Adult Learning Principles
MRCC designed the process for Team Learning to be consistent with Malcolm Knowles' adult learning principles:
- Adults need to know why they should learn something.
- Adults have a deep need to be self-directing (to decide what they will learn and when they will learn).
- Adults have a greater amount and different quality of experience than youth to draw upon. Adults become ready to learn when they experience a need to learn.
- Adults enter into a learning experience wanting to solve a real job-related problem.
- Adults are motivated to learn by both external motivators (recognition/rewards from others) and internal motivators (personal satisfaction/sense of accomplishment).
In keeping with Knowles' principles, the Team Learning process was designed to achieve the optimum conditions for learning:
- mutual trust and respect
- collaboration rather than competition
- peer-support rather than peer-judgement
- an informal atmosphere that encourages fun
- a mechanism for mutual planning
- a process for learners to evaluate their learning outcomes
- a process for learners to share their ideas with the rest of the organization
Learning Styles
According to the research of Kolb, Peters, Pfeiffer, Rogers, and Murrell, people have preferences for how they acquire and assimilate information to solve problems-or how they learn. Kolb describes four learning styles: Concrete Experience, Reflective Observation, Abstract Conceptualization, and Active Experimentation. Although no one style is best-just a preference to learn in a particular way-it is important for us to develop the ability to learn in all domains.
Team Learning appeals to all of the learning styles through a variety of activities and multi-sensory stimuli; individual reflection, video presentation, group discussion, brainstorming, skill practices, games, puzzles, and so on.
The Learning Cycle
Experts like Kolb, Pfeiffer, and Pike believe that to learn we must complete "the learning cycle." That is, we will only learn from our experience if we reflect on that experience, then generalize to draw our own conclusions, then test our conclusions by experimenting with new behaviors or techniques.
You may subscribe to Kolb's four stage learning cycle, or Pfeiffer's five stage Experiential Learning Cycle (Experiencing, Publishing, Processing, Generalizing, Applying), or Pike's three stage ADA (Activity, Discussion, Application), or another of your preference.
Regardless of which model you prefer, you believe that effective learning experiences must guide the learner through the entire cycle. In the classroom, the instructor or facilitator provides that guidance. In Team Learning, following a one-time orientation session led by the Team Learning Coach, the workbook instructions and sequence of activities guide the team through the learning cycle without a trainer. Leadership is shared by all participants.
The Team Learning Coach
How can you help Managers become more Coach-like towards their staff? This transition is being attempted at many organizations today with mixed results.
Team Learning is an ideal forum for Managers to practise their coaching skills in a safe, non-threatening learning atmosphere.
The Team Learning Coach sits apart from the learning team (who are the primary focus). But the Coach is available to add value to the discussion and encourage the group.
Team Learning Program Content
Criterion Research Corporation, an independent market researcher contracted by the Ontario Training Corporation, surveyed 78 organizations in the private, public, and financial sectors to have them identify the critical skills employers want. Based on that market research and extensive study in the area of high performing teams and dysfunctional behaviours and influences that prevent teams from performing, MRCC developed the core Team Learning programs using the team learning design methodology:
Team Learning Skills
The concepts of Reflection, Discussion, Brainstorming were inspired by Peter Senge's "The Fifth Discipline".
Addressing Conflict
Adapted from the Thomas & Kilmann model of conflict styles.
Being Persuasive
Adapted from MRCC's Presentations That Work, a program that has won international awards and received acclaim from ASTD's Journal as "the best communications course available."
Coaching Others
Designed following the principles and concepts of MRCC's successful Coaching That Works workshop program.
Customer Service Standards
Developed through a customer service initiative in conjunction with the Toronto Dominion Bank.
Effective Listening
Based on MRCC's Effective Listening workshop program, developed in 1978 in partnership with Gulf Oil.
Effective Negotiations
Adapted from MRCC's Effective Negotiations workshop program.
Giving Recognition
Developed from various sources, including General Accident Assurance of Canada.
Key Elements of Business
Developed in conjunction with Aviall Inc.
Making Decisions
Designed using the decision-making model developed for MRCC's Management 1 workshop program, developed with the support of Gulf Oil.
Managing Change
Based on the writings of William Bridges.
Partnership Sales
Adapted from MRCC's Partnership Sales workshop program, developed with Philips Lighting.
Planning Work
Adapted from MRCC's Management 1 workshop program.
Problem Solving
Developed through research from a variety of problem solving models.
Successful Meetings
Adapted from MRCC's Management 1 workshop program.
Teams That Work
Developed from various sources involved in researching high performance teams and teamwork.
The Team Learning Lab
Based on Peter Senge's "The Fifth Discipline" and the practical applications at Ford.
"Team Learning is vital because teams, not individuals, are the fundamental learning unit in modern organizations...unless teams can learn, the organization cannot learn.
The discipline of team learning involves mastering the practices of dialogue and discussion, the two distinct ways that teams converse. In dialogue, there is the free and creative exploration of complex and subtle issues, a deep "listening" to one another and suspending of one's own views. By contrast, in discussion, different views are presented and defended and there is a search for the best view to support decisions that must be made. Team learning also involves learning how to deal creatively with the powerful forces opposing productive dialogue and discussion in working teams. For example, faced with conflict, team members frequently either "smooth over" differences or "speak out" in a no-holds-barred, "winner take all" free-for-all opinion. Yet the very defensive routines that thwart learning also hold great potential for fostering learning, if we can only learn how to unlock the energy they contain. The inquiry and reflection skills begin to release this energy, which can then be focused in dialogue and discussion. Lastly the discipline of team learning, like any discipline, requires practice. Yet this is exactly what teams in modern organizations lack. In fact, the process whereby such teams learn is through continual movement between practice and performance, practice, performance, practice again, perform again."
Peter M. Senge
The Fifth Discipline: The Art & Practice of The Learning Organization