizations can and should go to create an environment of freedom. Ted Fleming, author of “Develop: 7 Practical Tools to Take Charge of Your Career,” says, “One factor is the inherent risk in the performance. If you’re training air traffic controllers, it’s going to be necessary to provide the information in a highly structured way.”
Jim Sheegog, president and founder at Rowhill Consulting Group, says the issue of performance risk as a general guideline: “First things first. Assess what’s dangerous and beneficial about creating learner accountability.”
Having been a learning leader and practitioner in heavily regulated industries like financial services and health care, I’ve been charged with developing learning programs in the full range of topics, from compliance and risk management to leadership development. To address performance risk, we designed and delivered programs with the priority of delivering content in detail and unambiguously.
Although those are key requirements of any program, the result was instruction-oriented programs delivered didactically. Through program evaluation and follow-up assessment, participants and supervisors reported that the messages got across, yet identified common learning problems like difficulty in recalling the information on the job and applying it to specific situations. On reflection, we concluded that we’d had uncaptured opportunities to increase learning impact by adding an appropriate amount of learner autonomy through involvement, even in high-performance risk topics.
On missed opportunities to increase autonomy, Bob Dean, founder of Dean Learning and Talent Advisors LLC, points to barriers that are often built into learning design. “PowerPoint is one of them. Another is page-turner e-learning,” he says. “Learners need to feel the freedom to ask questions, and those who design and deliver learning need to be eager to hear them.”
These perspectives and experiences are consistent with the research and underscore the main question: How can learning practitioners and the leaders who direct their efforts achieve the right balance?
Designing and delivering for autonomy
One way to strike the balance is by designing and delivering for freedom within rather than instead of structure. Below are examples. All of these practices can and have been used in in-person, live remote, on-demand and informal learning formats. The key to greater autonomy is to fully use them.
Openings
- Statements of intent. In live as well as in on-demand programs, a clear statement of commitment to learner choice can set the tone.
- Interactive openers. Starting with an activity can stimulate participant involvement before they “settle” into a passive mode.
Content
- Facilitate vs. present. Use techniques like scaffolding to provide content by building from participants’ entering knowledge and experience.
- Provide content paths. Participants can be given a choice of content direction when appropriate. For example, in a session on innovation and continuous improvement, participants can be given the choice of spending part of the session on either topic after gaining foundation knowledge on both.
- Leverage time. Ted Fleming observes, “There’s often an overemphasis on time in learning design. Content is fit into a pre-determined time period. People need different amounts of time to learn.” Learner autonomy can be promoted by enabling participants to choose from different time expenditures for a given topic.
Demonstrations
- Dynamic examples. Examples can be provided in an interactive rather than presentation format, for example, using the simulation format in condensed form.
- Guest participants vs. guest speakers. Subject matter expert sessions can be conducted as facilitated dialogues. In on-demand formats, dialogues can be included as “sound bite” video interviews with discussion questions posed for participant response.
Application
- Provide options. Participants can be given a choice of activities, for example, either to complete a practice exercise or create a plan for using the skill on the job.
- Participant vs. facilitator-conducted debriefs. Participants can lead activity debriefs based on a set of optional questions, with the session instructor acting as an “armchair” rather than front-of-the room facilitator.
Creating and maintaining a learning environment of freedom involves “pushing the envelope” by fully using techniques like these and others consistently, within the degree of structure required by relevant limitations. Bob Dean brings this challenge to life.“A model I’ve used for years in training instructors has as its goal to help participants reach the trust learning level,” he says. “It’s the highest level of participant engagement.”
Leading a learning organization that promotes learner freedom
“To have autonomy and freedom takes having great leaders,” Jim Sheegog says. “Leaders must be candid and start with creating safety and trust. It takes guts.”
I experienced the impact of that kind of leadership when I became a learning leader for a merged organization. When, as part of my due diligence, I observed programs at the company with which mine was merging, I saw a clear difference in the learning environment. Participants showed high engagement and self-direction through the inquisitive nature of their questions and comments and the open responses of the instructors.
In the company in which I’d been leading the learning function, participants consistently showed significantly less engaged behavior, asking few questions, and offering even fewer opinions or perspectives on the program content, often none. That pattern continued in combined participant groups in the post-merger programs we conducted. I made that observation at a post-merger leadership dinner to a few leaders from the company whose participants had shown higher engagement. “That’s good to hear,” one leader said. “We care about what people think.”
This leadership culture issue is an additional consideration for learning leaders in assessing the extent to which learner freedom can be increased. The potential may be lower in less empowered environments, yet not totally absent. Below are examples of day-to-day leadership behaviors that can help create as much learner freedom as possible:
- Communicate the vision. Engage others in discussion of the why, what and how early and often.
- Enlist team members and stakeholders. Engage others in dialogue and debate on the specific benefits and requirements of greater learner autonomy. Set goals accordingly and let others know the influence they’ve had on those decisions.
- Provide development, coaching and feedback. Make creating the environment part of the core leadership responsibility of helping others perform and grow.
- Walk the talk. Show commitment to the vision in planning, problem-solving, and implementation.
Maximizing learner freedom can not only increase learning effectiveness but also help realize the vision that many learning leaders and practitioners have for the impact our profession has on the lives of the people we touch.
