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    • Are we mixing enough with those outside our bubble?
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    Are we mixing enough with those outside our bubble?

    Online Niel Posted on

    At a recent conference, I was surprised by the background of the audience. The Learning and Performance Institute event was billed as a Learning Impact Summit. There were participants from the education sector, personal and online trainers as well as L&D professionals. They were sellers, buyers, planners, thinkers, writers, EDI subject matter experts, university professors and corporate professionals. The enormous mix led to extremely interesting discussions and the sharing of many multi-faceted viewpoints. This mix brought new lenses to old problems. The event was an ideal time to hear new thinking and gain fresh inspiration – it became a rich and fertile ground for sharing ideas and inspiring creativity.

    It got me thinking about whether L&D practitioners are getting enough lenses on their work. Can we make sure that our products or learning programs are really what people need? Do they speak our language of learning or the right language for our business? How do we know? If we only mix with people who are learning, will our offering only suit education professionals? If we only mix with leaders, will we forget what it means not to be a manager in an organization? If we only interfere within our organization, will we get enough external factors influencing our work?

    All these questions got me thinking. What about people who are neurodivergent? When it comes to mixing outside the bubble, our colleagues living with neurodivergence often do so on a daily basis in their everyday lives. Professionals with different cultural backgrounds try to make sense of work cultures foreign to their own. The list of examples could go on and on. Societal norms and non-inclusive work cultures make it difficult for some people, while others blindly ignore the benefits of diversity of thought and experience. It’s widely reported how diverse teams lead to better results, and so we all need to make sure we get out of our bubble to think better. When we stay in our bubble, it becomes an echo chamber, self-sustaining agreement from all sides. Healthy challenge is essential for good discernment and self-examination of our own thinking and approaches, regardless of our field of activity.

    Developing the skills of effective challenge, being a critical friend and discerning thinker, along with collaboration, adaptability and conflict resolution, all come from working with people who are not like us. Skills are currently in short supply worldwide. Setting up to improve opportunities for skill development and achieving diversity of thought is a win-win situation. Learning and development can drive this change by inviting these conversations, especially in our live learning events like in-person trainings.

    By thinking more broadly about how we can influence our way out of our bubble, taking a systems thinking approach ensures that we look at work in the big picture and from multiple perspectives. It’s easier to spot the holes when we zoom out and focus on everything, not just one part. However, in our work in L&D, we are often in the micro, not the macro, spaces of our organizations. We are receptive to what is in front of us, rather than the context in which it is situated. When we also consider our context, we have a much stronger force at work in our learning programs. Moreover, our programs are more likely to be successful because we will have considered a variety of voices in the initial design, thus setting us up for success. Being clear about the problem we are solving and then providing opportunities to voice both those with problems and those with a variety of ideas helps solve problems.

    How we contract and undertake a new learning and delivery project is a key part of better consulting and development. It is not good enough to hear from a single manager who commissioned the work – often asking for a course. We need to make sure we invite ‘end users’, customers and other stakeholders into the contract to provide their ideal success criteria as they will help us focus our bottom line.

    As a solo L&Der in an organization, this can seem like a big ask to both step outside of your own sphere of influence and actively seek out different voices to inform learning solutions. I encourage you not to be discouraged and not to make fear of the unknown an excuse. Start in simple ways – a curious coffee with people in your organization you don’t usually talk to is a great way to achieve this. Meet people and discover what they are doing and what they are thinking. Reading industry press or attending industry events that are in adjacent or related industries but not your industry can also bring a new lens of appreciation. Inviting focus groups from across the business to engage in learning design is a great way to ensure a variety of voices to shape solutions. Make networking a goal for them – offering good coffee and cake (who doesn’t love cake) ensures that everyone benefits.

    I am extremely grateful for the event I attended because of the reflections around diversity of thought, mixing with those I don’t usually get to hang out with, and encouraging others to do the same. Without a doubt, the benefits of meeting new people and hearing their different ideas last far longer than sitting in the same echo chamber over and over again. Creating such reverberating waves in an organization by working in L&D can only be positive. Who can you have a curious coffee with this week?


    Michelle Parry-Slater is the author The Learning and Development Handbook

    Online Niel
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