The world of work has transformed over the past few years, and the pace of change facing businesses around the world shows no signs of slowing down any time soon. In order to support employees in this new world of work, it makes sense that we need to transform our learning and development offerings, too. But how can learning leaders evolve their offerings to support modern learners, and what role does unlearning play in setting them up for success?
In this episode of The Business of Learning, sponsored by Canvas, we spoke with Bruce Landry, managing partner and chief experience officer at Canvas, and Dr. Susan Gray, chief creative officer at Canvas, to find out the answers to these questions and more.
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Additional Resources:
- Magazine – Training Industry Magazine, Fall 2022 Issue: Designing Learning With a Purpose in Mind
- Podcast – The Business of Learning, Episode 48: Beyond Training – L&D’s Role in Building Company Culture
- Article – Level-up Your Training Strategy With AI
Interested in learning more about the future of training and development? Training Industry’s 2023 Trends Report highlights six trends influencing the future of learning.
Download a PDF of the 2023 Trends Report
The transcript for this episode follows:
Speaker 1:
Welcome to the Business of Learning, the learning leader’s podcast from Training Industry.
Michelle Eggleston Schwartz:
Welcome back to the Business of Learning. I’m Michelle Eggleston Schwartz, editor in chief at Training Industry.
Sarah Gallo:
And I’m Sarah Gallo, a senior editor. Today’s episode of The Business of Learning is brought to you by Canvas. Here’s a brief message from our sponsor.
Ad:
Employees around the globe are demanding a new kind of income. Along with equitable compensation, they’re prioritizing personal wellbeing, purpose driven work, and continuous development. As a transformative learning leadership and culture change community, Canvas partners with leaders to disrupt status quo organizational thinking, to innovate new ways of working. We see a world in which all people are thriving in and because of responsible organizations. Learn more at canvasleadership.com.
Michelle Eggleston Schwartz:
The world of work has transformed over the past few years and in more ways than one. A global pandemic, the rise of remote and hybrid work and learning, as well as digital disruption in business challenges like employee engagement and retention, have all forced companies to rethink their business strategies and the employee experience more broadly. In order to support employees in this new world of work it makes sense that we need to transform our learning and development offerings too. To learn more about transformative learning, we’re speaking with Bruce Landry, managing partner and chief experience officer at Canvas, and Dr. Susan Gray, chief creative officer at Canvas. Dr. Gray and Bruce, welcome to the podcast.
Dr. Susan Gray:
Thank you. It’s a pleasure to be here, and it’s a pleasure to have the opportunity to explore how the world of work is changing. Both Bruce and I have been in this field of learning and development for the past 30 years, and it’s a really exciting time. I think we feel energized about the amount of interest that we’re seeing from clients these days around transformative learning as a foundation for organizational change.
Sarah Gallo:
Perfect. Yes. Welcome both. I want to start off really to your point, Dr. Gray, that we’re seeing more and more companies embrace learning and development as the strategic business advantage. So why do you think that we are seeing this rise of a learning culture, so to speak, in today’s workplace?
Dr. Susan Gray:
Yeah, I think after living in survival mode for so long, it’s not really surprising that we’re seeing all this unprecedented levels of burnout everywhere, right? Yet work is continuing. I think in response to the increased stress levels, the employees are demanding a new kind of income, right? In exchange for what they’re being asked to give, which is their time and effort on the job. And this new income is focused on personal wellbeing, it’s focused on balance and working smarter and not harder. It’s trying to find purpose driven alignment.
And there’s this mentality that if I’m expected to perform in the midst of ambiguity and uncertainty and change, then I, the employee, I’m expecting you, my organization, to invest in my capability development, right? To stock my toolbox with skills or insights or information. And I may need any of these at any moment in order for me to provide my best thinking and performance, right? As I’m navigating this turbulent environment. So providing learning for me, the employee, sends a message that I matter to the organization. And it’s this double win, the more I feel valued, the more I feel equipped to perform, the more success for the organization. So yes, learning is absolutely this competitive edge and an environmental uncertainty.
