Being OK with not being OK

A few months ago a colleague asked me if i had a model to depict the challenges a new joiner faces at work. I told him about a framework i used to follow for an induction program I handled in a previous role:

• Program objective: An individual should be in a position to take over independent handling of any role in the function he/she has been hired for at the end of the induction period.
• Program focus: the triad of Learning, Contribution and Relationships and how all 3 need to be worked on.
• Program Principles: How do you facilitate the anxiety associated with learning (getting over the Cognitive Dissonance problem)? ...my statement about “One has to be OK with not being OK for some point of time.” This would allow you not to jump to the first acceptable solution (just because you wanted to get over your learning related anxiety).

This framework, in parts, has been influenced by an understanding of the difference between Orientation and Induction – a difference highlighted to me by a senior colleague in my 1^st year of working.

This is a helpful framework for looking at the program. It comprehensively covers the way the company would look at the program. It also considers a major difficulty which the learner faces in the learning process.

But is that all that is required to ensure an effective induction process?

We say that the role of the learner is paramount in the learning process. If the learner does not want to learn then there is not much a trainer or a facilitator can do about it. I also have usually believed (though lesser nowadays) that all learning is meaning based (Snygg and Comb’s theory - phenomenology).

So can we as a facilitator/process owner create a context through which an individual derives meaning for the learning? The choice to learn or not to learn would still rest with the individual but atleast we would have created a space in which the meaning for the learning may find expression.

Some years back I had read about a learning cycle theory, frequently used in NLP. The theory is about 4 successive stages in learning, viz:

• Unconscious Incompetence
• Conscious Incompetence
• Conscious Competence
• Unconscious Competence

This model has a lot of face validity. When a newcomer comes into the system, he/she is in a stage of unconscious incompetence. How do we facilitate the movement to Conscious Incompetence? (providing a context from which an individual derives meaning for learning). This seems to be the crux of the issue.

I am not sure whether we can tell an individual the meaning. A space has to be created in which an individual reflects/experiences something and consequently derives his/ her own meaning.

How is this space created? Well, that’s where the role of the facilitator comes in.

The consequent challenges would be to provide the resources which allow the individual to work towards Conscious Competence while at the same time anchoring him/her around “It is OKAY, NOT TO BE OKAY for a certain point of time.”

All of these would have to be done with the additional process of anchoring the newcomer towards the importance of the active role of the learner in the whole process – “You can take a horse to the water, you can give the horse enough water to drink, tell the horse that drinking is good for its health, but the choice to drink or not to drink lies with the horse.”

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Sourav

P.S.: Over the last year I have started developing an alternate point of view on meaning based learning. Learning is not necessarily meaning based..You also stumble upon learning!:)