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How People Learn
The valuable lessons of life
are learnt by experience. “ Serves you right!”
is the remark that a naughty child hears when the bottle of sweets, on the shelf
it is scrambling up on a chair to reach, crashes to the floor. Lessons are
deeply scored in its brain for life! We also have the capacity to learn
vicariously… from other people's experiences, that's why biographies sell.
It is important to develop people by allowing them to make the
mistakes that let them to learn their own lessons.
It requires judgement and timing… and commitment to staff
development. Learning is a totally self-generated activity. It must be seen as
consistent with organizational goals.
Learning (and problem-solving) can be seen as a cyclical process of
continuing and overlapping activities:
There has to be balanced use of all four in order to benefit from
the process. The best compromise, especially where there is little leeway for
job-content modification, is to delegate according to natural tendency, e.g. the
‘theorist' gets the job of researching product specifications.
Getting down to the task of tackling ‘neglected' areas of the cycle means patience and gradually
easing someone into ‘contrary' or ‘against current' areas, but it's unavoidable
for development. Increased exposure to ‘neglected' areas will be important. Regular
progress review and feedback, as usual, play an important role in the learning
process.
QUESTIONS:
1.
How do people learn?
What are the compulsions / processes?
2.
What has learning theory concerning humans to do with
delegation? Explain various aspects of the situation, giving examples to
illustrate your answer.
