OESD Tip: three strategies for learning with purpose

Yale Organizational Effectiveness and Staff Development offers this tip to all managers of staff members at the university.

Support your team members’ intrinsic motivations without forgetting their external ones
Intrinsic motivation (personal goals and desires) affects overall achievement more than extrinsic motivation (compensation or recognition for a job well done). This theory suggests that when you’re looking to motivate your team members to perform at a higher level, seek to understand what their internal motivations are and nurture them. By doing so, you could see greater overall benefits because your team will be more poised to achieve its ultimate goals.

Influence your employees to become more self-directed
There have been several research studies published that suggest that employees that are highly self-directed are also the highest-performing staff members in an organization. Self-directed learners set their goals and achievement standards with or without the help of experts. In fact, they use experts as well as other resources to pursue their accomplishments. Dependent learners require an authority figure to give them explicit directions on what to do, how to do it, and when to do it. Most often they are not top performing employees since they require greater levels of direction. The good news is that self-directed learning is a skill that everyone can improve upon and reap the related benefits of.

Managers are the first line of learning defense
In a very recent study conducted by Cornerstone’s Thought Leadership & Advisory Services group, the question “What do you do when you cannot find the right information?” received an overwhelming response of “Ask my manager.” In a self-directed learning environment, arguably the manager is the most important resource in influencing a team member to become more self-directed. As a manager, you should be confident in  this knowledge so you can support an employee’s self-direction and learning motivation. When you master this, your team (and organization) has the chance to exponentially grow in its health and performance.