Week 10: 3rd - 9th July (Activity: 4.5)
At certain points in this unit so far, there have been glimpses of the more human aspects of learning; for instance, in the possibility that learners might push back when faced with some instructional designs, whether this is an active refusal to participate or a more passive disengagement. We have also seen that learners’ emotions might have a role to play in the effectiveness of training and talent management interventions. In this final section of the unit, you will explore these human aspects more fully, using the concept of resistance as the main conceptual anchor.
The topic of resistance features increasingly prominently in conversations about organisational life. You may well have experience of discussing – perhaps even dealing with – resistance in the context of organisational change. Within the change management literature, employees’ resistance to change is one of the most common explanations offered for why change initiatives seem to fail so often. Indeed, within this literature, resistance has often been construed as an irrational reaction against necessary efforts to re-engineer an organisation to be more effective. Explanations for employee resistance tend to revolve around parochial self-interest (i.e. putting one’s own interests ahead of the interests of the organisation) or misunderstandings about the nature of the change or the reasons for it. Seen this way, resistance is something that leaders and professionals, including HRD professionals, need to find a way to overcome, typically by implementing programmes of communication and employee engagement.
Resistance to learning
These connections with the resistance to change literature help to underscore the increasing emphasis HRD professionals pay to employees’ resistance to training, learning and talent development. Designers and facilitators of learning programmes need to be prepared for the possibility of participants’ resistance to their programmes, and to consider any potential effects this might have on their conduct and chances of success. Understanding the reasons for, and possible responses to, participant resistance is therefore becoming part of successful stakeholder relations in learning and talent development.
Simpson and colleagues (2000) suggest that resistance is an inevitable feature of any learner experience, because the very point of learning is to engage with not-knowing. In their view, any confrontation with not-knowing will stimulate a degree of anxiety in actual and prospective learners, which may result in resistance – what Simpson and colleagues (2000) call ‘defensive dynamics’ in their psychodynamic framing. There is no avoiding this experience of not-knowing, however uncomfortable it may be, because ‘if there is no sense of not-knowing, however transient or vague, there is no stimulus to learn’ (Simpson et al., 2000, p. 461). This suggests that any kind of learning situation – whether skills-based, traits-based or more reflective leadership development, whether online or face-to-face – can be seen as a site of potential learner resistance.
Simpson and colleagues’ work has similarities with the theory of transformative learning developed by Mezirow (2000). In this view, learning is inherently interwoven with experiences of being unsettled, which are often accompanied by complex and disconcerting emotions. Mezirow suggests that transformative learning builds on an initial ‘disorientating dilemma’, in which a learner is forced to critically reassess their normal assumptions and taken-for-granted areas of understanding. This self-examination is usually accompanied by feelings of fear, anger, guilt or shame. With such a mix of emotions, it is perhaps not surprising that a degree of resistance to learning might be triggered.
Manifestations of learner resistance
There are a number of ways in which learner resistance might manifest. In the Simpson and colleagues (2000) paper, resistance frequently emerges as a direct reaction against this notion of not-knowing, with learners reverting to tactics and assumptions that are more familiar to them; that is, they resort or revert to the domain of the known. These include demanding that teachers and facilitators give clear directions and provide the correct answers, in other words, that they conform to the pedagogic role conventionally associated with teachers in early school education – teachers who are assumed to know everything that is being covered. This is an interesting and provocative idea, especially within the context of the action inquiry approaches that were discussed previously, with their ethos of facilitation rather than direction of learning. It is an idea that you may wish to revisit in the final activity of this unit.
Drawing once again on the connections between resistance to change and resistance to learning, there are other ways in which resistance might manifest. Prasad and Prasad (1998) depict four categories of resistance behaviour, which could emerge in many different organisational situations:
- Open confrontation: Examples include industrial action, the initiation of grievance procedures or whistle-blowing. Within the learning and talent development domain, they might include raising a complaint about a particular course or a particular teacher/facilitator.
- Subtle subversion: Examples include deliberate acts of carelessness, slowdowns, foot-dragging, spreading of rumour or gossip. Within the learning and talent development domain, they might include small acts of disruption to online discussion groups, assessment arrangements, etc.
- Disengagement: This usually refers to a lack of enthusiasm or commitment to tasks and activities. Many scholars classify humour and cynicism as acts of disengagement, which may be an attempt to shore up one’s personal sense of identity against the perceived identity demands of the organisational and/or learning intervention. This is a topic you will return to later in this unit.
- Ambiguous accommodation: This refers to a kind of ‘playing the game’ in which employees appear to be engaging with a programme by using the right language and saying the right things, but where there is no deep or true commitment.
