Millions of adults around the world start new diets and join gyms at the beginning of every year. Sadly for most, these changes don’t usually last beyond the first quarter of the year. One missed workout morphs into lots of missed workouts leads until eventually, they revert to their old ways.
But let’s say one such adult gets a life-threatening diagnosis and learns that she will die if she doesn’t modify her lifestyle.
A disorienting experience like this is might be enough to make her rethink her attitude to food and exercise and make lifestyle changes accordingly.
She might find that her perspective shifts from exercising in order to look good to exercising in order to live longer.
If you have ever been one of the adults described in the first half of this paragraph, then you know how hard it is to changes for the better. Therefore, it should come as no surprise that lots of adults find it challenging to make necessary changes at work as well.
Why?
Over time, adult learners accumulate different ideas and assumptions as they attempt to understand and do their jobs. Sometimes these assumptions and perspectives prove helpful, while at other times, they hinder excellent job performance, contributing to poor organizational outcomes. Transformative Learning Theory developed, by Jack Mezirow toward the end of the 20th century, led to a breakthrough in adult learning. The theory helps adult learners question the assumptions behind their approach to work, thus beginning a quest to find more effective ways to get their work done. The strategies they come up with lead to transformation as they adopt new mindsets that result in greater efficiency. This makes transformative learning one of the most significant approaches to improving performance in the workplace.
Fostering transformative learning in the workplace
You know the saying that you can’t teach an old dog new tricks. Well, with transformative learning, you can! First, let’s look select a scenario.
Imagine a patient presenting at a hospital with uncontrollable bleeding following childbirth. After several attempts to staunch the bleeding by the gynecologist, a junior doctor suggests performing a hysterectomy. The theater nurse says nothing. The gynecologist fixates on stopping the blood flow. Eventually, the patient dies from a complication deemed preventable.
Now let’s look at possible outcomes from this scenario:
- The hospital management closes ranks classifying the death as the cost of saving lives.
- The doctor ends up embroiled in a court battle after the patient’s spouse sues him.
In the first outcome, nothing will change and patients will continue to die prematurely from preventable causes. The second outcome will lead to a disorienting dilemma. A disorienting dilemma is a significant event that precipitates a crisis in your life. It is the precursor transformative learning, but the dilemma alone doesn’t inherently guarantee transformation.
The transformative learning process, however, offers a systematic approach to orchestrating change.
Now, let’s begin orchestrating change for this scenario.
A disorienting dilemma is key to jumpstarting transformative learning but the dilemma alone doesn’t inherently guarantee transformation!
Establish a Think-Tank
It is not enough to have an dilemma that requires change. A key element of transformative learning is questioning the perspectives that led to the disorienting dilemma in the first place. One way to question these perspectives is to form a think-tank. According to the Centre for Policy Research, a think-tank is a great environment for people to reflect and become aware of their own biases.
An experienced facilitator could guide the members of the think-tank through a structured reflection process where they question why the patient died from a preventable cause. Each member could write out their answers on a sheet of paper. This process will help them surface their assumptions and uncover the thought patterns that led to the patient’s death.
Now, let’s examine likely assumptions that could have led to the dilemma in our medical scenario.
It is critical that at some point during this phase, the team interacts with others who have had similar experiences. This tells them they are not an anomalies.
They could for instance learn that on occasion, some nurses have given a patient the wrong medication, or some doctors have removed a healthy organ from the wrong patient!
Research shows that whether or not transformation occurs can be impacted by the social recognition and acceptance of peers or other learners.
In addition, when challenging old perspectives, employees may experience feelings of loss and discomfort. Hence, care must be taken to ensure they can share and reflect with others in a safe, non-judgmental zone.
Ultimately, whether or not employees successfully initiate and complete the transformative learning process depends on how they process these emotional discomforts.
Create Disruption
After surfacing the biases that could have led to poor performance, it is time to replace them with new perspectives. One way to do this is by creating disruption. The term sounds counterproductive but in learning, disruption refers to a divergence from the established models of instructing learners.
In this TEDx talk, Dr. Brenda Chaney discusses how she created disruption in her classroom by taking her college students to learn in prison with inmates. As a result, the perspectives her students held prior to their experience of learning alongside prisoners differed from the perspectives they left with following interaction and collaboration with the inmates.
New experiences like Dr. Brenda Chaney’s students had can open learners up to adopting new perspectives.
What if we put the nurse in charge of the medical team and let her make decisions regarding the patient’s care? We will be creating disruption! By seeing the situation from different perspectives, team members may be more receptive to a paradigm shift.
Here are some likely shifts in perspective that the team in the medical scenario might adopt.
Make it Sticky
Even with a paradigm shift, the transformative learning process isn’t complete unless the learners develop a plan of action or make observable changes. One way to do this is by making learning sticky.
Sticky learning refers to learning that is understood, remembered, and transferred to new contexts for lasting impact.
If we want to make learning stick in our medical scenario, the team must take actionable steps that ensure the desired results because ultimately, transformative learning should have a lasting impact on future experiences.
Armed with their new perspectives, the team could brain storm ideas and actionable steps that reflect their new insights. The team then deliberates on and researches the best ideas to come up with a new patient safety paradigm so as to complete the transformative learning process.
In this scenario, they might decide to use a variation of the mnemonic – P.A.C.E., from Syed’s book , Black Box Thinking for emergencies:
Probe – ‘Doctor, what other options are you considering if you can’t staunch the blood flow?’
Alert – ‘Doctor, blood loss is at 40% blood volume and dropping. What about a hysterectomy?’
Challenge – Doctor, we need to do a hysterectomy now or lose the patient.’
Escalate – I’m alerting the resuscitation team to do the procedure.’
Transformative Learning in Action
Adult learners don’t just segue from one perspective to another. There are critical steps that must occur for lasting change to happen.
In the wake of a disorienting dilemma, learners must:
- Engage in critical reflection by questioning the reasons for a particular perspective or approach they use in their work.
- Collaborate with others to deliberate on shared experiences and adopt new perspectives.
- Make changes that reflect their new perspectives.
In summary, transformative learning encourages employees to recognize that they can’t achieve desired goals with their current mindset, perspectives, or work processes and challenges them to gain new insights that change them. Essentially, the employees aren’t doing something different because the organization mandates it. These observable changes in their work processes and performance occur because they have experienced paradigm shifts.
Even though transformative learning offers a systematic approach to shifting paradigms, its impact is systemic – affecting the whole organization and not just it’s employees.
Transformative Learning encourages learners to recognize that they can’t achieve desired goals with their current mindset, perspectives, or processes and challenges them to gain new insights that change them.
More Organizations Need to Adopt Transformative Learning
Despite transformative learning’s effectiveness in the workplace, few organizations implement it. Consequently, organizations could be denying their employees a vital tool for optimizing their work processes.
When organizations face the challenge of redesigning work processes for employees set in their ways, they can take advantage of one of the most significant types of learning in adulthood – transformative learning.
Rather than forcing employees to adopt new work processes, training managers should create spaces for them to reflect on their existing processes and identify ways to improve them.
In conclusion, even though not all employees experience life-or-death workplace dilemmas, transformative learning can be used to address work situations authentic to any employee and sooner or later bring about the desired change.
References
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transformative learning in the workplace: A quantitative study. Journal of
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Merriam, S. B., & Bierema, L. L. (2013). Adult learning: Linking theory and practice
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TEDx Talks. (2017, May). Transformative learning inside the walls | Brenda Chaney |
Retrieved October 16, 2021, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PviJf-
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