Learning Integration and Bridging the Knowing Doing Being Gap

Over the past few months, I have interviewed over 40 people who are either responsible for leadership development in their organisation or executive coaches who are responsible for helping individuals make progress on their development. The key finding is that so many individuals struggle to integrate their learning post a development experience. Effectively they grapple with bridging the knowing-doing-being gap.

I found a bunch of organisational systemic factors that contribute including:

1. Work Horizon (Busyness, focus on task, in the here and now)
2. Cultural Misalignment (lack of focus on quality feedback, low learner safety and lack of experimentation)
3. Lack of Will and Skill of Line Managers (little focus on role modelling by the manager, coaching, sense making, feedback and creating the holding space for practice)
4. Little Context Applicability (the learner’s context does not allow for immediate application and practice)

I also found a whole bunch of individual systemic factors that impact on learning integration. These include:

1. Lack of Clarity of Development Need (learners not knowing the what and the why of their development, framing it too broadly or at a surface level)
2. Mindset (holding on to a fixed mindset, not primed for the learning experience, focused on self protection not self improvement)
3. Identity (uncomfortable with the stretch, unwilling to let go of default behaviours and beliefs, would prefer to learn than change)
4. Low Learning Integration Skills (unable to break the learning down, little experimentation or sense making, little attention to reflective practice)

One of the things I learnt in my research was, despite the impact of organisational constraints on learning integration, there were individuals who were able to make progress on learning integration and their development. They are what I call the Self Determining Learner.

If you want to know more about the findings of my research as well as what Self-Determining Learners look like please join me, and those who contributed to the research, at a Webinar on Thursday 10 August at 4:00pm. If interested, please direct message me at LinkedIn or email andrew@agilityconsulting.com.au or let me know in the comments.