CLO Exchange - Day 1 Review

How to entice employees to show up to work as their authentic selves and reasons why a culture of training doesn’t work are just a couple of the themes that permeated the Chief Learning Officer Exchange on Day 1.  The event is happening right now in Austin, Texas.

Stealth Learning

One of the first presentations of the day was given by Corey Rewis.  He’s the Senior Vice President and Head of Learning for Global Wealth and Investment Management for Bank of America.  His presentation was entitled Build a High Performance Internal Learning and Development Team in the Age of Overwhelm and Distraction.

Courtesy:  Mason Stevenson

From his presentation, two points were evident.

Number 1.  Creating a high performance learning and development team is all about layered connections.  At Bank of America, Rewis said these layers of connectivity exist in the way responsibility is shared.  For instance, Rewis spends 10%-15% of his time in the HR function.  That gives him a very unique perspective.  Being connected to HR, he understands learning and development from their perspective and what it means.  In a similar fashion, an HR generalist at Bank of America would spend 10%-15% of their time on duties related to learning.  By understanding the roll of each, both teams are able to execute the practice of learning in a much more effective way.

Number 2.  Learning has become stealth at Bank of America.  What does that mean?  Think culture.  Specifically, learning has begun to fade and has become a part of the everyday business.  This means that learning has become a standard practice amongst employees.

Training versus Learning

Learning eats training for breakfast.  In short, training is passive whereas learning is active.  That’s what learning is like at Allstate Insurance Company according to Rose Sheldon.  She’s the Director of Enterprise Learning Programs for Allstate.

Courtesy:  Mason Stevenson

So, why is learning superior to training?

Sheldon gave three reasons.

1. Training addresses too broad of an audience.
2. It provides ineffective measurements
3. It’s courses are sequential

Coaching is superior to Problem Solving

In her session entitled How Building a Coaching Culture Can Help Your Organization “Win” the New Leadership “Game”, Cylient CEO Dianna Anderson contrasted problem solving and coaching.  The first thing to know about the two is that both are important, however, in our current working environment there is more emphasis placed on problem solving rather than coaching.  According to Anderson, the two need to be reversed.  Putting it simply, problem solving as a primary strategy is outdated.

So, how does one shift between the two?

Courtesy:  Mason Stevenson

Anderson said getting curious about another person’s point of view is the beginning of coaching.  That coaching is made up of three critical components:

1. Courage
2. Compassion
3. Curiosity

Authenticity and Growth

According to Elizabeth Bryant, if you create opportunities for employees to learn, they will show up for work as their authentic selves.  Bryant is the Vice President of Southwest Airlines University.  In doing so, the company accomplishes two goals.  First, the Southwest Airlines has an employee who wants to be engaged with the company.  Secondly, that employee will represent the company to customers thus ensuring Southwest Airlines’ brand.

Courtesy:  Mason Stevenson

Bryant also said it was critical that learning not be, at least for Southwest, individual in nature.  For their company, the team that learns together grows together.  That’s significant when considering how employees interact with one another and with the customer.

Looking forward to Day 2

Day 2 of the CLO Exchange promises to be just as informative as Day 1.  Kate Berardo, Head of Leadership Development for Facebook is presenting on transformative learning experiences.  Also on Day 2,  a panel on Measuring ROI to prove and improve learning and development effectiveness.

HR Exchange Network editor-in-chief Mason Stevenson is in Austin covering the CLO Exchange.  Get live updates on the event from Twitter.  Make sure to follow Exchange_HR and #CLOEXCHANGE