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Social Networking: A Platform for Training New Managers Online?
Can social networking provide a practical way to help prepare newmanagers for their duties? Considering the rapid growth of social networkingadoption among younger workers, this is a question well worth asking.
Creating a curriculum for training new managers and supervisors isa common task that falls to instructional designers. The typical approach formany decades has consisted of a combination of classroom events, each lastingfrom one to five days (or more). This default design has many problems,including travel expense and time away from the job for the managers. Notinfrequently, there are severe mismatches between what is taught and the actualpractices supported by the organization’s culture.
There is an increasing number of companies and online serviceproviders who are convinced that social networking can help overcome at leastsome of the issues common to the classroom-only approach. You could think ofthe concept as a variation on so-called “blended learning.” By combining formalclassroom instruction and online reference and performance support with onlinecoaching, mentoring, and informal learning through social networking, a newmanager can gain a solid theory foundation, just-in-time help, andculturally correct application pointers.
Some history
This is not to say that this will happen just by setting up a wikiand making all new managers open a Twitter account. Technology alone will notsuffice, and especially not indiscriminately applied, unsupported technology.In fact, it could aggravate the new manager’s confusion and performanceproblems.
Are there any precedents that offer best practice principles toguide implementation? Let’s start by going back a century or three.
Informal learning in 1727
Formal structures to support and leverage informal learning havebeen around literally for centuries. Two early examples, from the eighteenthcentury, are the Lunar Society of Birmingham (whose members called themselves“lunaticks”) in England, and Benjamin Franklin’s Junto (pronounced “june-toe,”“juhn-toe,” or “who-n-toe,” depending on whose account you are reading) inPhiladelphia. They did not call themselves “informal learning groups” (Franklindescribed his Junto as a “club of mutual improvement”), but if you look at whatthey did and how they did it, the description is accurate.
How did these early groups function?
Many of the early informal learning groups were around for decades(Franklin’s Junto survives to this day as The American Philosophical Society),and their members were not all in the same geographic location. Their survival,in spite of the geographic separation of their members, was due in largemeasure to:
- Focus on a defined area of activity: Franklin’s Junto was concerned with “Morals, Politics, or NaturalPhilosophy [physics].” The Lunar Society, at least at first, concentrated onscience and its practical applications.
- Ground rules and process:Franklin provided a list of 24 basic questions to guide discussion, but he described theheart of it this way: “The rules that I drew up required thatevery member, in his turn, should produce one or more queries on any point … tobe discuss’d by the company; and once in three months produce and read an essayof his own writing, on any subject he pleased. Our debates were to be under thedirection of a president, and to be conducted in the sincere spirit of inquiryafter truth, without fondness for dispute or desire of victory; and to preventwarmth, all expressions of positive opinions, or direct contradiction, wereafter some time made contraband, and prohibited under small pecuniarypenalties.”
What does this have to do with informal learning online?
If you look at the groups that survived in the days when“communications technology” consisted of handwritten letters delivered on footor by horseback, and then look at today’s online groups, many of which do notlast more than a few months, it is clear that we can learn something from thosewho came before us.
First, the group members shared strong common interests within aspecific scope. Second, the process assumed that each member had something tocontribute, and it also ensured that each would contribute. Third, thetechnology (paper and ink, hand-delivered letters) didn’t matter as much as thesocial context.
Our technology in 2010 is vastly different from what Franklin andhis colleagues could ever have imagined, but it is still less important thanthe specific scope, mutual contribution, and the accepted ground rules andprocess.
Fast forward to the Third Millennium
Informal learning, as an object of attention by researchers, is nota new topic. However, it only appeared on the radar screens of instructionaldesigners less than ten years ago. The emergence of online social media has ledto the notion of somehow tapping into the potential of this channel, thatcarries so much of the real learning that goes on in organizations. For some,it has become a “top of mind” concern. You can see how the use of informallearning within organizations was emerging by 2006 in The eLearning Guild’s InformalLearning Research Report of that year.
In our current age, we have plenty of channels in which informallearning can take place: everything from microblogs (Twitter), to communities(LinkedIn Groups, discussion forums), to user-created content (wikis, Weblogs,YouTube), to social bookmarking (Delicious), and surely more to come. And wehave plenty of discussion and debate among instructional designers as towhether learning actually does take place in these channels, even though theefficacy of informal learning is well established. Do a Google search on“informal learning research” if you need specific evidence.
But we also have plenty of examples of attempts at use of thesechannels in which the attempts failed. The virtual landscape is littered withthe remains of abandoned wikis, content-less and comment-less Weblogs, andLinkedIn Groups where the spam has driven out the discussion and all buteliminated any possibility of learning. (As the administrator of The eLearningGuild’s Group, I am happy to say that this fate has NOT befallen our Group, duein large part to a strict no-spam policy as well as an outstanding group ofover 12,000 members.)
