Teaching and Learning Within Management: American Express

Introduction

One of the most recognized truths about today's world is that the individual never stops learning. After school and tertiary study, the workplace holds many opportunities for new training and learning. This is particularly so in complicated work environments, such as finance and banking. For this reason, training forms an important element of ensuring work quality and excellence in customer service. At American Express, both quality of work and customer service form an important part of ensuring that the company's goals and mission statement are met.

The business world today looks much different from past paradigms, in which managers and leaders tended to focus on control and offering direction to their subordinates. Indeed, today's leaders consider themselves to be more part of the team than its director as such (Chapter 2, n.d.). Today, the aim is for managers and leaders to extract as much as possible from the intellectual capital within an organization in order to achieve the goals set by that organization. It is therefore important to handle employees in a way that makes them aware of the company's defined goals, motivates them, and monitors the performance and outcomes that result (Chapter 2, n.d.).

Leadership and Team Building

This is also the case in the customer service training offered by American Express. The company provides its employees with thorough training in all components of their work, including technical aspects and customer relationships. In this way, employees are equipped with all the skills they need to handle work that achieves the company's goals in terms of profit and customer service.

Employee management at the company therefore occurs by means of what Berkeley refers to as "planning, checking-in, and reviewing." The planning process involves investigating expectations and objectives. At American Express, this is done by discussing and articulating the mission and goals of the company; through this process, managers have identified the training needs within the company. These needs have been identified in the areas of "soft skills" and technical skills.

After the training process, the company is in the position to "check in," which means monitoring employees' performance as a result of the training. Finally, reviewing is used to identify any further training needs in order to fill gaps regarding the company's goals and objectives.

The learning theories involved in these efforts include Allen Newell's General Problem Solver (Learning-Theories, 2015) and Social Learning Theory (Cooper, 2013). For the former, the main focus is on imitation: employees learn by observing others. This is particularly relevant to learning to work with computer systems, as employees are shown the technical side of their work by training professionals and learn by observing and imitating them. In terms of the latter, employees are taught to solve problems by means of critical thinking. For a company such as American Express, this is a particularly important component of their work with customers. The nature of working with people means that many unforeseen problems may arise, so those handling such problems must develop their critical problem-solving skills in order to serve customers to the best of their ability and in accordance with the company's mission and goals. Furthermore, this also creates a platform for word-of-mouth advertising, in which customers provide favorable reviews that result in American Express becoming a preferred company among others of its kind.

The investigation into leadership development focused on critically examining different methods of training in order to identify the most effective one. It compared three approaches: the traditional instructor-student classroom paradigm; the newer paradigm of online, self-directed learning; and a combination of the two.

Leadership Development

Like the traditional leadership paradigm, classroom-based instruction has been the accepted teaching method for decades. Children were long considered receptacles of knowledge, with the teacher regarded as a type of all-knowing entity. The same has been true for training in the workplace. Later paradigms have moved away from this traditional form of learning in favor of more interactive approaches and, ultimately, self-directed learning (Cooper, 2013).

By comparing the results of one extreme — classroom, lecturer-focused learning — with the other — self-directed, online learning with little or no instructor intervention — the company is able to determine the most effective approach.

In teaching theory, however, it is seldom advisable to adopt an extreme approach. In most cases, it is best to use a combination of methods that would work best in terms of outcomes, whether those be learner satisfaction, academic results, or the long-term usefulness of the learning. As the case study shows, the most effective method across all measures was the "blended learning" approach.

The teaching theories observed here include a focus on behaviorism, as explained by the Learning-Theories website (2015). This theory focuses on the ability of the individual to be behaviorally modified by means of various stimuli. The instructor provides the stimuli in a classroom setting, while the recipient is expected to internalize the information, apply it, and benefit from it.

Self-directed learning, as attempted through the online platform where learners work independently without interaction with others, rests on the idea that each learner has an innate cognitive ability and an innate motivation to acquire new information. The assumption is also that each learner has his or her own personal learning style, which makes an individualized learning platform ideal. This strategy draws on Sternberg's Triarchic Theory of Intelligence (Cooper, 2013), which focuses on the individual as governed by the self. Just as nations have governments, this theory recognizes the ability of the individual to govern his or her own desires, needs, and duties. Self-directed learning therefore focuses on this innate capacity for self-governance.

It is interesting that self-directed learning alone proves less effective than a combination of social and self-directed learning. Regardless of individual innate ability, people also need social contact in order to function optimally. The results of the investigation regarding leadership training venues therefore suggest that a combination of time-tested and proven methods is best. It is also worth noting that the existing theories of teaching and learning each contain an element of truth. In other words, every theory — however flawed by current standards — contains an inherent element from which educators and trainers can learn.

Conclusion

In conclusion, there is nothing simple about the learning or teaching process, as evidenced by the many learning and management theories currently in existence. The widespread practical use of all these theories is another indicator of the complicated nature of human experience. Trainers and learners are all human, which makes it very difficult to identify any single theory of learning, teaching, or management that works best universally. It is therefore in the best interest of managers to recognize the fundamental human differences of their workers in order to best design learning opportunities. Learners should also be made aware that learning never stops — whether in school, college, or the workplace. All kinds of learning can be useful in any area of life, and no learning ever goes to waste, as demonstrated by the situation at American Express.