Thoughts about Trust in Organizations

Last week, Alison presented a very interesting article about trust in organization and we had a discussion about how trust can promote organizational learning. It was the first time that I actually link the two concepts, trust and learning, together, and it makes perfect sense! Now, when thinking about those who I have learned the most from in the Student Union in my university, I noticed that they are also those who I trust the most.

One of the most influential people in my college life is my best friend, Yi. I know him from the Student Union,  and we became really close after a year. The way I define our friendship is that we will say whatever we think to each other directly, knowing that although it may hurt our feelings, we won't take it personal and will understand and deal with it rationally. Because of the mutual trust, we were able to share a lot about our experience in the organizational and learn from each other.

In the article presented by Alison, sharing vision, mission, and value is a  part of trust. I think that explains one of the reasons why Yi and I become close friends, which is that we shared the goals of the Student Union, which was to host students events successfully and be influential in campus life. Having this shared vision, we were able to carry out conversations about our practice and reflect on it. If we had different organizational goals in mind, I don't think we would have so many meaningful and interesting conversations or exchange inspiring ideas.

Another reason why we were work buddies is that we were always on the same levels in the organization for all three years. It not only gave us the similar levels of concerns and common topics, but also helped avoid the negative impact from hierarchy. Hierarchy is such a big thing in traditional Chinese culture and in the culture of student organization in many Chinese universities that I feel it is almost impossible to be as direct as I wish with those above me. Therefore, it is incredibly helpful to have a peer to give me feedback and share ideas. As teammates, we know that our words will be considered seriously by the other one and we believe that each of us is capable of listening to different voices and reflecting on our behaviors. The equality in our relationship is a reason for, as well as a result of, the mutual trust.

In most organization, there are also hierarchies, which may hinder knowledge transfer if not managed well. One of the solutions could be a relatively flat structure, which we have discussed about in the case of the steel company. It is very impressive the see how that company managed to have only two levels to foster information flow. Although it seems hard for many organizations to simplify the levels, they can start with little things to promote equality and trust. For instance, get rid of reserved parking spot for higher-level staff and create common areas where everyone can go and talk with anybody there.

Thank you, Alison, for inspiring this these thoughts :)

Reflection 1: Learning and Training

In the first class, we talked about what learning is. During our conversation, Carol raised a good question that hit me immediately: what is the differences between learning and training?  I believe that they are not just two different terms, but also two different attitude toward development, which will eventually affect the efficiency of individual and organizational learning.

Linguistically, Learning and training are used with different subjects.  Although they share similar meanings to some degree, the subject of the word “learn” is the learner himself, while that of the work “train” is the trainer or teacher. Therefore, it is obvious that learning concerns the learner get out from the experience, while training emphasis the input of the instructor and what he tried to teach the learners. In other words, they respectively represents learner-centered philosophy and teacher-centered philosophy. After clarifying this point, it begins to make so much more sense to me why our program is call Adult Learning, instead of Adult Training or Career Training. In our andragogy, learners are always the center of the classroom and they are responsible for their learning goals, learning process and learning products.

Unfortunately, although the name of our program indicates our philosophy beautifully, it is confusing to most people at the first glance. I feel a little sad that when introducing my major to others, I always have to add a little more explanations. Although I will say “organizational learning” or “learning in groups and teams”, what makes sense to most people is the word “training”. The word “learning” has become so strange and distant in adults’ world that many people find it so abstract and hard to understand. However, the word “training” gives people a clear picture of an instructor standing in the front of the classroom, telling the quiet and passive students what to write down. This form of training may be useful in some occasions, but is not ideal from collective learning in organizational development.

In the discussion about organizational learning, one vital component is sharing. It emphasis the process where members bring their own perspectives and understandings to the group, exchange ideas with other individuals, and eventually collectively create the shared interpretations and values which will guild their actions. The process is so engaging and interactive that it cannot be accomplished by any passive training programs. Active learning has to be involved throughout the process and eventually become the culture of the organization. I believe that it is our responsibility to promote the concept of learning in adults’ context and remind people how they learn and how they can promote organizational learning in a larger environment.

5th class

In our class today, we talked about the social problems that people with LD may encounter and how others can help them dealing with them. What I learned in the lecture is really, somehow, odd to me in the beginning, because how can someone be unable to distinguish a smiling face and a tearing face. After getting more information, I began to understand that although it sounds so ridiculous to me, it is happening to some others, and I have taken for granted such an important skill that people with LD may need pay tremendous effort to gain.

The reasons why social problems of people with LD are that social interaction is unavoidable in one's life, and social skills cannot be satisfactorily accommodated by technology or other help. When one person cannot pick up social cues, process them correctly and react to it appropriately, they are very likely to offense others and embarrass themselves. It is such a terrible feeling that you don't know the rule or cannot follow the rules. I had a lot of experience when just arriving America. For example, I don't know how to use the driving lane of a bank. I saw people drove through it, finished their business there, and drove away, but I don't know how exactly it works. But I felt embarrassed to ask because it seemed to be a common sense that everybody at my age should know. I don't want to be regarded as the silly one. Therefore, I just decided to try it out by myself. When I stopped in the lane, it took me a while to figure out how to call the bank teller in the window. However, when I tried to tell her that what I wanted to do with my account, she kept saying that she could not hear me. She repeated herself several time, and give me sone kind of instruction. But, affected by the mediocre communication technology and the pressure of being regarded an idiot, I could not understand her words. After a few minute, I just drove away while trying to hide my face from her.

