Learning Leaders, Leading Learning: achieving the Holy Grail of Manager and Leadership Development?
Dr Russell Warhurst
University of Chester, UK
Russell Warhurst is a Senior Lecturer in Management with the Chester Business School, University of Chester, UK and Visiting Professor with Aalto University in Finland. Russell researches and teaches in the areas of change management, management development, manager and leadership learning and qualitative research methodologies using critically reflective and action-learning pedagogies. Russell is Director of The Chester MBA programme. The MBA programme is offered in corporate mode to major public sector organisations including the two city councils upon which the research reported in this paper is based.
ABSTRACT
Purpose: The articles examines the extent and types of workplace learning engendered by a group of middle managers in two case-study organisations which exemplify contemporary learning challenges. A typology of learning which differentiates between individual and social processes and specified and emergent outcomes is used to analyse the learning engendered.
Design/methodology/approach: A case-study design was used with qualitative photo-elicitation interviews generating a rich data set. An inductive, grounded-theory, approach to analysis was adopted.
Findings: Considerable workplace learning was engendered by the actions and attitudes of the line-manager respondents. It is shown how various, mainly informal, learning interventions both enabled individuals to work more efficiently and teams to learn and generate new forms of practice and knowledge.
Research limitations/implications: Certain limitations of the research are identified such as the reliance on self-report data of the extent and nature of learning interventions made by the respondent managers. The article suggests specific research directions to further extend the impact of the research.
Practical implications: Practical methods for improving management education for learning are suggested; methods to enhance individual leaders’ capabilities for life-long learning and for leading the learning of others.
Originality/value: The article fills an important gap in the literature in providing rich empirical evidence of the extent and nature of line-managers’ use of direct and indirect methods to enhance workplace learning for individuals and teams. It is shown how certain of the methods used engendered expansive learning outcomes and improve organisational learning capacity.
Key Words
Managers-as-Educators; Informal-learning; Coaching; Mentoring; Communities-of-Practice.
Introduction and Context
Continuous learning by individuals, teams and organisations is a prerequisite for organisational survival and success in the contemporary world. The aim of this paper is to provide strong evidence of the empirical reality of organisational learning capability (Camps, and Luna-Arocas, 2012: 1) and specifically of workplace learning in the context of key current environmental challenges, notably the challenge of austerity. It is commonly asserted that in recession, “training budgets are the first to be cut” and Illeris (2011: 34) noted that financial restraints shifted the focus of development to engendering learning that costs little and which, ‘in a manner of speaking, comes “by itself”’. The paper seeks to evidence the extent and nature of such informal learning and specifically to critically examine the role of leaders and managers as enablers of this learning.
The research comprises a key element of a broader, exploratory inquiry inquiry that simply posed two interrelated questions to an exemplifying group of middle manager respondents. The two questions were “what does being a leader or manager mean to you” and “how have you become the leader or manager you are today”? The specific research questions which are addressed in this paper are to what extent and how do leaders engender or enhance learning in the workplace. This focus emerged from the data itself and was affirmed by assertions found within the literature that line-managers were crucial facilitators of labour processes and social relations for workplace learning (see Eraut, 2011; Fuller and Unwin, 2011; Gold, Holden, Griggs and Kyriakidou, 2010: 196; Hyman and Cunningham 1998: 100). Thus, Ellinger and Cseh (2007: 445) noted that the ‘overarching’ factor that ‘positively influenced’ employees learning at work was ‘learning committed leadership / management’.
In evidencing the extent and nature of this influence on learning, the paper completes a significant gap in the literature identified by Fuller and Unwin (2011: 54) among others. Fuller and Unwin felt that ‘much more research is needed on the workplace context’ and ‘forms of management’ that engendered learning outcomes and Ellstrom (2011: 19) similarly noted a continued ‘lack of knowledge’ about ‘conditions of learning’ within organisations.
