THE BONSAI APPROACH:

STRATEGIES FOR SOFT SKILLS WORKSHOP EDUCATORS TO BETTER SUPPORT THIER LEARNERS.

By

DIANA KAWARSKY

Integrated Studies Final Project Essay (MAIS 700)

submitted to Dr Mike Gismondi

in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

Master of Arts – Integrated Studies

Athabasca, Alberta

[December, 2013]

ABSTRACT

In this paper I explore how an interdisciplinary analysis helps conceptualize the relationship

between work and learning using Soft Skills Education practices. Drawing on experience, I

discuss critiques of pedagogy and andragogy and then contextualize these into a dynamic work

environment, using discourse theory as a backdrop. It is a response to the dynamic work and

learning environments that soft skills education finds itself in. This practice is called the Bonsai

Approach. It offers an inventory of Educator-specific skills and draws on methods and practices

from multiple disciplines to meet and exceed at-work soft skills learners’ needs.

The Bonsai Approach: Strategies for Soft Skills Workshop Educators to better support their learners.

Learning at work is like learning to play baseball. You learn to throw, to catch,

to bat, to run bases, to make plays, and to execute all sorts of refinements of

these basic skills. You do not learn to play baseball. You learn these basic

skills separately, and you put them together in new combinations every game .

. . . . There is no one-two-three method for life. You learn the skills, and you

combine them to play the game. (Hodnet, 1955)

Soft skills can be understood as learning how to put hard skills in action in the right combinations

and locations. They are how one learns to interact or react to one’s environment – maybe a

home run (a fully successful conversation) this time and maybe a single (a partially successful

conversation) the next (Caudron, p 34). Soft skills can be understood as situationally-determined

and effective on a relative scale; they are often non-quantifiable. Generally, hard skills (technical

skills e.g. software-specific knowledge) are definitive and measurable. Companies search for a

blend of soft and hard skills in employees to deliver goods and services effectively. Hard skills

account for about “15% for an individual securing a job, while 85% of the job success is based

on the individual’s soft skills” (Radhika, p 2). These are popular numbers that are often cited by

employers when partnering with a Soft Skills Educatori.

As a Soft Skills Educator, I work with many corporations, institutions and associations;

approx. 10,000 learners to date. At-work education (for both hard and soft skills) is unregulated,

unlike school-based teaching; consequently there is a wide variety of skills, competencies and

styles amongst educators. My business focus is successful in-person workshops; both design

and deliveryii. It is complicated work in a diverse market creating a complicated product. Soft

skills workshops make the complicated range of soft skills competencies accessible and

understandable. Corporate sponsors’ benefit from this on-the-job learning as it is customizable in

duration, delivery, location and overall investment. They are delivered in any industry, to any size

of organization, to any size group, and at multiple authority levels. I work in unionized, non-

unionized, for-profit, not-for-profit, retail, manufacturing, academia, and other sectors. Groups

can be in secular, religion-specific or gender-specific organizations. To my experience, how soft

skills workshops are designed and delivered is more significant than the physical location or

organization type. Better supporting learners means having an inventory of skills to draw upon

which are not site-specific (e.g. only applicable in a unionized environment) but educator-

specific.

This paper proposes strategies for improving on-the-job soft skills education and

incorporates them into a best practice called the Bonsai Approach. It re-conceptualizes the

relationship of work and learning by responding to the question: How can Soft Skills Educators

better support their learners? This paper draws on my experience and uses an interdisciplinary

approach to discuss, critique, and incorporate pedagogy and andragogy. It then contextualizes

these learning theories into a dynamic work environment by means of discourse theory as its

backdrop. These theories have commonalities and contradictions; each offering relevant

considerations which can be applied to the better serving soft skills learners. Just as the

Japanese tradition of Bonsai is a combination of discrete fields including gardening, horticulture,

biology, and ecology, workplace learning also does not comfortably sit within a single discipline

but is discussed in diverse fields including management, training, industrial relations, economics,

and sociology (Boud and Garrick, p 455). An interdisciplinary approach to the definition of soft

skills and the conceptualization of soft skills workshops is also necessary. No one discipline

offers comprehensive understanding of these concepts. The multi-dimensionality of the soft skills

concept is well reflected in broad based interdisciplinarity.

