Workplace Wisdom

What educators can learn from the business world

In many schools and businesses today, the pressure to produce results is far greater than attention to employee learning. If continued learning impacts service for business customers and their communities, then what lessons can we learn from business to support and advocate for educator learning? This article is a collection of lessons learned by an educator and a human resources professional over the course of separate careers in education and business. We share our individual perspectives and reflect on our experiences as a whole. We hope the lessons learned will be useful to those developing and supporting employee learning in business and education. Our conversation raised important questions about what kinds of learning resources are the most relevant and useful in both environments. We wanted

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Authors

Sheri S. Williams and John W. Williams

Sheri S. Williams ([email protected]), an assistant professor at the University of New Mexico, designs and delivers face-to-face and online learning for aspiring school administrators. John W. Williams ([email protected]), a human resources executive, develops professional learning and mentoring programs for business and nonprofits.

Anyone or anything is a potential mentor. The mentee must take the initiative, tap into the source, and search for knowledge.

Strong collaborators will continue to think of ways to help the weak team member. The best collaborators will try five or six ways to bring along a weak team member before going to a supervisor.

Respect at the individual level is paramount. Lack of respect is often the root cause of unhappy employees, not to mention grievances and complaints of discrimination.

Collaboration is essential in business.

The greatest pitfall for managers is to take personally the resistance to change.

References

Boyep, R.K. (2013). What are the barriers to innovation? The Chronicle of Higher Education, 60(5), B42-B46.

Garmston, R. & Wellman, B. (2013). The adaptive school: A sourcebook for developing collaborative groups (2nd ed.). Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.

MacLowry, R. (2013). Silicon Valley (Video file documentary). PBS: WGBH Educational Foundation. Available at www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/silicon.

Petriglieri, G. & DeRue, D.S. (n.d.). How can business schools develop leaders? Academy of Management Learning and Education Virtual Themed Collection. Available at https://amle.aom.org/cgi/collection/b_schools_dev_leaders.

Reeves, D.B. (2007, October). Leading to change: Coaching myths and realities. Educational Leadership, 65(2), 89-90.

Welch, J. (2011, September 2). Jack Welch on mentor (Video file). Available at www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQK7NU4hFM0.

Williams, S. (2013, October). Impact and effectiveness of developmental relationships among educators and instructional coaches in a large urban school district. In N.

Dominguez & Y. Gandert (Eds.), 6th Annual Mentoring Conference Proceedings: Impact and Assessment of Developmental Relationships. Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico.

Learning Forward

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Learning Forward is the only professional association devoted exclusively to those who work in educator professional development. We help our members plan, implement, and measure high-quality professional learning so they can achieve success with their systems, schools, and students.

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