When They’re Not Learning… Ethics And Leadership
Posted by Mitch Mitchell on Mar 30, 2021
Anybody can learn anything right? Actually, no. It's not even close to the truth.
For instance, as much as I've tried over the years I just can't absorb anything much about cars. I like how some of them look and I love the colors. I sometimes like the interiors. But if it involves engines or anything under the hood, my mind's not taking it in. I don't even know where the oil goes; yeah, I know, it's a shame.
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This means I'll never put in to do any kind of work in the automobile industry. Everything isn't for everyone.
That being said, one would think there should be some things that you might be able to teach anyone. I tend to believe that I can teach anyone leadership. I like to think that I can help anyone get motivated.
I know that's not true though. Often, the reason isn't that someone isn't smart enough, but that they're not ready to learn the lesson, or don't want to learn the lesson. It's a shame because sometimes you really want to get a lesson across that's just not going to work because the other person won't cooperate... sometimes they don't know they're not cooperating.
Case in point. A few years ago I did an experiment on Twitter, although when I first thought about it I wasn't thinking experiment. Some may remember hearing about this guy who, after Serena Williams won Wimbledon again, went on Twitter and said that the only reason she won is because she's so "manly". A lot of people went after him, he was on the news and all over social media for about a week, but he stuck to his guns on his position.
It stayed on my mind as well, and I decided to try to engage him and talk about the ethics of his actions. To save time, I wrote about the experience on my other blog, which you can check out here if you're interested.
At the end of about an hour I realized I was beating a dead horse. He didn't get it. He couldn't figure out why deciding that not only was a person good because of her physical presence but calling it out in an insulting manner wasn't a good thing to do. I tried everything, including asking him how he'd react if the tables were turned on him or his family members. It upset him, but he couldn't relate his feelings about his family and relationship to his treatment of Serena. He was a young guy in his early 20's, living in Germany. We didn't have a language barrier; we had a cultural barrier
I left the conversation feeling pretty good with what I said and how I said it. I was also slightly frustrated because he never seems to get an indication as to why people didn't like what he said. He wasn't ready to learn it I finally figured. He's relatively young, early 20's. Sometimes it takes a bit of aging for more ethical behavior to come to someone who, I assume, isn't necessarily bereft of some niceties.
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Luckily I could afford to leave that conversation and get on with life. His not figuring it out wasn't going to affect my life. Truthfully, the conversation wasn't just for him. Seems he'd accumulated a number of followers since his first statement, people who felt he had the right to say what he said. None of them helped him out during our conversation; maybe some of them got the point.
In business, you can't afford to do the same thing. We all have to face the reality that what we do isn't for everyone. I've always said that we have to treat everyone fair, not necessarily equal. This means figuring out the speed at which people learn and how much they retain once they've learned something. We have to acknowledge that everyone won't learn at the same pace.
Sometimes people never learn it though. I've seen that in health care; it's really not all that easy a business. There are always nuances; it could take years for someone to fully figure out everything there is to know about the work they do.
Still, there are minimum standards that have to be reached. That's why, as with almost every other job I know of, there are probationary periods. That's when you're supposed to be at your most adept in evaluating the training and learning process of each person.
If they're missing a few things here and there, you modify the training process to help reinforce what they need to learn. If they're not getting it at all... you have to do the right thing for the company and let them go.
No one likes firing employees. I haven't had to do it often but I've had to do it. As Mr. Spock once said, "the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or the one". If you don't let go of an employee whose work is substandard, one who can't figure out the process, it impacts the morale and efficiency of everyone else in the department and smacks of favoritism. Then you have another problem to deal with, one that's harder to overcome.
When people aren't learning and you've done everything you can to teach them something, you can feel good about having to take the next step because it's necessary. If you didn't do what you needed to do, that's when you should call your own processes or motives into thought.
Never be afraid to make the right decision, even if someone can't learn from your trying to teach them the right way.
I’m the same way when it comes to cars. I do know where the oil goes in my car, but essentially I’m stupid for the most part when it comes to cars or mechanical things. Same goes with football. My mother tried to explain it to me once and I just couldn’t grasp it.
You make a good point about motivation. I think motivating school is the most important step in teaching. If they don’t want to learn then they are likely not to learn. Some things we just don’t want to learn so we don’t until we are motivated to do so.
Good stuff Arlee. I used to wonder why schools try pushing history so much when most of the kids don’t care and don’t want to learn it. Many forget it immediately after a test. As much as I enjoyed history overall, I couldn’t stand European history; I don’t remember any of it at this juncture. If motivation is only to get a good grade at that moment and never use it again, how efficient is that? Schools probably should try using assessments, figuring out what kids might actually be interested in, and give them more of that while still teaching other things they might not care about as much. That might help; it certainly helps in the workplace if one has enough patience to figure out what an employee is good at.