Organizational Development

What Motivates Lifelong Learners

Describing the passion to explore and learn, and how companies can instil this mindset among their employees.

John Hagel

Oct 11, 2021 • 12 min read

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Organizational Learning

Lifelong Learning

Growth Mindset

Continuous Learning

Learner Mindset

Summary

Companies today are creating lifelong learning programs for their employees to stay ahead of the competition. Some companies instill fear of losing work in their employees as one way of making them learn. The author suspected that this is not the most convenient method, but with the help of his colleagues, they discovered passion is the most powerful motivator for learning. Employees who have a similar passion as explorers, who are motivated to deal with their challenges and learn from them learn much faster than those motivated by fear.

Takeaways

Cultivating the passion of the explorer enables innovative thinking in the organization at a whole new level. The institutions that restore our humanity in this way will unleash a much more powerful form of learning among all workers that will lead to exponentially expanding opportunities.
Some companies create fear among the employees, according to them, the worker needs to pursue new knowledge because if they don't they will lose their jobs as their existing skills become obsolete. According to the author, this is not a beneficial way as fear is not the most powerful motivator for people to learn.
The passion of the explorer is a very powerful motivator for learning, explorers have a lot of passion to achieve goals such as overcoming the unexpected, this allows them to learn and achieve greater impacts, employees who are passionate in these ways learn much faster than those motivated by fear.