The focus of the research is on learning within two case-study English city councils. Examining the role of leaders and managers in English local government in facilitating learning is particularly apposite as the sector exemplifies broader emerging trajectories in developed economies. Betts and Holden (2003: 287) noted that local government was traditional a slow moving sector and, moreover, a sector delivering standardised services tightly specified in national policy and thereby hardly worthy of research. However, with radical reforms to service delivery associated with the “new public management” movement reaching local government in England in the 2000s and with recession setting in from the late 2000s, the sector has come to exemplify a more general paradox. Rising demand for service standards and quality is occurring in a context of decreasing resources (Ellström, Ekholm and Ellström, 2008: 84). As recession has deepened, the national government response has been to impose ‘brutal cuts’ to local government (Burnham, 2012) making issues of change more fiercely urgent than ever and creating significant learning challenges. The learning challenges are, in particular, requiring not merely more cost effective forms of replicative learning but expansive, generative learning to deal with wholly new agendas such as multi-agency working. English local government further exemplifies a general organisational trend in developed economies in comprising, in essence, knowledge based organisation. As much routine operational work of English local government has been privatised and contracted-out, a high proportion of remaining staff are professional, knowledge workers, specifying services and managing complex contracts. Knowledge is both a key constituent of most contemporary local government services and a key output of those services. A reliance on knowledge requires that learning for all must become an inherent feature of organisational structures and work processes. Finally, the respondent local government managers were MBA educated and therefore an ancillary objective of the research is to explore the MBA influence on leaders as enablers of learning. In sum, local government is an ideal test-bed for investigating workplace learning processes and particularly the roles of leaders or line-managers in influencing workforce learning and organisational performance in a context of significant change.
Analytical Framework
The extent of workplace learning, particularly that which occurs informally and often implicitly through the processes of engaging in everyday work tasks is now well recognised. For example, Eraut’s (2011: 207) empirical studies consistently reveal that over eighty per-cent of professionals’ vocation learning can be attributed to ‘work processes with learning as a bi-product’. Such learning is increasingly well understood thanks largely to the prominence of practice theorising emanating from the seminal work of Lave and Wenger (1991). While drawing upon certain insights of such theorising, the aim of this paper is not to deepen theoretical understanding but is, rather, to analyse the ways in which informal learning is realised in the settings of work practice through the more or less purposeful actions and the attitudes of line-managers. However, to best comprehend such processes a critical consideration of established analytical frameworks at the macro and micro levels is required.
At the macro-level, Gold, Thorpe and Mumford (2010: 144) deploy a typology of learning interventions originally formulated by Rodgers et al. (2003). The authors differentiate interventions on two key dimensions as illustrated in figure one. The vertical dimension distinguishes interventions where the outcomes can be specified in advance from those where the outcomes emerge from the learning itself in the form of new practice or knowledge. The horizontal dimension differentiates interventions aimed at building human capital from those aimed at building social capital.
The four quadrants are characterised by distinct formal or informal learning interventions or development methods. Thus, for example, development methods within quadrant one would include off-the-job training courses attended by individuals and methods in quadrant two would include support for individual experimentation. Methods in quadrant three would include off-the-job training courses attended by groups and methods in quadrant four would include action-learning sets. The typology raises awareness that most formal learning and much informal learning in organisations occurs in quadrant one whereas what is perhaps needed more than ever in contemporary environments are learning methods in quadrant four. However, an organisation experiencing a normal degree of labour turnover and facing challenges of working in new ways to deliver innovative products or services, requires learning in all four quadrants of the typology.
At the micro-level, a range of researchers have investigated the characteristics of learning-rich workplaces in which learning occurs for individuals and groups and delivers both predetermined and expansive outcomes (see for example, Billett, 2004; Eraut, 2011; Fuller and Unwin, 2011; Illeris, 2011). A number of conditions or enablers of such learning are consistently identified. For example, Fuller and Unwin (2011: 51) suggested ‘two broad categories’ of workplace features which aid learning and which result an expansive learning environment. Firstly, ‘context and culture’, including job design and the organisation of work, and secondly, ‘forms of participation’. In the first area, Illeris (2011: 46) specifically emphasises job design as a key source of learning noting the educative power of work activities involving variety, task complexity and requiring problem solving (see also, Billett, 2006; Ellstrom, 2011).