Bruce Landry:
I want to just add a little something there. It’s not just about learning, it’s about growth, right? They go together. When we talk about learning and growth, we’re also talking about change. We really can’t separate these. If we’re living in changed times, I would say that we’re going to need to express this desire for growth and learning. And the opposite is also true, the more we learn and grow, the more we become motivated to do things differently and to change our thinking and our actions, I would say.
I think today’s environment is inundated with not just the need for more learning, but a transformative kind of learning that encompasses individual growth and activates collective change. We think transformative learning really is the difference between surviving and thriving in this unknown.
Michelle Eggleston Schwartz:
Definitely. Thank you both for sharing. I completely agree. Learning is about growth and change and learning is definitely earning its well-deserved reputation as a strategic business advantage. I’d love if you both could share more on what transformative learning means to you personally.
Dr. Susan Gray:
I’ll take this one. I think if we think about what drives human behavior and is all of our thoughts and our feelings, our experiences, right? They create these mental models. They shape our perceptions or assumptions, and that’s what influences our actions. And when we encounter experience or a situation that’s unfamiliar, when we come across new information, what happens in the brain is it tries to tap into these mental models that we’ve created from similar past experiences, all in an attempt to minimize confusion, to accelerate our ability to solve what is perceived by our brains in that moment as change.
And it’s that process of exploring this past meaning, on expanding your perspectives, on shifting future behavior when we encounter change, that is the foundation of transformative learning. It’s not a new term. We’ve heard this theory from Jack Mezirow, professor, I think he’s a field of adult learning at Columbia University. He defines it, and we subscribe to it as a process by which we examine and reevaluate our assumptions and expectations. Why? To make them more inclusive, to make them more open, more reflective, and ultimately more emotionally able to change.
Sarah Gallo:
Yeah, it really is such an innovative concept, and it’s one I think that can really help companies navigate all of these changes that we’re facing right now, and that inevitably lie ahead. It kind of sounds like the concept of unlearning is at the root of this idea of transformative learning. Can you both talk to the concept of unlearning as it might relate to existing skills and competencies? And do you think that unlearning is just as important as learning?
Dr. Susan Gray:
This is such a good question. I was discussing this with a colleague just earlier this week, and he said to me, “Susan, I’m tired of hearing this word unlearn. It’s everywhere.” And it irritates him because he says, “Doesn’t that just mean forgetting what we previously learned?” And I would say, “no.” Unlearning is not about forgetting, right? It’s not about getting rid of old knowledge or old skills that are no longer helpful. Unlearning is the ability to reduce the influence that that old skill or the old knowledge has on our unconscious bias and our cognitive ability. I would say unlearning is a tool that allows us to learn from a previous experience, right? It’s taking patterns that were previously made and loosening them to make space for new patterns within those existing patterns. And I think the interesting thing about unlearning is it doesn’t happen in a vacuum just because, it has to be triggered, and it’s usually triggered automatically when we find ourselves in these disorienting dilemmas, right? Where previous learning or insights or the mental models are not helpful in resolving the situation.
So personally for me, I could say all learning is preceded by unlearning, loosening the influence of those previous beliefs on our actions. And especially in a fast changing environment like today’s workplace, when we are facing the unknown around every corner, I could also argue that unlearning might be more important than our ability to learn. In a state of uncertainty you don’t know yet what skills or knowledge are needed in that moment, but you will know what’s not helpful really quickly. So being able to disrupt your habitual thoughts, your behavior on demand could be the competitive edge needed to thrive in such a changing landscape.
Bruce Landry:
I think for many organizations, this is one of the most difficult parts of the process. This concept of letting go, this concept of not accumulating more, but to actually make space to look at things differently, to challenge biases, to test assumptions, to question one’s values, one’s beliefs, the behaviors that come from that and to really go through a process of examination. And I think the post pandemic landscape has really amplified that. It’s provided this rich opportunity for people to really question for themselves personally, but also on an organizational level, what do I need to unlearn? What do I need to let go of to make space for thriving in my future?