I am not sure how similar it is to the experience of people with LD. They may experience something much worse. They may encounter with these situations hundreds of times everyday. And they may even don't understand why people make fun of them or shy away from them, which could be much more devastating. Again, just as I feel in other class sections, how lucky we are that we can function normally in our life. Compared with people with LD, there is little reason for us to complain about the hardship in life. It is really nice to know that there are programs and teachers (such as Lisa) that provide customized instruction for these individuals and they can be very helpful. When it comes to adulthood, it ties back to our discussion about self-advocacy. Individuals with limited social skills should let people who they trust and spend much time with know about their problems so that they can have the mirro to check and analyze their performance.

4th class

Today we shared our interview about what ordinary people and supervisors in work place know about LD. It is really amazing that people know about LD in various level and they can very different ideas about people with LD. Most of what they know is derived from what they have experienced personally. There are people who had really bad experience interacting with people with LD, therefore have negative impression about LD, such as my first interviewee. However, in Joyce’s presentation, her interviewees knows her son, who has autism, so that they know people with LD do not necessarily have low IQ. There are several supervisors that know about ADHD or ADD because they have employer with one of them. Just as Holly said, people’s perceptions, to some degree, are determined by their personal experience. We learn a lot from what we have been through. However, we cannot expect that everyone have the positive interaction with people with LD and learn the right information. As I said in my paper, “people are not ‘ having no idea about it’. They have some wrong idea about it.” Therefore, it is important to promote understanding through education and training.

This also connects with the “Self Lecture”, especially self-disclosure and self-advocacy. People with LD are usually the best source for others to learning about LD. Therefore, the more knowledgeable and honest they are about their situation, the more understanding and supportive others around them can be. During the lecture, I realized that how important it is to disclose with further explanation about one’s specific issue. Those terms about LD can be confusing, misleading and daunting. And because of the deficit model, people may go extreme and only think about what one cannot do. However, if one can articulate both his strength and weakness, and how he will deal with it, it builds up his credibility and give others reason to trust him. Just as Carol’s example, her colleague asks others to look direct into her eyes when talking with her to help her concentrate. It is always assuring to deal with someone who understand herself and can handle her problems.

As a Chinese and a non-native speaker in America, I understand the importance of self-advocacy. In many cases, I an misunderstood because of stereotypes, just like people with LD. My American friend may ask me questions that I find very naïve or strange. But those moments are opportunities for me to advocate for myself. For example, some people believe that Asians have funny eyes, which I find very superficial. I explained to some of my friends the different looks of people from different areas in Asia, and how their eye shapes vary. Also, as an English learner, I will let other know that although I do not have the intuition of English, I have learned the grammar systematically and can names the rules. Also, I have been trained to translate and interpret. These are my “niche” when compared with native speakers.

I really enjoy the class, and one of the reasons is that I can connect well with the topic we have discussed in several detentions. I think it will help me a lot if I choose to be an ESL teacher.

3rd class

In the third class, we focused on the high-achieving individuals with LD and analyzed what it takes for them to succeed. To me, the class is more like an inspiring speech. We take those out-standing individuals as example and learn from them about how they overcome unusual difficulties to proof their value. I can relate to those key elements of success very well, since they also apply to any ordinary people, especially the majority.

First, people with LD are “niche-pickers”. They understand what they are good at, and what they cannot do well. Therefore, they build on their strength and avoid the shortcoming. This is also very applicable to me. I remember that when I was in high school. I was very good at some subjects, such as English, Chinese and History, but cannot understand Math or Physics at all. When choosing my major in college, I was highly encouraged to choose accounting or finance because they were the more profitable career. However, I knew that I wouldn’t figure out all those numbers and my life would be miserable then, so that I decided to choose English, which was not recognized as promising field. Because of my passion and confidence in English, I did pretty well in college, and realized my dream to come to America. All these stories have proved again and again the importance to find my strength and stay on it.

The second key element of success of people with LD is resilience, because of which I respect them the most. They do not give up easily when knocked down. I understand how hard it is to persist in one thing that you have failed for many times, since that is the reason why I gave up playing piano, dancing and many other things. Now, I do regret that I was not hard enough on myself and was not resilient. Fortunately, one thing I have not given up is English, which is my passion and leads me to my dream. Therefore, just as Dr. Gerber said, to be resilient, it is crucial to find the niche and one’s passion. Only when the person is enthusiastic about what he is doing, can he control his frustration and stick to it.

