Following is Phil LeNir, Executive Director of CoachingOurselves, in an interview for Creelman Research 'Thought Leaders' on Social Learning.

Creelman Research 2009. vol. 2. 10
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Phil LeNir pioneered the use of social learning when he was an engineering manager not because he was some kind of visionary, but because he desperately needed a better solution to management development than he could find in the marketplace.
Born of necessity Phil has become an expert in the practical application of social learning among managers. In this interview he shares his ideas about the topic.

DC: Phil, tell me about how managers
learn.
PL: Let me answer by asking you to ponder
how you learned to be a manager; think
about the processes by which you and your
fellow managers are improving.
I can’t say exactly what it is that made me
into a manager, but I don’t think it had a lot
to do with lectures or e-learning. You may
not change a lot in any given year, but if you
compare the you of today with where you
were five years ago, you’d recognize you’ve
learned a great deal. Well, how did that
happen?

DC: It’s hard to put a finger on it besides
saying ‘experience’.
PL: Dr. John Seely Brown talks about two
types of learning. One is Cartesian learning
which assumes that knowledge is a
substance and pedagogy concerns the best
way to transfer this substance from teachers
to students. This is an approach that most of
us have experienced from a young age. In
classic LMS terminology we talk about
learning objects which are transferred to the
learner. There is nothing wrong with this for
some contexts like learning the alphabet, but
when it comes to learning how to manage it
doesn’t have much to do with Cartesian
learning.
The other kind of learning is social learning
and it is socially constructed based on
conversations about the things we are
working on. I believe that most management
learning occurs through this process,
through discussions with your colleagues
that help you make sense of your
experiences. That’s what is going on when
we say we learn from experience.

DC: Do professors have any role in this
kind of learning?
PL: Yes, but it’s less about downloading
facts than it is providing concepts that help
managers organize their thinking and talk
about their experience.
For example, this discussion we are having
today is enriched because an academic has
made this helpful distinction between social
learning and Cartesian learning. But we
won’t really learn it by reading about it or
listening to a lecture. It’s when we take this
concept and talk to other managers and think
about how learning has occurred in our own
lives that it begins to make sense. Then as a
manager you move to “and here’s how we
can use these ideas in our organization.”

DC: So how should we help people learn
to be better managers?
PL: You don’t send managers on a course to
learn management, they need to get on with
it and learn from experience. But social
learning can accelerate their growth as
managers.
Here’s how it’s done. Simply carve out
some time, maybe an hour a week, to learn
and reflect. This works better if you gather
some colleagues who are having similar
experiences so you can talk about your
reflections and share your experiences.
If you can bring in some outside concepts
from the academic world, you’ll probably
find that brings added value to this
discussion of experiences. That’s what I did
when my team and I needed to improve our
management abilities and it worked really
well.

DC: This sounds a little like action
learning.
PL: Yes, action learning is a type of social
learning. It has the main elements I’m
talking about: a group of managers working
in the real world and taking time as a group
to reflect on their experiences.
The only trouble with action learning is that
you need the right kind of project and that
needs to be orchestrated—so it’s hard to do
on a large scale. I think social learning
occurs as a natural part of management and
you just want to encourage it with some
everyday meetings that allow for reflection
and conversation.

DC: What about communities of
practice?
PL: Those provide a mechanism to enhance
social learning as well. Although I think you
find those are often more for technical topics
rather than management. You might find
that aircraft engine technicians from
different companies can have a great sharing
of learning in communities of practice
because they have the common context of
the engine itself. For managers this is harder
to do because the context is so different
from place to place; you learn best from
people who know the context.

DC: Can social learning go wrong?
PL: I’m not sure if it can really go wrong,
but it certainly won’t work among managers
until you build up a feeling of trust. Unlike
more technical subjects, discussions about
how we manage touch upon sensitive areas.
So make sure you pay attention to the trust
issue.

DC: Tell me about your own experience
with social learning as a manager.
PL: Normally there are a lot of filters on
what you share with your peers. I might say
just a little about some subject to a peer and
when I get home I’ll tell my wife the whole
story about what really happened.
With social learning we found that our
group of managers was opening up this
space of trust. Suddenly it wasn’t the
engineering manager talking to the
production manager; it was Steve talking to
Maria.
The sort of honest sharing that came through
that discussion enabled a kind of learning
that I can’t imagine occurring any other way.
It was also a lot of fun, we laughed all the
time.

You can reach Phil LeNir at
phil@coachingourselves.com

The original publication of this interview can be found at http://www.creelmanresearch.com/files/Creelman2009vol2_10.pdf