Why are we sometimes in resistance about professional and personal development?
Are you familiar with the following scenario:
You spend a lot of time, money and effort designing L&D content. Introduce modules and trainings, new ways of learning to help employees improve their skills to become more efficient and effective in their current roles and to progress in their careers. And you find yourself in a situation where some (and often the majority) resist learning and development?
Why is this happening?
There are many possible reasons, and here are the most common:
"Push" approach / Mandatory training:: Employees feel "forced" to learn new things without a clear picture of why it is beneficial for them.
Daily jobs: They have so much daily work, in which no one will replace them, than they spend their private time to complete the work for which they are paid to compensate for the time they spent on some training.
Relevance: It is not a rare case that in an employee's annual training plan there are trainings that are either not relevant for them today and in the future, or we did not give them enough arguments why it is relevant for them.
Generational habits: Baby boomers are usually in the greatest resistance, Generation X somewhat less, Millennials and Generation Z the least.
Human nature:: Some people simply do not have the affinity and need to develop and learn.
The effort that needs to be made: Personal and professional development requires serious effort because changes do not happen by themselves but are the result of working on yourself.
All of the above is a generalization, and the answer lies in the individual approach.
In practice, this would mean doing one simple thing instead of assuming - let's ask our employees what blocks their motivation for professional development and what they see as useful and necessary for their work.
We ask specific people, for specific content in a specific context. When we understand the cause, we can find a solution.
The beauty is in simplicity and that we respond to the real needs of the people around us, rather than assuming what they need.
