Leadership and Mentorship

My colleague John said something interesting the other day. In my organization and in the industry I support, on the job training is also a huge part of the learning and growth experience for the field technicians and operators. He wrote: "To put it simply, learning from experience must be a deliberate act that involves much more than simply having an experience and storing that moment away for future recollection.  Dewey promotes the "active participation of the learner" by creating processes by which the experience is reflected on, comparisons made to prior experience, options are considered, and a deliberate approach is prepared for the next attempt. Like you, they (and I) believe that this is the route towards career growth and safe operations, and like you mentioned, there is no specific framework but rather a loose undefined pathway that may or may not be successful for the learner."

One way we are working to address this is through developing our supervisors, crew leaders, and leadership personnel through a series of leadership classes. Through these classes we discuss how important it is to mentor and facilitate the learner of new employees in our field.

So often the new employees are left with nothing but abrupt lessons (that are rarely actual lessons), watching others do the work, or being yelled at and told to do work that they don't understand and are not motivated to do. It's a recipe for disaster. Many of our leaders don't realize they are supposed to act as mentors to others, but that it's just a hardship they must endure.

Imagine a world where the mentor designs classes and courses and modules for their new employees rather than just yelling at them and expecting them to understand what to do next through a series of nearly silent grunts and confusing hand motions. We hope that by changing the dynamic of a generation of leaders we might help the next generation through better role-models and better mentors. This is directly related to what you mention in your post, a "circular approach"  -  but where yours looks at the learning through experience to reflection, the circle we are hoping to create has more to do with generational leadership.