Michelle Eggleston Schwartz:
Definitely. I’m interested to hear your thoughts on how transformative learning can impact organizational change. Can you share how you’re working with companies in this way? Were they able to improve business outcomes as a result?
Dr. Susan Gray:
Absolutely. I’ll start this one, but then Bruce, I’ll pass it to you to bring a concrete example to life, right? If we think about organizational life, employees are encountering change daily or what the brain perceives as change, right? These unfamiliar situations, this disorienting dilemma. And equipping your leaders, as Bruce was talking about, equipping your employees with the ability to pause and to critically reflect, to become aware of those mental models as they move through these moments, leads to an understanding and an awareness that there may be other perspectives, other ideas, there may be better approaches that will help innovate a new way forward that I’m not thinking about. I think it’s not just about how smart you as an individual are anymore, right? It’s about how quickly can you disrupt your old habits of thinking and doing. And it’s not really even around embracing change, but to create change.
From a transformative learning lens, change is the outcome of disrupting our current beliefs and expanding those perspectives. So it’s critical not just to identify what needs to change, but to understand and question the why it needs to change. If you can truly uncover that why at a very meaningful personal level, your brain will naturally start to assess and plan how to go about changing yourself to accomplish a transformation that you’re seeking. And you don’t really need an extrinsic reward to do that. You don’t need external factors to encourage or drive you to change at that moment because you feel so compelled to do things differently. Why? Because you are different. Your thoughts have shifted and you have a compelling reason. You have a new perspective, you have clarity on the new meaning you’ve made about why this disruption is necessary and why you want to do things differently. And this why becomes your greatest catalyst for the disruption and growth that you’re about to enter into. Bruce, maybe you can bring this to life at an organizational level for us.
Bruce Landry:
Yeah, thanks, Sue. Last year, one of our clients in the digital telecommunication space came to us with a disorienting dilemma, in fact, several. Number one, they were having challenges with attracting and retaining the right talent. Two, and I spoke about this earlier, their leadership team was challenged with new hybrid ways of working in the post pandemic landscape. How do they make the old systems work? How do they get the same productivity? How do they get the same engagement scores that they had before, which they really weren’t able to achieve with the hybrid way of working? And then finally, both of these issues amplified preexisting challenges across the organization around effective communication, inclusion, and trust.
So we worked alongside their leadership team, larger coalition team or taskforce, if you will, and the entire organization to engage in critical reflection. And we asked them, what are the personal values of each person in the organization? What values best reflect the current culture? And then what’s needed for the organization to succeed in the future, and key here, and for its people to thrive?
And then we started collecting stories to better understand the context and shared and unique experiences behind their selected values. Together these steps created aligned meaning. Shared stories about their current beliefs, mental models, clarity in what’s needing to change and they began really to uncover their why. This why is so important, right? Because change often fails because we don’t understand our why. Why it’s necessary for me to work harder, to actually disrupt myself, why it’s necessary to do some of the difficult things that are required to create a stronger, more effective culture. This focus group and workshops ignited reflective dialogue, and they really served as a catalyst for the organization and all of its people to identify their motivation for engaging in this change.
And once that motivation was achieved, then we started to try to create momentum. And that momentum was generated through us facilitating with their leaders and the coalition, a cultural development plan on how to assess and improve practices in five critical cultural drivers, people strategy, effective teaming, leadership development, organizational structure and communication. And we believe that these critical drivers are the areas through which an organization can shift the culture, can create change, and are the levers to which we can create an environment for people to thrive within these organizations.
