ABSTRACT
Continuing learning has become a necessary part of today’s workplaces. Therefore, it has become an important part of the manager’s area of responsibility to create a framework for learning. The chapter describes how the manager can expand his or her understanding of the learning process.
When the manager is recruited according to meritocratic principles, the conception of the manager as the foremost professional person appears. However, people who are professionally talented are not necessarily good managers.
The authors describe how the manager can be in conflict between professionalism and people management and how this conflict is often solved by letting employees manage themselves, based upon a conviction that employees are grown-ups and can make their own way. This is not always the case, though, and can produce poor conditions for learning and development. The goals of the organisation are not clear (or not making sense), and people are not getting any help in overcoming the obstacles in learning and changing.
Instead the text suggests that the manager could use the appreciative inquiry approach in order to develop the organisation’s ability to learn from successes and failures in a non-judgemental way.
The text is illuminated by cases.