There are three participants in soft skills education: sponsor of the training (decision-

maker controlling budgets), Soft Skills Educator (professionals designing and delivering

workshops) and learners. Social theorist Roxana Ng wrote of a similarly triangulated

relationship when she, “… identified three major power axes in the university: that between the

classroom and the larger academic institution; that between the teacher and the students; and

that among the students” (p 345). She writes of power axes and varying levels of privilege

amongst learners, including, “sexism, racism, a sense of class privilege, and … biased attitudes

are operative in interactions among students as well” (p 345).The successful Soft Skills

Educator secures a partnership with the sponsor, interacts with learners, while fostering

relationships amongst the learners and also complements the sponsor-learner relationship. At-

work politics, relationships and power imbalances influence everyone involved in at-work

learning workshops. To further complicate, the educator can be a transient participant, often

with varying access to information and limited participation.

Who are these soft skills learners? In my experience, there are three general kinds of

learners: those who are required to attend by their superior(s), those who have been “voluntold”

(superiors would prefer the learner commit) and volunteers who want to be in the workshop for

their own reasons. If one has been told to attend a soft skills workshop on time management, it

can be inferred that that skill set has been identified by management as in need of review. This

does not mean that learner necessarily agrees with this conclusion, but attending the workshop

is required nonetheless. Of course, this influences the learner’s interest, motivation and overall

experience of the workshop. In addition, if there is a direct reporting relationship between a

director and a manager attending the same workshop, it is my responsibility to ensure that the

learning experience is career enhancing, not career hindering. This relationship can bring

specific power axes to the learning whether formal as authority is understood by the

organization’s hierarchy or informal through the interpersonal relationships (how that hierarchy

may be lived). Better supporting learners means allowing them to choose how they may better

participate. Each learner interacts with the curriculum, other learners and the educator in a

dynamic options-rich setting.

Here are working definitions of pedagogy and andragogy:

For centuries, the most commonly accepted approach towards teaching and learning was

pedagogical in nature. The Greek roots of the word pedagogy are “ped” or child, plus

“agogos”, which means to lead. A literal interpretation would be to lead a child. By definition,

pedagogy is the art, science and profession of teaching. Andragogy, from the Greek word,

“anere”, for adult and “agogus”; to lead is then the art of science of helping students learn.

Widely used by adult educators to describe the theory of adult learning, the terms offer an

alternative to pedagogy for some.

[Source: http://www.library.yale.edu/training/stod/pedagogy_vs_andragogy.html]

Soft skills workshops using pedagogical principles are efficient and serve the educator by

creating a forum where one’s expert status can be created and legitimated (see Table 1).

Timeliness and an adherence to pre-set curriculum are attractive to learning sponsors in reporting

on learning outcomes. Championing pedagogy is convenient because it is documentable. It is

prescriptive and can validate the sponsor’s original decision to hire the Soft Skills Educator. It

assumes the learners are lacking some information and that via this workshop they will be filled

with that preferred knowledge; learners are passive and accept the information as sacrosanct. It

effectively ensures a protocol of curriculum within a specific-time frame and borrows from school

teacher practices. Pedagogy efficiently separates the educator from the learners with the

educator assuming full responsibility (and liability) for the learning outcomes. This prescriptive

process does not align with ‘soft skills’ skill sets. It can detract from learners having an

opportunity to contextualize the curriculum whether first-time or a refresher in soft skills

information. Soft skills are context-driven. If a lone pedagogue is prescribing what is “right” and

“wrong” then it is within any adult learner’s usual frame of reference to question that perspective,

and perhaps simply dismiss it altogether. Working professionals have valuable experiences,

knowledge and ideas about soft skills which are independent of the educator. An educator must

offer a platform for interaction and learner presence. Adults are not interested in being lectured to

(treated like children) and can easily dismiss pedagogical educators as being “out of touch” or

even jingoistic. The table below sets out the qualities of ineffective and effective approaches to

teaching soft skills.

