In Real Life: The Most Important Person in Workplace Learning

Building an awesome learning ecosystem is a team effort.Learning is not strictly the domain of L&D. Regardless of role, we all haveour parts to play to make learning a true differentiator for our employees andorganizations.

Each role impacts the employee learning experience indifferent ways. In my work, I have found that one particular role almost alwayshas a bigger impact on the employee learning experience than any other. Theperson in this role can make or break an employee’s ability to improve theirperformance. For that reason, I believe this is the most important person inworkplace learning. My finding isn’t based on scientific research or surveys oftop-performing companies. It’s simply an observation after 15 years ofpractical experience in both corporate L&D and large-scale operations.

So, who is the most important person in workplace learning?Let’s round up a few of the usual suspects (+10 for catching the Casablanca reference):

Suspect #1:The Executive

The corner office establishes the overall strategic visionfor the organization and sets the tone for workplace culture. Executivescontrol budgets and resource allocation. We also know how important theirsupport can be during L&D initiatives, including everything fromcommunication to hands-on participation.

Suspect #2:The Subject-matter Expert

SMEs have vital information people need to do their jobs.They sometimes provide performance support in the workflow, but L&D oftenrelies on them for access to the foundational information on which trainingcontent is based. And sometimes you have to chase the SME down to get that infobefore your deadline. That must mean they are important, right?

Suspect #3:The Learning and Development Professional

Of course L&D is important! After all, we’re responsiblefor building and executing the organization’s learning strategy. We have toprovide the right resources to the right employees at the right time to fosterperformance improvement. But are we the MOST important?

Suspect #4:The Employee

Employees have to be responsible their own development,right? As the pace of business accelerates and workforces become increasinglyremote, employees must take the lead and leverage every available resource tosupport their own learning. This is essential to our ability to simultaneously scaleand personalize learning.

So who is it? My guess is that many of you chose “employee”as soon as I asked the question. Yes, of course employees must take ownershipfor their continuous learning, but I’m going to list them as the second mostimportant player. In real life, an employee’s best efforts can ultimately bederailed by our final suspect: the FrontlineManager.

FinalSuspect: The Frontline Manager

There’s a reason people have taken to the “pick your boss,not your job” philosophy. As an L&D pro, I have seen how influentialfrontline managers are when it comes to their employees’ ability to develop intheir roles. As a “retired” operational manager, I also know what it’s like towield that influence. Managers are in the trenches with their employees everyday. They have direct formal authority and can choose to either tacticallysupport the learning culture or completely hide their employees from it.

Frontline managers:

• Control employees’ day-to-day priorities, schedule, andcapacity
• Assign and reinforce employee accountability
• Sit in between employees and workplace knowledgesources—often with the option to funnel information based on perceived value
•  Act as an employee’s primary source for performancefeedback

This story is further complicated by the manager’s ownaccountability, which typically focuses on short-term business objectives. Thiscan cause the de-prioritization of employee development and a relatedunwillingness to allow employees the time and capacity necessary to focus onlearning. Employees can also suffer due to inconsistent support when working inlarge operations that include multiple managers spread across daily shifts.

L&D often runs into challenges when trying to engagefrontline management, for all of the reasons I already listed. Rather thansolve the problem, we have turned to structured interactions, such as the“leaders as teachers” concept. While well-intentioned, this idea is oftennothing more than an attempt to puppeteer managers by giving them talkingpoints that support our learning initiatives.

Rather than asking for permission to support their employees—andcomplaining when we don’t get it—we have to find better ways to partner withfrontline managers and enable them as key components of the workplace learningecosystem. Here are a few suggestions:

Empathize

In my last column, I suggested that we must believeoperational context to be more important than our learning strategies. We mustunderstand our management partners’ accountabilities and align our workaccordingly. This includes building learning opportunities into the workflowand limiting potential strain on already tight operational resources. If we doask to pull employees out of the workflow, we should have a very good reasonand a measurable value proposition. “Because we have to” just doesn’t cut it.

Provideactionable information

Traditional L&D data, like competitions and quiz scores,doesn’t help frontline managers do their jobs. It just gives them more work todo as they track down people who haven’t completed an assignment. We mustimprove our data collection and reporting so we can provide actionableinformation that managers can use as part of their role. At Kaplan, we providedmanagers with a simple dashboard that identified potential knowledge gaps aswell as growing expertise by topic within their teams. By connecting learningto performance, we can inform managers’ coaching efforts and limit unnecessaryrequests for training.

Teach themto teach

Like it or not, frontline managers are often promoted forreasons other than their leadership skills. Many are simply great at the joband therefore deserve the promotion. Beyond traditional “leadership training,”we must identify managers’ potential knowledge and skill gaps and providerelated learning resources and opportunities. Specifically, we must helpmanagers become effective teachers so that we can more reliably lean on themfor support without resorting to scripted speaking points.

Supportthem in the same ways

We typically include managers in our learning strategies sothey have exposure to the same experiences as their employees. However, when itcomes to helping managers improve their skills, we often use differentstrategies—or no strategy at all. This creates a value disconnect and makes itmore difficult to “sell” approaches that focus solely on employees. Instead, weshould build our learning ecosystem using consistent resources and strategiesthat we can apply regardless of role. For example, managers and employees alikeshould benefit from on-demand performance-support resources and knowledge-sharingopportunities. This will make future strategy suggestions more familiar andpotentially acceptable to managers.

Jump in andhelp

Nothing says “I care about your business” like dropping whatyou’re doing and helping when things get rough. At the Walt Disney WorldResort, we suspended all formal L&D activity during peak operating periodsso we could help out in the theme parks. Anyone who had appropriate certifications(like me) got into costume and performed roles alongside the cast. Otherspicked up pans and brooms and just tried to keep the parks as clean as possiblefor our tens of thousands of guests. We were there when our management partnersneeded us, and we didn’t let our L&D responsibilities get in the way.

Learning often takes a back seat to the needs of “thebusiness,” and justifiably so. Sure, learning is always taking place based onthe reality of 70/20/10, but we must adjust our formal approach to make sureour efforts are consistently valued by the people we support. Executivestakeholders, SMEs, employees, and L&D all play huge roles in workplacelearning and performance. In my opinion, our first step should be to establishmeaningful partnerships with the most important players in our learningecosystems: frontline managers.

What do you think? Based on your experience, isthe frontline manager the most important person in workplace learning?