A friend of mine took her three-year-old daughter along to her doctor’s appointment. My friend needed some blood drawn for some tests. She sat down. The nurse tied the tourniquet around her arm and stuck the needle in. My friend’s daughter hugged my friend and said, “Don’t worry, Mommy. I’m here. I know you can be brave.” The nurse said to my friend, “She learned that from watching you.” Little did I know when I heard that story that I was experiencing Albert Bandura’s Social Learning Theory in action.
Like my friend’s daughter, we all learn best when a behavior is modeled for us. We all have role models we look up to and try our best to emulate. We might see cooking blogs and try to recreate what is made. We might see home decorating tips on Pinterest that we would like to copy from our own homes. We might read self-help books to find motivation on how to better our own lives. Likewise, we also have examples of bad behavior that we would not like to imitate. Social learning is part of everyday life for each of us.
Social learning can be an effective tool in the workplace. Employees can learn better strategies, better use of technology, and other skills through social learning. One might be the teacher or the student depending on the social learning situation. In the article Social Learning Theory in the Workplace, Barbara Brown explains, “Social learning theory supports the concept that managers should provide role models of appropriate behavior. Managers can create social learning opportunities through individual rewards or praise given in public settings, such as staff meetings. Conversely, inappropriate social behavior, such as harassment, should be punished uniformly across the workplace to build the correct social context to modify behavior.” (Brown, 2017) Employees can learn from observing what goes on in the workplace.
Business succeed by attracting the best and the brightest in their industry. The best and the brightest never stop learning and never stop changing. Employing people with this drive to learn could inspire all in the workplace. The article How Do You Apply Social Learning Theory in the Workplace says that “person’s learning ability is 20% formal and 80% informal learning.”(Big Think Edge, 2018) This means that 80% of workplace learning is social learning. The textbook quotes Henry Ford, “We do not make changes for the sake of making them, but we never fail to make a change when once it is demonstrated that the new way is better than the old way.” (Moran, R., Abramson, N., Moran, S., 2014) If employees engage in social learning in the workplace, they will connect, interact, and make the changes necessary to make a business successful.
References
Brown, B. 2017. Social Learning Theory in the Workplace. Retrieved on September 26, 2018 from bizfluent.com/info-8405262-social-learning-theory-workplace.html
How Do You Apply Social Learning Theory in the Workplace. (2018) Retrieved on September 26, 2018 from www.bigthinkedge.com/blog/apply-social-learning-theory-in-the-workplace
Moran, R., Abramson, N., Moran, S., 2014. Managing Cultural Differences. Routledge. New York, New York.