Characteristics of Personal Mastery and Effective Team Learning - Essay Example

Characteristics of Personal Mastery and Effective Team Learning Based on Peter Senge’s five disciplines of organizational learning, this paper explains in detail two disciplines with significance to organizational learning, i.e. personal mastery and team learning. A detailed account of personal mastery and team learning has been elucidated through respective definitions along with their characteristics and contributing factors, in relation to real life situations. Further, a critical evaluation of the two disciplines has been explained in brief. The paper concludes with important learning acquired in the process. Word Count: 2667 words. (Excludes abstract and references) 1. Introduction and significance of organizational learning Organizational learning has become the core ground for corporations to reinforce their competitiveness and sustainability in the market, achievable through their employees’ creative thinking, decision making problem solving capabilities, and readiness to accept and assimilate changes in external as well as internal forces that influence organizational effectiveness and sustainability. Peter Senge’s (1990) extensive work on identifying ways to foster and enhance organizational learning has provided much help to leaders/managers. Senge’s (1990) grounding principles of organizational learning have helped many management theories of learning and motivation through five main components of learning organization that include systems thinking, personal mastery, mental models, building shared vision, and team learning. According to Senge, personal mastery is a skill that helps in developing an objective view of reality, which is essential for leaders in decision making, problem solving and crises management. Senge also extensively asserts team learning is the most essential ingredient of organizational success. This is fundamentally based on ability to establish dialogue with peers so that everyone in the team learns from each other’s perspectives of thought and experience. An in-depth understanding of two of these elements, i.e. personal mastery and team learning has been obtained through extensive study of literature, theory in relation to practical experiences encountered at workplace. According to Senge (1990), learning organizations help all people to continuously expand their capacities to create results that they truly desire, and new and extensive ways of thinking are nourished, facilitates collective aspirations and constant learning to learn together. Thus, contemporary management believes that organizational learning is a multidimensional process, and is not possible through traditional one-way thinking. Personal mastery and team learning are two competencies that help employees to improve their awareness and realization of management tasks and decision making. This awareness and learning will further help managers to maximize the potential of their employees; to achieve optimum results; encourage employees to think creatively and analyse situations from different perspectives. Through self mastery of these skills and also helping employees acquire these skills, managers can not only contribute to better and creative decision making but also empower their subordinates to take critical decisions; this process can further enhance creative thinking and chances to choose the best possible solution can be increased. Slocum, McGill and Lei (1994) referred to learning organization as the one that develops a strategic intent to learn, a commitment to experimentation, and an emphasis on learning from past success and failures (cited Keys and Fulmer, 1998; p.7), a view in line with Senge’s five components of learning organization. For example, a systems thinking encompasses strategic intent to provide or facilitate learning; building shared vision, team learning and personal mastery encourage and support creativity and innovation through new ways of thinking, thus reinforcing a commitment to experimentations. Thirdly, reflective thinking of mental models in relation with a shift in thinking involved in personal mastery help individuals to learn from past success and failures. Characteristics of Personal Mastery and Team Learning The concept of personal mastery involves cultivation of personal impetus to continually learn how actions affect an individual’s external and internal world. Without an attempt to gain personal mastery, individuals will never realize the root cause of issues and problems that do not seem to have any solution; individuals tend to view these issues and problems as highly complex and intertwined and impossible to understand or resolve. Senge (2007; p.12) relates the essence of personal mastery, i.e. realization, to ‘metanoia’ or ‘shift of mind.’ Much before Senge, Albert Einstein had advocated similar philosophy, stating, ‘the significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them’ (cited Kreutzer, 2006; p.229). Relating these two philosophies, it can be understood that ‘learning’ refers to changing the viewpoint and inviting and accepting others’ views/perceptions rather than grasping information. Learning is the fundamental ground to personal mastery, which should eventually and continually lead to re-creating oneself. A continuous process of learning helps individuals to bring about a paradigm shift in their thinking and approach, and help in achieving goals that once seemed unachievable. Salonen (2004) sums up that personal mastery may be characterized by personal vision and action, a commitment to the truth, contact with one’s subconsciousness, a conscious reflection on mental models created through experience and perception, and an ability as well as consciousness to see the big picture. To begin from the last feature, ability to see big picture will help individuals to take appropriate decisions to achieve intended outcomes in short term as well as sustain the results for longer term. For example, to enhance productivity of a team, if a manager opts to incentivize good performance within a team with rewards and/or bonuses without attempting to understand motivational needs of his team members, the results would definitely show an increased productivity; however, the results’ sustenance cannot be promised. Before deciding on incentives/bonuses, if the manager puts an effort to understand team members’ behaviours, connections with each other, specific areas of improvement, situations/issues/challenges faced by each member