Most job descriptions include the words, “must be a self-starter.” If companies want their employees to be self-starters and demonstrate strong learning agility, why not activate this skill from the beginning? During employee onboarding, learning and development (L&D) can engage the self-starters from day one and instill a mindset of continuous learning and self-leadership with each subsequent training opportunity.

The key to creating these types of learning experiences is to empower learners to have the same level of ownership over their learning as they do for the work they do in their actual jobs. This requires intentionally designing every aspect of the experience. When learners take ownership, they care more about their learning experiences, which in turn builds self-leadership and enhances company culture.

How Do You Get Learners To Care?

It begins with the person, or people, creating their learning experience. It’s arguably impossible to know if each individual end user will benefit from your learning experience, so focus on what you can control instead of trying to control what the learner will retain. Much of that is on them and should be on them to want or need to learn for their job, their career, their future, etc. Let’s trust the self-starters to lead their own learning.

Take some weight off your shoulders and understand that what you can control is the care you put into the learning experiences you create. Care is something that’s in our control because it’s what we can do. We can:

• Be intentional with everything we put into the learning design and experience.
• Ensure the learner doesn’t feel alone and always has a resource or person to go to.
• Empower the learner to think of training not as a task or activity, but something that will help them grow, personally and professionally.

Incorporating Care into Self-led Learning

If you created no training at all and threw an employee directly into a job to figure it out on their own, that employee would have no choice but to self-lead their own learning. This is the “sink or swim” learning method. It can be effective but is made more effective after incorporating care through thoughtful design.

Our brains cannot physically process information when in a state of anxiety. This is why care is so important when creating self-led learning solutions. When you’re designing self-led learning, think about taking the learner to the “alert” level just enough, but not to the point where they want to give up or they are too anxious to retain any information. We want them to be uncomfortable, but still in a place of psychological safety. For example, weight trainers want workouts to be challenging and difficult to grow muscle, but not painful. Incorporating care into the learning strategy and design achieves a similar balance in corporate training.

Below are the three components of incorporating care into self-led learning:

• Environment
• Time
• Resources

Peloton, for example, is a company that thrives on people self-leading their own fitness. They provide fitness options to accommodate any environment, at any time for any length of time, and have an abundance of resources to choose from. This same concept can be applied to how people approach their own learning and development.

Here are some key questions to think about when designing for the learner’s environment, time and resources:

5 Tips for Designing with Care

Now that you have a baseline structure for self-led learning experiences, here are the five tips that can provide boundaries and direction to guide you throughout the design process:

1.  Ask questions to determine if training is the answer.

That’s right, training isn’t always the answer to everything. If a training project is sent your way and you have doubts, ask questions. Perhaps the stakeholder feels training is appropriate because the learner doesn’t understand the process, or the process is the issue and that’s what needs fixing.

It could be that the learner needs coaching, or that an existing process or way of thinking needs to evolve. Has the stakeholder checked that the steps are correct in the knowledge base procedures, or do they need to be better communicated? Process fixes, coaching, knowledge base updates, communication, etc. are some alternate solutions to training, but to get to one of these solutions, it’s imperative that you ask questions to uncover the root cause.

If you’re not sure what to ask, here are some example questions:

• What’s the why? Why is this important?

• Note: There’s a “5 Whys method” that is very effective for determining root cause.

• What problem are you trying to solve?
• Is there a behavior change or is this a new skill?
• What is the desired outcome?

2. Know ALL your audiences.

Self-led L&D doesn’t mean the learner is alone. The learning experience should include learners creating moments with their leaders, subject matter experts, coaches, etc. You should also know your learners’ audience. Who do they support? For example, if you support call center agents and they support customers, then you should get to know the customer audience as well.

Let’s think about how we get to know our learners. There are great ways to research your audience, but a simple and effective way to learn about them is sitting down one-on-one and getting to know them individually or in small groups. Start with care. Ask them to chat with you for 10-15 minutes over coffee, so you can best learn how to support them as you create learning for them.

This can seem a little awkward at first, but if you start with care, everything else follows. Lean in with curiosity and avoid making assumptions. During these one-on-one conversations, ask questions such as the following:

• What do you like to learn? What are your interests?
• What naturally draws you in, to the point that you lose track of time?
• What did you struggle with when you first started your role? What surprised you?
• Where do you see your career going? What are your development goals?

3. Think guidance rather than handholding.

“Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.” – Chinese Proverb

Provide real-life scenarios with resources to resolve them. Teach how to fish for the answers rather than just giving them the answers. Instead of walking learners through tasks step-by-step, lead them with questions. Even if a learner guesses the answer to a question and is incorrect, they are more likely to remember the correct answer.

4. Build the design and experience, then find the tool that fits it.

It’s easy to get caught up with so many amazing high-tech learning tools, but if you’re designing with care and hearing your audience, you may not need a fancy tool. A simple checklist may fit the needs of your learner better than a shiny new tool you may want to explore. Don’t be afraid of the minimal viable product and be open to continuously refining and iterating. That may be what’s best for you and your learner and the best option to care for them.

5. Bring the Passion.

If you’re not passionate about the learning experience, then how do you expect your learners to fully engage in it? If you’re bored making the design, then your learners will be bored during the experience.

We can’t predict what our learners will retain from the learning experiences we create, but we can create them with care by thinking about the learner audience’s environment, time and resources. To help others genuinely care, incorporate care yourself and see how that care spreads to your learners, the people around them, and the organization. The more care learners put into their learning experiences, the more they are equipped to self-lead their own learning and development.

Register for the next in-person Training Industry Conference & Expo (TICE) to hear Lauren LePage’s session, “Designing with Care: Self-Led Learning Solutions.”