Also, in the class, Dr. Gerber talked about the Deficit Model. I didn’t think about this before, but it is so true! We do define people as what they cannot do, but not focusing on their capability. Once heard about this model, I cannot help wondering the reason. I guess one of reasons could be that we won’t some kind of guarantee in other’s capability. When dealing with people, we want to know what is not so good about this person in order to decide how to interact with him or her. For example, if I know that a very kind, smart and nice person cannot keep secret, I will still be friend with her, but not sharing my privacy with her because that may hurt my interest. I don’t know if this make sense to others, but it is how I feel about the deficit model.

2nd class

Two things in this class impressed me a lot. The first one is LD simulation. All the discussion we had before gave me a abstract concept of LD, I know what it is, but I was not sure how it felt. The simulation brought a vivid experience that helped me understand how people with learning disability struggle in many ways. Actually, many parts of the simulation remind me of the process of learning English as a foreign language, especially the early stage. One of the struggle we had in the simulation was the separation of decoding the words and understanding the meanings. Because of the misspellings,  I spent the major energy in figuring out what the word was. As a result, I focused on individual vocabularies, but not the whole sentence and text. Therefore, I did not got the main idea although I read all the words. This is a symptom of dyslexia, also a common experience of foreign language learners in the early stages. Even now, I experience it occasionally when reading sophisticated academic article with many unfamiliar vocabularies.

I do agree with Dr. Gerber that one of the best solutions to this is extra time and support. I takes longer time than most of my classmates to read the assigned material to ensure comprehension. Also, my professors and classmates never show any doubt about my reading capacity and encourages me constantly. They are very helpful during my first year in VCU. Therefore, when dealing with people with dyslexia, extra time should be allowed. It may also redue the level of anxiety and improve their performance. Plus, based on my personal experience, multi-sense input promotes comprehension. Audio book and radio broadcast are usually more enjoyable for me than reading in English. I guess it is very similar to people with learning disability. It will be great if the supporting system provides their more chance to exchange information by listening and speaking, but not reading and writing.

The discussion about how to accommodate people with LD in modern society sheds light on another benefit of technology, especially voice control technology. One of the example is Siri in Iphone. I thought it was not as impressing as it was advocated since I seldom use it.  But I see how life-changing it could mean to people with dyslexia. With this technology, they do not need to read the words on their phone to operate it, but to talk to it. This could make their life so much easier. Also, this technology has been installed in cars, so that people can just talk to the car to control the music and the navigator. To people with dyslexia, it could seriously reduce the risk of driving since they do not have to stare at the bottons and try to figure out what they mean. Now there are one more reason for me to love these human-friendly technology: it cares those who suffer more than ordinary people and promotes equality.

Another discussion we had was about adult disability law. Dr. Gerber mentioned that people with LD need to show that they have the essencial skills before getting the job. After the fireman's story, I cannot help wondering what kind of job is not involved with reading and writing skills. Words and written language are so fundamental in our society that it is also impossible to avoid them. After reading TJ's story, I realize that although reading and writing is always a part of life, reading in a limited time is just characteristic of specific jobs. Although TJ's job as a special teacher requires a certain amount of reading and writing, he could spend extra hours on it. Therefore, he is still qualifies for the job.
However, people like TJ still dazzle me. It is so hard for me to believe that people are suffering this and they are working so hard to prove themselves.

1st class

Compare with my American classmates, I have little background knowledge about learning disability. Therefore, I fell really behind when everybody else has at least a general idea of what ADD,BD and ADHD are while they make little sense to me. These are just something we haven't begun to talk about in mainland China, or, more precisely, in the area I come from. As a result, I felt silly about some of my questions or comments, such as the question I asked Melissa “Can learning disability be cured like other deseases or no?" By the way, I found it sound awful once I uttered it. 

Fortunately, we started the conversation by clarifying the concepts and categories of learning disability. It definitely helped me catch up a little bit. It really impressed me when subtypes of learning disability were identified, such as dyslexia, dyscalculia and dysgraphia. They explain to me much clearer about what learning disability is, or, at least, what the symptoms look like. 

But, at the same time, what puzzled me was if they really exist. According to Dr. Gerber, LD happens to 5% to 10% of the population, which means that, in average, there should be one person with LD among 10 to 20 people. However, I have never encountered or heard about anyone like this in my 22-year life experience before I come to America. Although I had some classmates who just cannot get good grades, it was generally believed that they didn't work hard enough. No one thought that they might have some biological challenges in their brains. Also, they were not as bad as the example Dr. Gerber provided. Anyway, learning disability seems to a new idea that I need to buy in. 

The video we saw in the end of the class helped me get more understanding of dyslexia vividly. I began to regard dyslexia as myopia. Both of them are resulted from biological issues and cause inconvenience or problems in people's daily life, and I believe people may get them since born. Nowadays, all kind of tool, such as glasses, contacts and surgeries, have been developed to support people with myopia so that they can function well and do what they can do. As to learning disability,  we are still in the process of creating the suitable support for people with it. There is no reason to devaluate them, just as we do not devaluate people who wear glasses. 

One of the question I have about LD is where it comes from. Are people born with it, or they can also get it later in their life? I hope the questions will be answered later in our class.