in relation with and out of work that directly or indirectly impacts work, then the approach to enhance productivity of the team would be different. Without attempting to look at long-term outcomes, such schemes as incentives/bonuses for better performance may become monotonous, increase variation between high and bottom performers; create conflict of opinion, relationships and even biasness within the team, all of which can prove more detrimental to team performance. Having a personal vision can help an individual to realize what his/her priorities are; what is important and not important; what motivates and what misleads; and helps in driving the individual towards performing appropriate action that will help in achieving the personal vision. Personal vision should not be a short-term achievement, should have short-term objectives to achieve the long-term vision. By realizing what is important, an individual can avoid what is not important and see reality with greater clarity. Personal vision and action also direct the individuals towards realization of principles and values they hold. This is important because individuals’ principles and values decide the actions they take, and also the type of resulting outcome. Individuals’ awareness of deeply held values helps in gaining an insight into how the outcome would impact their objective/success. Seteroff (2003) emphasizes that a clear personal vision will help in making decisions subconsciously that are in line with our core values and beliefs. For instance, when an employee works only to get noticed and/or receive appreciation, he/she may achieve it in the short term. It becomes a natural tendency for the employee to continue to display the same behaviour, with little attention towards peers’ requirements in terms of assistance, managers’ expectations in terms of taking on additional responsibilities or contributing to other activities such as training and/or assisting other team members; this individual may eventually feel left out and ignored. Thus, a reflection of individual behaviour is important in order to anticipate or assess the outcome. Without followers there cannot be any leaders; leaders exist because they listen to followers and vice versa. Stephen Covey (1989) advocates the importance of listening for understanding others, which is one of the most important aspects of leadership. This, he refers to as empathic listening, a means to acquire accurate data before forming any assumptions, feelings, motives or interpretations; it helps in reaching the reality from other person’s perspective. Empathic listening also paves way to form a commitment to truth; individuals can avoid thought or feelings-based biases through empathic listening. For leaders, empathic listening helps to avoid perception formation about their members and understand the situation in complete reality/truth. Gandhi had once stated, “You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free” (cited Nair, 1996; p.20). Considering a team member who has not been performing up to the expectations and requires being listened to by the leader, which in turn will help the leader to adopt right approach to counsel, coach or mentor him. In the absence of empathic listening, the leader may mislead or mismanage the individual, which will further worsen the situation and even demotivate the individual. Senge (1990) emphasized team learning as the most essential element of organizational learning because organizations are formed of teams, and performance is also measured team-wise. Teams are expected to achieve more than sum of individual achievements. Therefore, team learning can be highly advantageous for an organization. In team learning, individual knowledge is transformed into collective knowledge through sharing, and is used for collective (team) advantage. Dechant, Marsick and Kasl (2000; p.5) define team learning as a process through which a group creates knowledge for its members, for itself and for others. However, for effective team learning to happen, favourable contexts have to be created or facilitated. For instance, team consisting of more than one individual would require a reason to talk or interact; team alignment along with facilitation to learn; cooperation among team members; effective dialogue creation and contributing to co-creation of dialogue; ground rules to be followed during discussion such as equal opportunity for all members to express their opinions and with honesty; emotion-free and non-judgmental mindset. Dechant et al.’s (2000) studies identified that team learning happens in three phases, namely, fragmented phase determined by individual team members’ previous experiences, pooled phase formed by sharing information and different perspectives, and synergistic phase characterized by mutual knowledge creation. These phases are dependent upon the resolution achieved and are non-sequential. Fox, Fourie and Wyk (1998; p.47) sum up that team learning implies change: change in the abilities of individuals and changes in the abilities of teams. 2. Factors contributing to personal mastery and effective team learning Jones and George (2004) suggest that creating complex mental models help in creating complex ways of thinking for an individual. The individual can then choose the best or most appropriate information from these complex models that will be close to accurate ways of performing tasks. Behaviours such as trying out new methods of dong tasks can further enhance personal skills; however, appropriate risk assessment of the decisions or new methods is important to avoid any devastating outcomes. Ladders of inference are effective explaining the attitudes that individuals usually carry. First developed by Argyris (1985), ladders of inference help individuals to realize their own assumptions and conclusions, and how they shape relationships with others. In addition, they also help in predicting the outcome of assumptions based on no or incomplete information or data. By reflecting upon a ladder of inference, individuals can relate their behaviours to specific situations or incidences based on complete information; thereby, assessing all realities involved in the situation. On the whole, ladder of inference can help individuals to enhance the effectiveness of their communication by reflecting upon their thinking in relation with different incidents that occurred; improving the ability of making their thinking and reasoning more clear to others; and attempting to know others’ thinking and reasoning. This will in