These are all behaviours with which most instructional designers, trainers and learning facilitators will be very familiar. It is important to reflect on how you might try to manage any such manifestations of resistance, because such behaviours, if left unchecked or unacknowledged, might influence the outcome or reputation of the programme and/or compromise the quality of the participants’ learning experience.
Dealing with resistance
You will recall from the discussion on resistance to change that there is a distinction between seeing resistance as something to be overcome and trying to use resistance as something constructive. This distinction is mirrored in the choices you can make about resistance to learning. For instructional designers, a key question is whether to view resistance to learning as a nuisance or as a resource. In thinking about this question, you might find Figure 4.8 useful. It is based on the three levels of management of ‘defensive dynamics’ proposed by Simpson and colleagues (2000).
At level 2, facilitators are more primed to use resistance constructively. So, if a learner raises a challenging idea, facilitators might respond with ‘what does your resistance to this idea suggest about your underlying assumptions about my role, your role, or the topic being discussed?’ This kind of response to participant resistance is increasingly prevalent in leadership and management development programmes, where parallels between the respective roles of participants/facilitators and subordinates/leaders are used as a basis for reflections on the dynamics of organisational power. As most facilitators will testify, this kind of management tactic takes a certain amount of courage, because it takes the session in an unpredictable direction.
At level 3, experiencing, acknowledging and exploring resistance becomes one of the main learning objectives of the session. Facilitators and participants engage with resistance deliberately, explicitly and in some depth. For example, a programme designed and implemented by Carroll and Nicholson (2014) had the explicit intention of fostering participants’ resistance behaviours as a kind of leadership skill, that is, as an important way of mobilising critical questioning and practising the skills required to work effectively with conflict. This was a way of learning within leadership, rather than learning about leadership – consistent with the idea in AI of learning within practice, rather than learning about practice. You will have the opportunity to reflect further on these ideas in the next activity, for which the Carroll and Nicholson (2014) paper is the set reading.
Resistance and identity
Take a look at Video 4.2: Resistance at work, in which HRD practitioners, consultants and academics talk about their experiences of resistance and learning.
In the discussion of manifestations of resistance, connections were made between resistance and identity. It was suggested that participants in development programmes might resist certain aspects of those programmes because of a perceived threat to a cherished identity or an unwelcome demand to develop a new persona or sense of self. All sorts of learning spaces, especially those designed for leadership, management and professional development, are now seen as the site of ‘identity work’ – a place where participants try on different identities for size, perhaps discarding roles and personae that do not fit well with what they think will be successful in a particular organisational setting (Petriglieri et al., 2011). Although the concept of identity has inspired huge amounts of research and scholarship over past decades (e.g. Ashforth and Mael, 1989; Hogg and Terry, 2001; Jenkins, 2008), the idea that identity dynamics should have an important influence on the experience and success of talent development programmes is a relatively new and undeveloped area of research.
In Unit 3, you considered issues of power and the range of ways in which power manifests in organisational life, including in relation to people’s sense of identities. When planning and designing learning interventions, it is useful to reflect on the ways in which some identities get reinforced in learning spaces over others. As Nicholson and Carroll (2013) argue, participants may feel as if they are embarking on personal and individual learning journeys and taking ownership of their own development, but the range of possible identities available to them is likely to be restricted by wider factors, such as our societal assumptions about what particular roles entail, or a particular organisation’s culture, values and rhetoric. This means that our sense of who we are, and who we might become through learning and development, emerges in a context in which some identities are especially sanctioned and encouraged. Scott (2010) provocatively refers to the power dynamics of identity work as the production of ‘McSelves’. And even in less obviously standardised organisational settings, the vibrancy of people’s identity work should probably not be underestimated. In learning situations, people put a great deal of effort and investment into trying to make sense of who they are, and who they think they need to become to be successful – or perhaps simply to survive.
Identity, resistance and emotions
One of the reasons identity work is important for learning and talent development is because it can invoke great feelings of anxiety and uncertainty, which may in turn lead to resistance to learning. Perhaps participants feel uncomfortable about a clash between their normal role (e.g. as a competent manager who knows what to do and what to say) and their role within the learning setting (e.g. as someone fearful of asking questions that might make them look stupid in the eyes of others). Perhaps participants will experience a sense of loss or confusion if they feel that a development programme is encouraging them to abandon their normal, habitual ways of acting or feeling in order to develop new repertoires or conform with ‘the company line’. Perhaps participants will feel particularly resistant to being taught by outsiders or external consultants who do not know what it is really like ‘on the ground’. The video at the start of this section also included other instances where learning situations have triggered both positive and more uncomfortable experiences and negotiations of identity.