Table 1: Comparative analysis of pedagogy, andragogy and the Bonsai Approach.

Questions to Consider

Pedagogy Andragogy Bonsai Approach

What is the focus of the Educator?

Focus on self as expert “Sage on the stage”

Build functional relationship between self and learners

Assumes full responsibility for learning

Focus on learner as expert “Guide from the side”

Build functional relationship between self and learners and amongst learners

Assumes no responsibility for learning

Focus on multiple relationship “Interpersonal/Intrapersonal”

Build functional relationships with sponsor, learners and amongst learners

Assumes shared responsibility with both sponsor and learners

How is relationship between educator and learner defined?

Learner is dependent on educator

“Sell knowledge”

Learner is independent of educator (self-directed)

“Offer knowledge”

Fluid interdependence between educator and learner; provide specific feedback

Sell and offer knowledge while soliciting input

What is the Educator’s role? Who has responsibility?

Educator’s experience is most influential

Educator retains ultimate authority

Share own knowledge with learners

Educator assumes total responsibility for learning outcomes

Educator’s experience is less influential than learners’

Learner retains ultimate authority

Create safe environment for learners to share knowledge

Learner assumes total responsibility for learning outcomes

Educators’ & learners’ experience are equal

Sponsor retains ultimate authority

Share own knowledge, create environment for learners to share and ensure sponsor’s learning outcomes are clear

Shared responsibility for learning outcomes among Educator, learner and sponsor

What is the learner’s role? Who has responsibility?

Learner brings limited, if any pre-knowledge and/or experience

Educator has total responsibility for success, which is defined by Educator

Learn for public success over others (interpersonal)

Learner bring greater volume of pre-knowledge

Learner assumes full responsibility for success, which is defined by learners

Learn for personal success within one’s self (intrapersonal)

Learner brings both pre-knowledge and experience

Educator shared responsibility with learner for success, which is defined by sponsor, Educators and learners

Learn for public (interpersonal) success, personal (intrapersonal) success and to achieve learning outcomes set by sponsor (transpersonal)

Orientation to Learning

Limited diversity

Some diversity

Unlimited diversity

Prescriptive curriculum based on Educator: pre-determined.

Educator drives process: planned experience

Descriptive curriculum based on learners’ input: spontaneously determined

Learners drive process adventitious experience

Prescriptive & Descriptive curriculum: fluid & shared, both Educator based and learner based.

Both drive the process: planned and adventitious experience

What is the learning motivation?

Interpersonal motivators e.g. Competition, amongst learners re: pass or fail

Meaning from theory and application

Intrapersonal motivators e.g. improved self-esteem

Meaning from application

Transpersonal motivators (both Interpersonal and Intrapersonal) e.g. improved public speaking skills and improved self-confidence

Meaning derived from theory, application and contextualizing in real-life

WIIFM The above table sourced information from: http://www.library.yale.edu/training/stod/pedagogy_vs_andragogy.html

Soft skills workshops using andragogical principles can also be efficient, focusing on the

learners creating a forum creating and celebrating individual learning processes. Learners are

assumed to be actively engaged throughout. The learning is created in an iterative and under-

structured way; rebelling against infantilizing adult learners; rendering them responsible for their

own learning. Malcolm Knowles, often cited as a founding father of andragogy, suggests most

adults enter learning to create personal change and bring preconceived thoughts and feelings

influencing both the learning experience and the outcomes. Knowles identified many defining

principles of adult learning including:

