So I guess you figured out somewhere along the way that this blog was coming at you from two angles? One being the use of internal social media and collaborative platforms, the other being to do with learning at work and the ways in which this happens, how to be good at it etc.
In my last post I asked “What is social learning anyway?“, well this post is where you will hopefully start to see the two things come together as I give you my top 5 things to do on your internal network to help people learn, or indeed to learn yourself.
1. Share something interesting. Have you learnt something recently in an article online, or a new perspective on something? Share it with others so that they can learn from it too. Keeping it to yourself doesn’t help anyone to grow and also doesn’t expand your network. Post the link, highlight the main points – just share it somehow!
2. Ask a question. Hopefully you took on board some of the advice I gave in my article Things to do on your network now it’s live, and created some groups where people can congregate on the site and post related things. Well, if you have a question, why not see if a group exists that’s related and post your question in there. Groups like these enable the location of experts much easier and information is much easier to get hold of as a result.
3. Answer a question. If you’re browsing your groups one morning, or even spot a question in the main feed of your network, answer it if you can. Don’t leave it to some else, it might not happen. Again you’re helping someone learn and also gaining some credibility for yourself that could expand your network.
4. Tell people How to… Have you ever thought of something that would be good information for people in your network to know for themselves how to do something? Or you’ve shown someone nearby how to do something and they’ve gone “I’ve always wanted to know how to do that” Well why not take the next step and post something that shows, describes or tells people how to do something they might find useful? Create a hashtag for other people to connect other tips to. I created one called #HappyToHelp when our network launched.
5. Work Out Loud. Narrating your work can help people understand what the heck it is that you do. They can see the kind of work you create, the kind of thoughts that influence your day, the decisions you have to make, the meetings you’re involved with and the people that you work with, all of which potentially get’s stored as useful information for someone and they suddenly have someone in their network they can go to with a question on your area.
There you have it, my top 5 things to do on your network to start learning and helping others to learn to. What other suggestions do you guys have?
Nick Emmett 