Going Far Together - the value of social learning
This week we take a look at the value of different types of learning and the enabling role of an effective community leader
Something I’ve long struggled to articulate sensibly is why I like being part of and growing communities. I think the thing I like is the feeling of being part of a group talking about a problem or challenge or skill or approach, and someone says something and there’s this shiver that goes through the group. A sudden collective ripple of realisation that they have stumbled upon something wonderful - that this is the moment that the path forward has been made clear and suddenly everyone in the group knows what they’re going to do and how its going to change them. I live for this feeling. The feeling that by coming together, the members of the community have found they can achieve more together than they would have done alone by themselves.
This is the feeling of social learning.
I learned from Beverly and Etienne Wenger-Trayner (both from this book and in this podcast) the definitions I now use when talking about the different ways of we as human beings learn. The first and most common type of learning is through learning partnerships - when groups of people come together to learn FROM someone. This has been so for many thousands of years - tribal members would come together around a campfire and learn from a elder how best to throw a spear and bring down a Mammoth. Our children go to school and they listen to a teacher stand at the front of a class who teaches them how to do Maths and English. When I go to the gym I ask the instructor to teach me how to use the weights machines without exploding the discs in my spine like a dropped tube of Pringles. This transactional exchange of knowledge very common and valuable in communities of practice, because of course it is - people who come together with other likeminded people to get better at what they do need to learn from somewhere, and we meet that need by having someone stand up and share something they’ve learned. We bring in external speakers and thought leaders to share what they know and increase the collective capability of the community. This is a good thing - society is built on learning partnerships. Community Leaders have a clear (if not particularly simple) task to enable these learning partnerships - ensure that there is a broad and well rounded schedule of subject matter and experiential experts to share their expertise with the community to allow for an effective exchange of knowledge and experience.
Social Learning is different. As many of you will have guessed, social learning is an additive and creation focussed process - it's the process of learning WITH others. It happens when groups of people with diverse viewpoints and perspectives come together around a common problem and develop a deeper knowledge and understanding than they could alone. No two people have the same view of a problem or a solution, because no two people are the same. We are all the sum of our successes and failures, our upbringing and background, our beliefs and our values. When we bring these perspectives together around some form of common ground, we see an amplifying effect applied to the quality of any outcomes that come from the learning process. Our collective viewpoint is much wider and richer than when doing so alone. Barriers that are insurmountable to one person are easily traversed by the group. The unsolvable becomes solvable. And the quality and richness of the social learning process is exponentially impacted by the diversity the members of the group - the broader the experiences, the more rounded the view of the problem and solution will be. For those in the software world, you might notice similarities between the benefits of social learning and those of mob programming - you’d be right of course, as they both bring about the same benefits to those who practice them. I know programmers who clutch their laptops in horror when they see teams practising it, and I know others who have tried it and can no longer imagine working any other way.
Community Leaders have a somewhat more challenging tightrope to walk when they are trying to enable effective social learning. The structures and environments needed to enable social learning can be remarkably complex - members need to feel on an equal plane with the others in the group and comfortable speaking up to share their own view point. They must have the collaborative ‘yes and’ attitude that let’s each addition build on top of the previous instead of overwriting it. The relationships between each member of the group impact the learning dynamic in ever changing ways, with even one person not playing (or not able to play) their part impacting the whole groups effectiveness. On the other hand, it can also be very simple. Sometimes all that good effective social learning needs to be effective is for the leader to shut up, get out of the way and let the magic happen. A good leader is observant and aware of their own place and impact on this dynamic, and should use their facilitation skills to help keep the group in the sweet spot for enabling learning without overbearing and disrupting the flow. As I said - not easy!
When I think of the very best work that I’ve ever done - the things I’m most proud of doing and being a part of - they all came about through social learning experiences. Times where I’ve been in groups of people and its all just clicked into place; when a thrum of electricity buzzes through the group as we all at the same time see the path made clear together, and we realise that together we’ve been able to do something meaningful - no one told us what the answer was, no one pointed us to the guidebook for our solution…..we’ve discovered something new and we did it ourselves together.
Thanks so much for reading, if you’ve enjoyed this post I’d really appreciate it if you could share it - alternatively you could always buy me a coffee :)