Mindset: Invest in your own professional development

About two years ago, when asked about his attitude to training and development, I heard the Chief Information Officer (CIO) of a company say that “if you want to learn something just go onto YouTube”. At the time I couldn’t believe my ears. While I understand the intention was that YouTube is a useful tool to develop specific skills, my overwhelming sense was that this was such a myopic view of development for smart people and demonstrated an astounding lack of ambition for team that he lead and the company he was a senior leader in. About the same time I heard that Satya Nadella at Microsoft had requested that all his employees read Carol Dweck’s book Mindset (Dweck, 2006) which is about how to cultivate a growth mindset. Nadella credited Dweck’s book to Microsoft’s turnaround because within five years of him taking over the share price of the company had skyrocketed and the company had become ‘cool’ again (Bariso, 2018).

I have been thinking a lot about this dichotomy in attitudes in the intervening period as part of the research I am undertaking into continuous professional development for cybersecurity professionals. There is a wide range of academic research behind the need for learning in organisations, the drive for learning as part of professional development with individuals and the tensions which may exist between the two. Workplace learning is always dependent on the organisational context and is influenced by the power relations which characterise the employment relationship (Rainbird, Munro and Holly, 2004). Also related to the organisational context is that organisations, quite understandably in my view, are more interested in their employees’ learning which will benefit the organisation, rather than the individual (Friedman, Davis and Phillips, 2001). The concepts of affordance and engagement explored by Billett (2001) focused on the relationship between employer and employee at work and its impact on learning. The affordance of the workplace refers to how inviting a workplace appears to a person and engagement is related to how willing a person is to engage with learning. It is important to also acknowledge that support provided by an organisation for learning would be directed towards workplace continuity (Friedman, Davis and Phillips 2001;?Billett, 2001). On the other hand, individuals are more focused on their own personal goals and career directions and Billett (2001) confirms there is often a tension between this and organisational learning. This is something I have seen in my own professional life.

I cannot help but think that truly progressive organisations (like Microsoft, for example) understand these tensions and try to bridge the gap between organisational requirements and individual learning. In this context bridging the gap means trying to reduce the tensions certainly but, perhaps more importantly, it means actively trying to align the ambitions of the individual’s learning and the organisation’s need. It means allowing individual’s the freedom to learn in terms of time and by providing a range of potential options for them, options that cover both specific skills the individual and the organisation need but also wider, softer skills to allow the individual to become more rounded.

In the real world however, organisations don’t have an unlimited budget for training and development. This, in my experience, can exacerbate the tensions between the individual and their employer, often leading to people becoming disgruntled due to ‘lack of learning opportunities’. This is why I firmly believe that you need to invest in yourself and your formal learning on a regular basis. Some organisations may support you financially or in terms of study time which is great. But if they don’t, you need to do it yourself. The importance of formal learning, and by this I mean the learning associated with academic qualifications and certifications for example (rather than the accreditations themselves), should not be underestimated. While formal learning and informal workplace learning are different, both are important for the development of professional expertise. According to research, different theoretical frameworks highlight the significance of the interaction between formal and informal learning in terms of both advancing workplace learning and the development of expertise for individuals (See for example, Guile and Griffiths, 2001; Nonaka and Takeuchi, 1995). In recent years, as part of my own development plan, I invested (sometimes quite heavily) in my own continuing education and saw the benefits on a daily basis. My belief has been that while some of this education may not have been directly relevant to the role I was doing at the time, it certainly was part of my plans for the future and therefore I could justify the investment. I have never looked back. This has taken me on wonderful learning journeys and, in a few cases, has taken me in brand new directions.

And this brings me back to Carol Dweck and Mindset. What Satya Nadella did by promoting this book at an organisational level was to raise the ambition, to get the organisation to learn from the outside and bring that learning into the company to drive value. My experience is that, from an individual perspective, it did exactly the same for me. It raised and broadened my ambition, gave me the confidence to know that I could achieve these ambitions by taking any learning I undertook and made it tangible so I could see the value. But, perhaps most importantly, it gave me a fresh perspective, a new optimism and a sense of infinite possibilities at a time when I felt my development was unsupported at work. If you have not taken the time to read this book yet, you should treat yourself. It might just change your outlook!

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References

Bariso, J. (2018) This Is the Book That Inspired Microsoft’s Turnaround, According to CEO Satya Nadella, Inc.com. Available at: https://www.inc.com/justin-bariso/this-is-book-that-inspired-microsofts-turnaround-according-to-ceo-satya-nadella.html (Accessed: 9 August 2021).

Billett, S. (2001) ‘Learning Throughout Working Life: Interdependencies at Work’, Studies in Continuing Education, vol. 23, no. 1, pp. 19-35.

Dweck, C. (2006) Mindset New York: Random House

Friedman, A., Davis, K. and Phillips, M. (2001) Continuing Professional Development in the UK: Attitudes & Experiences of Practitioners, Bristol, PARN.

Guile, D. and?Griffiths, T. (2001) ?‘Learning through work experience’ Journal of Education and Work,?vol. 14, no. 1, pp.?113-131

Ibarra, H., Rattan, A. and Johnston, A. (2018) ‘Satya Nadella at Microsoft: Instilling a Growth Mindset’, London Business School. Available at https://krm.vo.llnwd.net/global/public/resources/WIN_Engage/143/LBS128p2_SR_CS_20181024.pdf (Accessed: 9 August 2021)

Nonaka, I. and Takeuchi, H. (1995) The knowledge-creating company. How Japanese companies create the dynamics of innovation, Oxford University Press,?New York?(1995)

Rainbird, H., Fuller, A. and Munro, A. (eds) (2004) Workplace Learning in Context, London, Routledge