3 days ago
Learning When Nobody's Watching
It all started with the BIG question on the table.
How do you find and recognize the people who are growing their skills quietly on their own time, with no LMS involved?
This Coffee Chat tackled the challenge of spotting and rewarding informal learning—the kind that happens in unplanned moments, not in a course or a system. We opened with a classic example: someone leans across the cube, drops a helpful tip, and disappears back to their desk. That's informal learning in action. But how do we recognize the people quietly sharing knowledge like this? One participant shared that Microsoft Teams has a built-in Praise feature, plus their organization's recognition system lets people give public thanks that employees can actually use in their year-end reviews.
The conversation took a sharp turn into the double-edged sword of social learning. One person raised a real challenge: some people love being the go-to expert so much that they gatekeep their knowledge, becoming addicted to "saving the day" instead of scaling what they know. Another pointed out that this creates the opposite problem too—the same helpful people get volunteered for everything and recognized constantly, while quieter people doing equally good work get overlooked because they're not raising their hands for the spotlight.
We explored practical ways organizations are surfacing informal learning. One person's team runs quarterly learning events where staff sign up for five-to-seven-minute presentations on anything they've learned—conference takeaways, a completed project, whatever. Low pressure, recorded for people who miss it, followed by a shout-out in Slack. Another shared using healthcare "exemplars"—recorded or written stories that prove someone applied a skill in a real situation, which build camaraderie and inspire others through storytelling rather than a multiple-choice quiz. And a simple icebreaker question sparked a goldmine: "What's the last thing you learned for the first time?" In under two minutes, the chat filled with AI prompting, Storyline triggers, MBA coursework, and even how to use a new belt—proof that this question alone can surface hidden pockets of knowledge across a team.
The group also got real about balancing recognition with application. One person pushed back gently, asking not just how we recognize learning, but how we recognize what people do with it—especially in compliance-heavy fields where you need evidence someone can actually perform a task, not just that they watched a video. And Barbara shared a favorite: a "Caught It" coupon system where team members award each other for doing something right, with a quarterly committee reviewing standout moments for a small prize. It's gamification, but low-key enough to fit into a workplace culture without feeling like a fifth-grade participation trophy.
The takeaway? Most of us aren't missing informal learning because it isn't happening—we're missing it because we're not asking about it. Recognition shouldn't stop at "what did you learn." It needs to include "how are you using it." And the same helpful people shouldn't be the only ones getting the spotlight—spread that love around and make sure quieter contributors get seen too.
So what's the last thing you learned for the first time?
Stay curious!
-Shannon
Video
Transcript Summary
Transcript:
Chat Box:
Resources:
Books:
The Carrot Principle by Adrian Gostick
Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us by Daniel H. Pink
The Coaching Habit by Michael Bungay Stanier
The Culture Code by Daniel Coyle
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Host: Shannon Tipton
Podcast produced by: Obsidian Productions
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