Deciding to Learn and Learning to Decide: Coaching and Andragogy
The business context of the 21st century is like no other in commercial history. Organizations of all types are being called upon to operate in increasingly complex environments characterized by changing leadership, increased entrepreneurship, and evolving employee-employer relationships.
The rapidity and complexity of these changes challenge leaders and stakeholders in every industry to reinvent themselves to compete, sustain, and survive continually.
In his 1990 book Managing at the Speed of Change, author Darryl Connor wrote that change provides us the opportunity to be architects of victims of our own future. Unlike prior periods in commercial history where change occurred more gradually, controlled, and even predictably, today, the speed and unpredictability of change require leaders, stakeholders, and entrepreneurs to acquire new knowledge, competencies, and skills to innovate and compete.
Today's global change is turbulent, discontinuous, and relentless, influenced by the unyielding flow of political, social, and financial events. As a result, professionals in every industry must make strategic and tactical decisions that will impact business planning action. While decision-making, relative to planning, is a cornerstone activity in many organizations, the results are often disappointing as desired goals are not achieved.
One dimension associated with these outcomes is the theoretical and applied relationships between adult learning (Andragogy) and decision-making. A core component of adult learning is "How adults learn and apply their learning to decision-making." Coaches can play a pivotal role in enabling coachees to explore how they learn, the influence of learning on their decision-making, and how increased self-awareness and understanding of learning and decision-making can result in improved planning and performance.
Learning How Adults Learn
Adults can gain insight into their decision-making process by understanding how they learn. In his 1984 seminal work Andragogy in Action. Applying Modern Principles of Adult Education, American Educator Malcolm Knowles theorized six characteristics that influenced/contributed to adult learners; they included: 1) self-concept, 2) learning experiences, 3) readiness to learn, 4) motivation, 5) need to know, and 6) problem-centered.
An applied understanding of these characteristics and their use in coaching can help coachees identify their and coachees' preferred learning modalities. As a result, coachees can develop strategies for evaluating the role of each characteristic in their decision-making and develop a learning skill for increasing decision-making efficacy. Advancing the coachee's ability to inform decision-making through learning preferences can increase performance, productivity, and profitability.
Contemporary organizations operate in a global knowledge and data economy. The knowledge economy places value on knowing and knowing how to learn. The 16th-century English philosopher and author Sir Francis Bacon informed us that Knowledge is Power. This axiom remains true today in the 21st century. Coaches using Knowles's six characteristics of andragogy can enable coachees to cultivate a learning-decision-making connection, cultivating knowledge and data-informed orientation decision-making.
Decision Making and Experiential
American educational theorist David Kolb offers a four-part experiential adult learning model supporting informed decision-making. The model includes 1) experiencing, 2) reflecting, 3) generalizing, and 4) applying. Making business decisions can be a complex experience. Often, decision-making is hampered by questionable information and insufficient data. Coaches can guide coachees to use Kolb's adult learning model supported by Knowles's six andragogical characteristics within learning and decision-making employing/using an experiential learning perspective.
Experiential Learning and Coaching
In coaching entrepreneurs and business leaders in decision-making, many inform us that they rely on their business and life experience and close industry colleagues when the needed data is limited or its accuracy is suspect. They express that if they had a decision-making model drawing from experience, their decisions could be more informed and effective. After introducing Kolb's 4-part model to decision-makers, they have reported increased confidence that their decisions were better informed, enabling increased goal achievement.
Coaches may consider studying Kolb's model and consider its role in decision-making.
Kolb's Experiential Model
Experiencing-identify concrete experiences related to the decision.
Reflecting-analyze, synthesize and evaluate key components of the experience drawing from objective and subjective perspectives.
Generalizing-formulate new conceptualizations and ideas associated with the decision based on the experience; and
Applying-test new, emergent ideas generated from reflection and collegial feedback.
Coaching to Learn From Experience
The first-century Roman senator and historian Publius Cornelius Tacitus wrote Experientia docet or Experience teaches. Kolb's four-part experiential learning model enables coaches to assist coachees in mining their experiences for meaning and value relative to decision-making and employ the work of Knowles and Kolb to acquire insight and paths to action. Knowles emphasized that adult learners need to know why they should learn, learn through experience, and use their prior experience to continue learning. Coaches serve as models of learning and improving through experience.
By adopting and practicing Knowles's developmental model of involvement, experience, relevance, and focus, coaches become guides to discovery. They guide coachees' personal and professional exploration and development, enabling continuous learning and informed decision-making.
As attributed to Julius Caesar in De Bello Civili, "Ut est rerum omnium magister usus - experience is the best teacher.
Experience teaches, wisdom decides, and coaches enable.
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