So what were the results that we saw from this? Well, several. First and foremost, psychological safety and trust went up really quickly. And once we gave them a process that valued disclosure and story harvesting in short, people who are more willing to be vulnerable, there was greater cross-boundary collaboration, people working outside silos on company-wide initiatives through voluntary task force. There was a greater investment in what it takes to support a culture of unlearning through continuous learning. Numbers are going up on talent attraction and retention, defined competencies and evaluation methods to track and hold leaders and managers accountable for demonstrating inclusive behavior. And finally, there was a greater shift in perspective around hybrid work, not as a burden or a challenge, but as a welcome opportunity to flex and value employee needs.
Sarah Gallo:
Perfect. Thanks for sharing, Bruce. I love what you said. I think it was, “Change often fails because we don’t understand our why.” That really stuck with me. I think even in our personal lives, right? Whenever we’re making a change, that motivation piece is just so, so critical. Well, now that we’ve touched on what transformative learning really is, how it can help companies build this agility they need and what it actually looks like in practice, I want to touch on the leaders’ role here. What’s the role of leaders in creating this learning culture?
Bruce Landry:
That’s a great question. If we think of leadership, not as title, but as a responsibility to cultivate, nurture, and sustain the environment needed to support both people and organizational needs, then leadership becomes a critical activator role that lives and works at the intersection of human growth and organizational needs. It becomes the critical conduit through which people understand their why and are better able to embrace change and growth.
Dr. Susan Gray:
And Bruce, I want to add this dance between human growth and these organizational needs, right? It’s a delicate balance. And in this learning culture, I think leaders have an accountability to really stay curious, to stay connected, to stay future ready in the service of positively disrupting the business in order to help achieve that individual and collective growth. And I think leaders who understand how to use transformative learning to disrupt the way things have always been done and to imagine more impactful ways of being, those leaders will actually become catalysts of transformational change.
Sarah Gallo:
And going off with that, Dr. Gray and Bruce, what should transformative leaders really be doing? What do those actions look like in order to prepare their organization for the future of work?
Dr. Susan Gray:
Yeah, Bruce and I were actually on a call this morning with a client. I’ll give you two things that we shared with them that leaders can do right now. The first is for leaders themselves to commit to their own transformative learning journey, right? Leaders must work now to increase their own self-awareness. They must understand their own limiting beliefs, their existing mental models, so that they can disrupt themselves, so that they can unlearn their habitual ways of working. And as they model their own critical reflection, as they actively seek out new perspectives to expand, to shift their thinking, they will naturally inspire others to also open their minds to positive disruption. That’s the first thing.
The second one is to anchor into this concept of storytelling and story as culture. When we think of organizational culture, it’s built on the stories that shape and sustain the way things are done around here. And of course, yes, systems and processes and routines, of course, the organizational structure plays a critical role. But man, those stories that we tell either to ourselves or to other people, they create meaning. They frame our thinking, our interactions, and they give us a sense of purpose. They give us a motivation to take action. So stories are continuously preserving or transforming the company culture. And as culture holders for the organization, the leaders have the responsibility of not just telling these stories, but harvesting them, giving voice through this reflective dialogue that Bruce described earlier.
Michelle Eggleston Schwartz:
I love that. Storytelling is so critical, especially for leaders like you had mentioned, kind of giving us that sense of purpose and motivation is really powerful in the workplace. Just shifting gears, I wanted to get your thoughts on something that consistently shows up as a challenge for learning leaders, which is measuring impact. What tips do you have on measuring the impact of transformative learning efforts?
Dr. Susan Gray:
This is such a difficult question, even if we’re just not even talking about transformative learning, but just learning, right? Any good evaluation effort, focusing on the outcome and not just the learner experience inside the learning journey is critical. We’ve got these end of course surveys that people use, right? That would rate how much has this course changed the way I think? But it doesn’t really provide a means to demonstrate how my behavior has changed as a result of any new thinking. Those end of course surveys provide only this anecdotal reporting, right? This subjective experience versus evidence of impact. But I do want to acknowledge measuring how someone’s behavior has changed because of a perspective shift is actually quite challenging. And this challenge is compounded by previous mental models that we all have that continue to support let’s use these surveys or a survey. Let’s rate and ask questions like, did I enjoy this session? How useful is it? How much do I think I’ll use this new information for me on the job now or in the near future?