turn help in eliminating perceptions or misinterpretations, and building better understanding by avoiding arguments (Wilson, 2007). Ego management is another important factor contributing to personal mastery. For this, individuals will have to learn how to listen to others’ viewpoints and not defend their own viewpoints; i.e. individuals have to learn how to give importance to others’ perspectives on a common situation. Emotions need to be avoided in order to accept others’ viewpoints, instill trust and sensitivity, and develop an ability to understand instead of judging others. These factors are equally important for team learning to happen. From a team learning perspective, the ladder of inference can be very effective because it creates a path to lead others to the links of one’s reasoning. Members may or may not agree with the point, but they can rationalize other person’s opinion. Communication is considered as a cross-cutting factor in team learning (Taylor, 2004), because it involves different skills such as empathic listening, speaking as well as non-verbal cues. For learning to take place, dialogue creation is the most important ingredient of communication process. Through dialogue creation, two or more individuals can get engaged intentionally with the goal of increasing understanding, addressing problems, and questioning thoughts or actions (Romney, n.d). Gradually, this process of dialogue creation should lead to co-creation of meaning that all team members relate to, and also makes teams more powerful (Gobillot, 2007). Thirdly, teamwork includes openness of team members to hearing and considering others’ ideas besides valuing their own role and contribution to team learning. All team members have to receive equal opportunity to give their input, whether viewpoint or objection, in the learning process. Thirdly, operating principles of the team such as establishment of goals and mission, time management, task allocation, and following a systematic approach to decision-making and problem solving processes (Dechant et al., 2000). Building a shared vision will enhance team learning because it fosters alignment of all members towards a common mental model. 3. A Critique According to Senge (1990), barriers to learning at personal and team levels mainly include egotism, misinterpretation of data and unavailability of data. Learning from one another is barred by disagreements on conclusions reached based on specific actions taken which were determined by their beliefs, available data and information and experience. These disagreements could be a result of misguided beliefs, our own feelings about the beliefs based on perceived ‘real’ data and ‘truth’ derived from this real data. Secondly, leaps of abstraction created by our chosen data and action based on our beliefs conceal the rest of the process that lead to the action/decision. Human beings tend to see what they already believe and vice versa, referred to as reflexive loop. Long data and time can obstruct people from realizing the root cause of their learning or attitudes they developed over time. Although organizational learning is advocated as a significant component of contemporary organizations, true learning is impacted by its culture, leadership and management styles. Secondly, organizational structures that are flat and decentralized can foster better learning. Its information systems should be able to provide fast feedback on the performance of the organization and effectiveness of learning strategies adopted (Argyris, 1999). Argyris questions the practical applicability of organizational learning principles, and questions their impact on individual and team performance in the long run. In practical sense, human beings cannot go back in time to reflect on ladders of inferences that would have created relationship barriers; even if they do, it may not possible for them to explain it to others. Other psychological factors that hold back certain aspects of personal mastery include time constraints, clarity of information owing to memory, and personal vision and intention. From team learning perspective, barriers include time constraints, multicultural influences on members’ behaviours and interpretation of behaviours, and even distance (in case of virtual teams). 4. Conclusions and Learning In conclusion, two of the five elements of organizational learning proposed by Senge, personal mastery and team learning are inter-related. Without personal mastery, team learning cannot take place. For personal mastery, one should be able to understand and relate to the reality; have a thorough awareness of his/her beliefs and values that shape self behaviour; requires a change of mind from assumptions and feelings/perceptions-based thinking to information/data based assessment of situations; and an ability to connect with others through trust, sensitivity, empathic listening and open-mindedness. Personal mastery can be achieved by mapping ladders of inference, accurate and large data, and a non-judgmental emotion-free attitude. Team learning is much more effective than personal mastery because the outcome of learning will be greater than individuals’ contribution. For team learning to take place, all team members’ thinking needs to be aligned towards a shared vision, besides all skills of personal mastery. Team members should be open to discussion and participation; should be able to accept all members’ differing insights without any biases. Operationally, team discussion or learning process should be facilitated through appropriate goal setting and dialogue creation, monitoring of time, avoiding distractions of all forms, and a continued focused towards the goal. References Argyris, et al. 1985. Action Science. San Francisco: Jossey Bass publishing. Argyris, C. 1999. On organizational learning. 2nd ed. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. Covey, S. 1989. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. London: Simon and Schuster UK Ltd. Dechant, K, Marsick, V and Kasl, E. 2000. Team Learning: A model for Effectiveness in High Performing Teams. In Beyerlein, M.M, Johnson, D.A and Beyerlein, S.T’s Team development. New York: Emerald Group Publishing. (Ch.1; pp: 1-20). Fox, W, Fourie, M and Wyk, B.V. 1998. Team Learning at Station Level. In Police Management in South Africa. South Africa: Juta and Company Ltd. (Ch.4; pp: 38-47). Gobillot, E. 2007. The Connected Leader: Creating Agile Organizations for people, performance and profit. 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