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Eight Principles of Development

Ultimately, all change is personal. Faced with changing realities and increasing stakeholder demands,
enterprise talent in all areas is undergoing dramatic adjustments. Employees are constantly facing changes in
their roles and responsibilities and need new competencies to keep up. Roles define what we should be doing
and who we are and competencies define how we should be doing our work.
But knowing what to do and even how to do it does not ensure that it will be done well. Personalizing change
and making it real requires learning and development.

Principles of Professional Development


Unlike adolescent learning, which focuses on mastering facts and assimilating information, adult learning
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focuses on applying facts and turning information into action. Adults have already developed cognitive
frameworks through life experiences, and they are interested in learning how new ideas will help them get what
they want rather than simply accumulating more knowledge. Here are the key principles of adult learning that,
as a Talent Manager thinking about providing opportunities for your people to grow, should be applied to your
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understanding of professional development:
1. Base new ideas on business reality. When adults understand why they should learn, they more readily
accept what they should learn. For example, HR professionals who have spent their careers doing
administrative work (say, compensation or benefits) become more open to learning new tasks when
they recognize and accept the reality of outsourcing and technology as replacements for their traditional
work.
2. Focus on application. Working adults are less interested in theory than in how theory can help them.
They need to know theory as an anchor against the winds of management fad, but they absorb it best
when it is presented along with the action it generates.
3. Accept multiple learning styles. Most adults have a learning style, or preferred way to learn. The Center
for Creative Leadership has classified four such stylesactive, reflective, advice seeking, and
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emotionaland found that people learn best when presented with material tailored to their own style.
Professional development programs thus need the flexibility to appeal to the diversity of learning styles
among participants, and they need to be able to match individuals to developmental approaches.
4. Present information via multiple channels. Adults adapt and learn through reading, listening, observing,
watching videos, analyzing case studies or live cases, role-playing, or discussion. Participants may be
face-to-face or remote, working alone or in groups. Professional development programs need to employ
a variety of technologies so all participants can gain insights from them.
5. Ground the program in personal reality. Adults develop when they recognize their strengths and
weaknesses and make realistic plans for improvementbut honest assessments are difficult to come
by. Candid and open feedback is rare, as people withhold information under the guise of sensitivity. It is
also hard to give, as few people can accurately see just what information someone else needs. And it is
hard to interpret; most recipients tend to overreact to anecdotes and underreact to patterns of behavior.

--Adapted from Leadership Brand: Developing Customer-Focused Leaders to


Drive Performance and Build Lasting Value, by David Ulrich and Norm Smallwood,
Published by Harvard Business School Press, Boston, 2007

6. Articulate a clear goal. Adults who know what they want find it easy to focus their attention. In shaping
your professional development, you can compare yourself to others, to the competencies that the
strategy of the business requires of you, to what your boss and other clients expect of you, and to where
you think the profession is headed. These sources for defining your future enable you to figure out what
should be. A clear and precise vision of the future becomes a magnetic north, guiding efforts at three
levels: What strategy will allow the department to contribute most value to the organization? What
practices will bring the value proposition to life? What competencies do professionals need to make it all
happen? Professional development plans that incorporate these elements will provide solid guidance.
7. Earn and build on respect. Adults learn best from those they respect, and a faculty that lacks credibility
will ultimately lack impact. Professionals can learn as much from peers as from experts if the learning
process is set up to share experience and insight. An effective development program includes forums
for peer sharing as well as faculty members with real-world experience.
8. Create a friendly learning environment. Adult learners commit to action when they draw their own
conclusions from the material presented; they often chafe at the traditional schoolroom where teachers
teach and students study. Professionals need a setting that is informal, two-way, nondictatorial, and
more inquisitive than directive.
These eight principles may be used to assess and guide investments in developing employees or in selecting
professional development experiences. They can be applied to the two major options for improving
performance: training and development. Training focuses on formal education, events where participants learn
specific skills and information. Development includes the array of guided activities that help people learn by
experiencea topic that will be covered later in this course.
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To explore adult learning, see Stephen Brookfield, Understanding and Facilitating Adult Learning: A
Comprehensive Analysis of Principles and Effective Practices (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1991); Malcolm
Knowles, Elwood Holton, and Richard Swanson, The Adult Learner: The Definitive Classic in Adult Education
and Human Resource Development (Houston: Gulf Professional, 1998); and Michael Galbraith (ed.), Adult
Learning Methods: A Guide for Effective Instruction (Melbourne, FL: Krieger, 2004).
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This list is drawn from Edward Prewitt, What Managers Should Know About How Adults Learn, Harvard
Business Review, Harvard Management Update, 1997.
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Cynthia McCauley, Ellen Van Vestor, and John Alexander (eds.), The Center for Creative Leadership
Handbook for Leadership Development (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2003).

--Adapted from Leadership Brand: Developing Customer-Focused Leaders to


Drive Performance and Build Lasting Value, by David Ulrich and Norm Smallwood,
Published by Harvard Business School Press, Boston, 2007

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