So I want to redefine how we think about measurement. Let’s define it as a collection, the analysis, the reporting of data on the progress of, and the context in which learning takes place. Because if we shift that perspective a little bit, then measuring the impact of transformative learning is about being able to show where and how employees are able to change their beliefs, their perspectives and actions through reflection and discussion. That measurement becomes retrospective in nature, and it’s continuous. It requires time and the right balance of time, not too short. You want to give learners the opportunity to critically reflect, to experience changes in points of view of or their behavior. And also not too long, you want to keep a certain consistency in developing that habitual reflection and action planning to support those new ways of being.
And this kind of measurement, I think also requires other perspectives, right? Well, now we’re talking about 360s. They’re mixed in with self-reflection and feedback and observation that is collected at fixed points along the transformation journey. And I think the last thing I’ll add here is it requires us to get really granular at the organizational level on defining what does learning look like here in this company or in this team, or in this situation? And how are we as in this organization, how are we creating the conditions that support transformative learning experiences here?
When we ask those questions, we really find it’s in those one on one discussions or one to group discussions or conversations. It’s in those stories of critical reflection, of shifting perspectives on the job in the flow of work. It’s in the consistent after action reviews. It’s documenting the failures and the mistakes and the learning insights. It’s highlighting the skills that were missed, the knowledge that was needed, and then creating the plan that is activated to acquire those new capabilities. So I come back to what Bruce was talking about story. It gives voice to the new ways of working that are emerging from new ways of thinking.
Sarah Gallo:
Perfect. And since we know that creating this transformational organizational change is really a big undertaking for any leadership team, do you have any insights on one step our listeners can take toward introducing transformative learning into their workplace? How can they get started?
Dr. Susan Gray:
We’re going to give you three, not long. We’re going to give you three. And you’ve heard Bruce say this already. One, invest in transformative learning for yourself and your people, right? Embed it in all of your talent retention strategies that process, that journey. Two, design collaborative experiences for your employees. Purposely expose different perspectives and encourage that reflective dialogue to harvest those stories. And the third one is celebrate progress, not just outcomes. We like to talk about outcomes, but it is important to talk about and share, yes, the cultural best practices, but more importantly to surface the culture barriers, the feelings, the learnings, modeling that vulnerability that’s needed to explore the way that things have always been done, and then the courage to do things differently.
Bruce Landry:
I think for me, the one thing that leaders can do in an organization is to be curious. Because if you foster and develop and maintain the behavior of curiosity, that curiosity drives so much of what we’ve talked about today. Those stories, you’re seeking those stories, you want to understand those stories. You want to understand the stories you tell yourself about your culture. That curiosity, I think is such an integral part to everything we’ve talked about today. And I think that’s something that people should give some thought around.
Michelle Eggleston Schwartz:
Definitely that curiosity is such a critical part. Well, this has been such a great conversation here today. How can our listeners get in touch with you after the episode if they’d like to reach out?
Bruce Landry:
Yeah, thanks. You can look for us on our website canvasleadership.com. You can find us on Instagram at Canvas Leadership, or you can find us on LinkedIn at Canvas.
Michelle Eggleston Schwartz:
For more insights on transformative learning in the future of work, interview the highlights from this episode in animation, visit the show notes for this episode at trainingindustry.com/trainingindustrypodcast.
Sarah Gallo:
And if you enjoyed this episode, let us know. Leave a review wherever you listen to your podcasts. Until next time.
If you have feedback about this episode or would like to suggest a topic for a future program, email us at info@trainingindustry.com or use the contact us page at trainingindustry.com. Thanks for listening to the Training Industry podcast.
