I am a father of two great boys. Being with them and see them grow has been one of the most rewarding experiences for me. Over the last decade seeing my elder one grow and adopt skills has made me go back to a fundamental question - how do kids learn things which we didn’t intend them to learn or have taught them? I am sure you are aware of what I am talking about and surprises or laughs or moments we all have experienced as parents. Observing them and listening to them has taught me a lot, and I have embraced this concept further in the last five years of my personal and professional experience.
I have shared earlier that my work takes me to places and often to areas and situations which I haven’t experienced before. This brings in areas of learning which I have been imbibing on by merely observing. Observational learning has been an age-old practice where a lot of scholars have researched and written about it. Today I see it fading or not getting much attention apart from science experiments or sports in the age of AI. We are relying on technology to do the observation and then learn from it rather than imbibing it wholly in our day-to-day. The world is evolving at a rapid speed, and just reading or listening would not teach us enough to be successful in the present and prepare for the future.
There are four primary stages of observational learning: a) Attention, b) Retention/Memory, c) Motor/Practice, and finally d) Motivation.
Just observing doesn’t help, actual replication or practice would improve the learning to be more profound. Since I land up in new places, you mustn’t get alienated or be looked upon as out of place. My practice on observational learning is focussed on the following areas
Communication structures: Whether it is a new city, country, restaurant, or professional setup, you can learn about the cultural nuances and communication structures just by observing people, the things kept, or what drives or motivates or make individuals happy. More so within a professional setup, whether in a meeting, conference calls, or the broader organization on how the office setup is, or calls/meetings get conducted, who sits where, how does the communication flow define the organization culture. In my current role, it is critical to understand the organization, so observational learning helps me to work with my customers and the broader organization better.
Organization Structures: Leading a substantial sales and consultancy organization requires one to coach and lead the team to analyze and understand how to do the budget, decisions, and information flows within an organization. It can be achieved by just observing the organization structures, how does the email communication flow, and, more importantly, asking the critical questions enable to decipher the culture of the organization.
Technology Knowledge: Technology is evolving at a rapid rate, and there are increased technology proliferation and quite a bit of similar feature sets across different products. Observational learning plays a more significant role today in the age of Technology as it allows me personally to grasp what need does the platform addresses and similar or dissimilar functions between the two sets of technologies belonging to the same category.
No one can call themselves an observational learning expert. It is more of experiential learning as well, and the more you get exposed to that area of interest and observe with practice over a while would help you to be a more natural observational learner.
If you practice this type in areas that I haven’t mentioned, then I would love to hear about it. Chao..