The second of Fuller and Unwin’s meta-categories of enablers of workplace learning includes team-working, opportunities to participate and ‘high involvement work practices’. For instance, Sambrook and Stewart (2000: 209) who found that the introduction of team-working in their case-study firms created ‘new learning opportunities’ and Eraut (2004: 207) emphasised the importance of new professionals learning from established professionals and support staff within work teams. However, learning within teams not only serves to distribute knowledge or to develop the knowledge of newcomers but can also, through dialogue, ensure that teams come to know more than the sum of their individual members’ knowledge. In other words, work teams characterised by good, open relationships, can, if unencumbered by egos and power conflicts, generate new forms of knowledge, knowing and practice (Engestrom, 2011).
The leader or line-manager can be instrumental in creating such productive team relations, a climate or culture for learning and, in turn, in ensuring expansive learning within the workgroup. A number of researchers comment on how leaders and managers specifically enable learning of various types. Ashton (2004: 52) for instance, noted how it is within the remit of most managers to re-organise individuals’ work to provide variety and challenge with the specific objective of aiding skills formation. Eraut (2011: 187) felt that managers could have an impact simply by enabling staff to recognise the learning potential in everyday work activities such that they come to see these as learning opportunities in themselves. However, the manager can significantly extend and deepen such learning through purposefully working with staff to reflect critically on their experiences and to thereby draw out key lessons for practice. Researchers have also pointed to the role of leaders and managers as role models of learning for their staff (Ellinger and Cseh, 2007: 445; Sambrook, 2005: 104). A manager who is obviously continuously learning should be an inspiration for the learning of reports. More directly, managers contribute to learning through sensitivity to individual subjectivities in learning priorities and style, through being approachable, using a supportive style and through coaching and mentoring activities. Perhaps of most significance, individual leaders create a culture for learning (Marsick, 2009: 271) if they are tolerant of appropriate risk taking and encourage experimentation. To enable truly expansive learning environments where new knowledge is systematically generated by teams, managers need to facilitate team working ensuring the right mix of ability and experience in the team and open, dialogical communication among members (Eraut, 2011: 196). While there is therefore, considerable commentary on the roles of leaders and line managers in enabling and facilitating informal learning in the workplace there is, as noted in the introduction, only limited empirical evidence of managers’ influences on learning. The paper turns now to explain how the empirical evidence, which is the key contribution of the current research, was generated.
Methodology and Research Setting
The empirical investigation adopted a qualitative, interpretivist stance in line with the exploratory aims of the inquiry, to gain deep understanding of leadership and management in action. While this methodology precludes establishing a cause-effect relationship, it has had the benefit of engendering rich and nuanced data. The research involved photo-elicitation interviews with managers within two specific local authorities as detailed below and can therefore be classified as having facets of both a case-study and cross-sectional survey design. Respondents were asked to compile a portfolio of ten images ahead of the interviews around the themes of “being and becoming the manager or leader you are today”. Photo-elicitation enabled more considered and reflective responses to the research themes than typically occurs in interviews alone. Interviews were conducted once respondents reported that their portfolios were complete. A draft interview schedule had been prepared, fleshing out the theme question of the research. However, this schedule proved largely redundant because of the extent and quality of the dialogue engendered by respondents’ images.
Analysis of the data was largely inductive and borrowed elements from the grounded theory approach (Reissner, 2010: 288) and, as Parry (1991: 134) noted, ‘grounded theory is a research methodology in which theory emerges from, and is grounded in, the data’. The first stage of data analysis began after the initial interviews had been conducted, with descriptive codes being devised inductively from a close reading of respondents’ narratives. New descriptive codes were added and existing codes refined as more transcripts were analysed and transcripts that had already been coded were revisited. At the next analytical stage descriptive codes were compared and contrasted with themes from the literature which allowed more interpretive, theoretically informed, codes to be established. The third and final stage of analysis involved exploring certain relationships through compiling matrix displays.