Читать книгу The Art of Waking People Up - Kenneth Cloke - Страница 40

As educational philosopher John Dewey pointed out decades ago, every experience persists into the future, leading to new experiences that either enhance or block future growth: “Just as no man lives or dies to himself, no experience lives and dies to itself. Wholly independent of desire or intent, every experience lives on in further experiences. Hence the central problem of an education based upon experience is to select the kind of present experiences that live fruitfully and creatively in subsequent experiences.”

The learning continuum Dewey describes requires feedback, coaching, mentoring, and assessment processes that amplify learning experiences and encourage employees to proceed confidently into fresh encounters. While we can learn important lessons from every experience and each piece of feedback, certain experiences teach us deeply who we are and how to behave. It is these experiences that wake us up and invite us to see all of work as an opportunity for lifelong learning.

Few organizations communicate that lifelong learning is valued, unless it can be demonstrated to result in discernable competitive advantage or increase profitability. Few organizations devote significant resources to developing the natural intelligence and humanity of their employees. Few empower employees to challenge their authoritarian practices. Few actively encourage genuine risk-taking, play, creativity, and ownership—yet these are precisely the traits organizations need the most.

Organizations with leaders who are committed to lifelong learning encourage employees to welcome information that fuels their growth and development, especially when it is critical, unpleasant, or contradicts deeply held assumptions. They create cultures in which criticism is seen as the highest form of compliment, where mistakes are seen as natural and failure as essential to growth. At every moment in every working day, learning organizations challenge employees at every level to recognize that no matter how successful they have been, no matter how much they have achieved or think they know, there is always room to master the subtle, challenging, arduous, endlessly intriguing art of waking up.