Learning in a sandbox

Managers and L&D officers increasingly tell me they need for employees to make themselves responsible for their own learning and development process.

One of the ways to help employees to gain insight in their learning process and to make it visible to their managers is by using e-portfolio’s. Especially when you look at e-portfolio’s from a reflective and development perspective. Weblogs can help employees in this process of reflection.

For the past couple of weeks i’ve had regular web-meetings with Jeffrey Keefer on this subject. An aspect returned in almost every discussion is motivation. We questioned ourselves how to motivate employees to actively engage in this process of development. Preferably in a networked environment where people not solely reflect individually but share and discuss their reflections with others in order for organizational learning to occur.

An article by Nohria, Groysberg & Lee (July 2008) in Harvard Business Review, presents a model for employee motivation. Partly based on results of neuroscience it is suggested that “that people are guided by four basic emotional needs, or drives, that are the product of our common evolutionary heritage”:

1. The drive to acquire (obtain scarce goods, including intangibles such as social status)
2. The drive to bond (form connections with individuals and groups)
3. The drive to comprehend (satisfy our curiosity and master the world around us)
4. The drive to defend (protect against external threats and promote justice)

Thinking about how to motivate your employees to engage with using e-portfolio’s you can think of several ways how this can contribute to the first three drives. I can see how blogging can play a role in profiling yourself and what you do to others in the organization - world. This could fulfill the drive to acquire as it might improve your social status. Blogging could also contribute to the drive to bond as its interaction possibilities help you to connect with others. One thing that I especially appreciate in blogging is that through these reflections in blog posts i try to understand the world around me. Unfortunately I think that for a lot of people the drive to defend is an extremely strong force. As publicly blogging your reflections might improve your social status, one also might believe it could be decreased. One might also think readers would disapprove their writings and as a result would disconnect. These fears encourage the drive the defend.

In my latest paper on social learning technologies with Robin Yap, we have written about the importance of trust. I believe this is also important in this discussion on motivation. If we can offer a safe (learning) environment, we might be able to diminish people’s drive to defend.

Any comments on how you try to work on this in your organization are more then welcome!