In terms of your own role as an HRD professional, you may be able to think of instances of such identity dynamics in your own experience. Hallier and Summers (2011) offer a fascinating analysis of some of the complexities of HRD identity work which can emerge in the context of learning. They suggest that HRD learners’ sense of who they are – and who they are being trained to become – is a complex issue, associated with two main strategic developments in HRD:
- the professionalisation of the HRD space, including the increasing numbers of practitioners with graduate and postgraduate qualifications
- a perceived clash of ideas and ideologies between functionalist (represented by practitioners) and critical (represented by academics) approaches to the subject.
As a result of these complexities, the participants in the Hallier and Summers (2011) study developed a range of identity management tactics, which are shown in the left-hand column of Table 4.2. The right-hand column shows potential connections with the various kinds of resistance behaviours that have been covered in this unit.
Resistance and culture
So far, you have considered resistance in relation to anxiety about not-knowing and the perceived threat to a participant’s identity. In this section, you will consider a further argument for taking resistance to learning seriously; namely, the possibility that certain methods and approaches may trigger resistance because of cross-cultural differences in learning systems, styles and preferences.
You will recall from the discussion of anxiety about not-knowing (Simpson et al., 2000) that resistance may be associated with our implicit models of the role of teachers and learners, especially our taken-for-granted assumption that teachers are supposed to be able and willing to provide all the answers to student questions. Some of these assumptions about learning may well be connected to cultural factors. There is a great deal of anecdotal evidence that participants from different cultural backgrounds have different expectations about what good learning looks like and, as a result, are more likely to resist some methods of delivery over others. For instance, learners from some cultural backgrounds seem to find it uncomfortable to adopt the Western practice of using first names to address senior academic staff and professional facilitators. Some cultural groups seem to enjoy active participation in group exercises, whereas others seem to place greater value on formal lectures and theoretical content.
Cultural differences with experiential learning
One area where there has been particularly vibrant debate about cultural differences is experiential learning, especially the experiential learning theory (ELT) of Kolb, which has featured in several of the units in this module (Joy and Kolb, 2009; Kolb and Kolb, 2005). Yamazaki (2005) conducted a meta-analysis of studies into different reactions and preferences within ELT, looking at learner experiences from Australia, Canada, China, France, Germany, Japan and the USA. You will recall from previous discussions of Kolb’s approach that experiential learning is said to be a process of creative tension between two modes of grasping experience (concrete experience, CE, and abstract conceptualisation, AC) and two modes of transforming that experience into knowledge (reflective observation, RO, and active experimentation, AE). Figure 4.9 shows the results of this meta-analysis.
The results suggest that Japanese managers responded more positively to the concrete and reflective elements of learning compared, for instance, with American managers who responded more positively to the active and abstract aspects of learning. Chinese students in this study seemed to display especially strong preferences for reflection, as opposed to active experimentation. Indeed, all the students covered in this study seemed to veer away from active experimentation, with the exception of the part-time MBA students from the USA. Although there are some statistical validity complexities underpinning this analysis, this snapshot of differences is interesting insofar as it seems to coincide with much of the anecdotal evidence that learners from different cultural backgrounds may react differently to learning programmes based on ELT.
The aim here is not to reinforce cultural stereotypes. Rather, the intention is to suggest that cultural background and associated assumptions about learning may be an additional factor in triggering resistance to learning. Successful learning and talent development requires sensitivity to the possibility that the learning approaches that we ourselves favour and/or that are popular at a certain point in time or in a particular cultural setting, may not be successful or appropriate for all participants, at least, not without careful reflection and possible adaptation (Reynolds, 2009; Tomkins and Ulus, 2015b). One size may not fit all!
Conclusion
In this unit, you have covered four main topics:
- the traditional training-based approach to learning and talent development
- the shift from training to learning, and its key implications for the work of HRD professionals
- some popular and effective alternatives to the traditional training-based approach, in particular action inquiry, peer learning and communities of practice
- the more human aspects of learning and talent development, in particular resistance, identity and culture.
Over the course of this unit, a number of key themes have emerged, principally:
- the increasing attention being paid to learner agency, and encouraging learners’ sense of ownership of their own learning objectives, journeys and outcomes
- the way in which this increased learner agency makes two key aspects of the HRD professional’s role especially complex, requiring more nuanced thinking than is often implied in traditional training-based approaches, namely facilitation and evaluation
- the value of using reflections on your own experiences of learning as your ‘tool-kit’ with which to plan, design, deliver and evaluate learning and talent development programmes for others.
These themes will be important throughout the remainder of this module.