Existing informal learning groups online include a surprisingvariety of formats, including some modeled on the Junto (for example, TheMontreal Junto https://montrealjunto.com/). A more typical example is Jay Cross’ Internet Time Community,formerly on Ning but now on Grou.ps (https://grou.ps/internettime/). Participants in the Twitter #lrnchat sessions also comprise anongoing informal learning group.
Clearly, if informal learning is going to take place online, itmust be self-sustaining. What factors support this?
What makes informal learning online work?
Looking at the groups that are successful, here are the factorsthat seem to drive participation and commitment by members.
- Focus: By definition, informallearning is that which takes place between individuals who self-identify insome way as members of a group with a common interest.
- Payoff: The most successful groupsprovide an inherent incentive for participation; this may be tangible in nature(personal development that leads to advancement in position or compensation),or it may be intangible (increase in reputation, appreciation by others).
- Dialogue: The group norms encourageparticipation.
- Leadership: There are leaders whoorganize what needs to be done and keep things moving; sometimes these arewell-known people, and sometimes they are people who are known within the groupto be reliable.
- Membership: The group is large enough,and members are active enough, and there is a sufficiently diverse base ofexperience that most questions draw a response in a short amount of time.
If a group lacks focus, or focus is too narrow, if the group’sprocess is too complicated, if there are not enough members, and if there areno rewards for participation, the group will fail. Informal groups are a lot ofwork to establish and maintain, and the work falls equally on all members.
Setting up a social network for manager training
The first task is to establish a design for the social interaction.This must come before technology selection, so that the limitations of thetechnology do not drive or constrain the interaction. As with Franklin, thesetup begins by defining the focus for the network. Is the group meant for newfirst-line supervisors or for new mid-level managers? Is the objective of thenetwork to support development of leadership and communication skills, or tosupport application of critical policies, such as those relating to ethics?Next, provide some general guidelines or principles that will serve to supporta healthy group process. Again, Franklin’s rules and 24 basic questions mayprovide you with a starting point.
Getting to the technology
When these tasks are completed, start identifying whichtechnologies will best support the focus and the process. Jane Hart providessome excellent resources to help you in this:
- https://www.c4lpt.co.uk/Directory/Tools/social-L.html
- https://janeknight.typepad.com/pick/2010/04/115-social-networking-and-collaboration-spaces.html
- https://c4lpt.co.uk/Directory/Tools/communication.html
You mayalso want to look at platforms that allow you to configure a collaborativespace. These include:
- Ning https://www.ning.com
- Grou.ps https://grou.ps
- SocialGO https://www.socialgo.com/
A purpose-built platformfor manager development
Although the name sounds like a riff on an Adam Lambert song, What DoYou Want From Them (WDYWFT) is a Charlotte, North Carolina-based servicedesigned from the ground up to enable organizations to create private socialnetworks that facilitate the professional development of low- to mid-levelmanagers. This platform (https://www.whatdoyouwantfromthem.com) leverages social media and networkingspecifically to provide training and support for new managers.
The features of WDYWFT make it possible for an organization to helpnew managers learn about policies, ask questions, receive mentoringand leadership training, and discuss career advancement opportunities. It alsoprovides the organization with a way to explain legal issues, provide ongoingfeedback to managers, and demonstrate commitment to professional developmentinitiatives. Configurable social software in WDYWFT can also fosterpeer-to-peer learning, collaboration, and innovation.
WhileWDYWFT is primarily a private group, it also makes it possible to extend accessto a global community of managers around the world. This makes it possible fornew managers to expose themselves to different leadership styles andperspectives, share knowledge, ask questions, and find support.
Why consider a social network for manager training?
AnnaSmith, the principal of WDYWFT, points out the fact that workers in their 20sand 30s expect to be able to use the latest IT applications in their workplace.They are used to social networking online, and to online learning, oftenpreferring these to classroom instruction. As Smith says, using socialnetworking leverages technology tools that young managers already use on adaily basis. “By engaging them on their terms and in their language, we’retaking an inside approach to training and developing the potential oftomorrow’s business leaders. In addition, this also will encourage opencommunication between companies, employers, HR departments, owners, andmanagers.”
Theseare the workers who will be your new supervisors and managers. Withoutappropriate technology tools and resources available in their work environment,they may look for help from non-work related services such as Facebook.com. Integratingsocial media into the development environment eliminates this potentialchallenge and at the same time increases the potential for success of thedevelopment effort and of the new managers.