1. Adults are internally motivated and self-directed

2. Adults bring life experiences and knowledge to learning experiences

3. Adults are goal oriented

4. Adults are relevancy oriented

5. Adults are practical

6. Adult learners like to be respected

He argued that adults select their connection with their learning and the premises for this

selection are found in their experiences and interests (Gailey, p 38). The approach depends on

consistent, ongoing commitment from learners and educators, which can waver within a

workplace-based workshop or unsustainable. (School-based learning, e.g. university can offer

more consistent commitment defined by many factors such payments, grading and degree

requirements.) Often at-work learners are required to excuse themselves from the workshop for

potentially extended periods to tend to business, they are not graded instead can be required to

grade the educator. As soft skills education is unregulated, educator’s skills vary. Andragogy

relies on the educator reacting creatively to learners’ cues and in-course preferences which does

necessitate some teaching competency. Theoretically, successful soft skills education leverage

Knowles’ points, in practice it may be ineffective because of time and budget constraints, variable

commitment levels of the sponsors, and potentially unpredictable educators and learners.

Critics argue that pedagogy does not address learner diversity and concentrates on the

educator, while andragogy defines diversity primarily in terms of the psychology of the learners’

motivations (Illeris, p 169). Diversity was perhaps recognized by Knowles when he advanced

his original thoughts on andragogy suggesting all learners prefer to be taught in a dependent

style when the subject matter is unfamiliar but as learners experience more comfort and/or

understanding, they seek out autonomy (Knowles, p 187). This advancement is important to the

Bonsai Approach, as it one way to include multiple delivery styles in the same workshop, but it is

still not enough to better design or deliver-work soft skills learning (see Table 2). Bonsai

workshops offer multiple opportunities for learners to be unfamiliar and familiar with the subject

matter. A workshop process can be: the educator offers topic-specific information, learners

present ideas, opening the forum to either structured or unstructured discussions, learners inter-

validating, and the educator or learner leads a debriefing with the whole group. The Bonsai

Approach is successful here as it is multidisciplinary; asking for a thoughtful flexibility from

educators using the lecture style of pedagogy and the facilitative role of andragogy. This fits well

with my work experience and the need for me to teach soft skills in a context where participants

differ in age, gender, education, race and life experience.

Soft Skills Educators are challenged to make meaningful curriculum by tying it to best

practices (theory), one’s personal experience (expertise) and to the current established socio-

cultural environment of the immediate workplace (learners’ input). Adults do not learn in

vacuums, yet much pedagogy assumes adult learners are disconnected from the dynamic real-

world life of being a working professionaliii. In contrast, the Bonsai Approach applies and

contextualizes “good” soft skills versus “bad” as defined, practiced and ultimately adopted in a

shared workshop experience (see Table 2). Knowles under-emphasized multiple adult life

influences, which include professional, personal, social and cultural aspects (Russell, p 350).

Also missing is social context, real-life relationships, and politicized work relationships. Knowles

found that adult students are ready to discover when they “experience a need to learn to cope

more satisfyingly with real-life tasks or problems (Knowles p 33). Said differently, adults are

skeptical about everything that others want them to learn and that they do not necessarily feel an

urge to learn themselves. Knowles’ andragogy allows learners to “learn for themselves what they

want to learn” but it is more prescriptive with specific pre-determined learning objectives, and

more linear in nature than the Bonsai Approach advocated here (Merriam, p 51).

Soft skills learners are both self and other motivated; I have labeled it ‘Transpersonal

Motivation’ in the Bonsai Approach. Each learner is encouraged to take different knowledge from

the same workshop. Nomenclature aside, creating a workshop environment where learners can

thrive, achieve desired learning outcomes and return to work with new soft skills options is

fundamental.

Table 2: Bonsai Approach: Considerations Strategies & Actions

Questions to Consider

Bonsai Approach Bonsai Approach: Considerations Strategies & Actions

What is the focus of the Educator?

Focus on multiple relationship “Interpersonal/Intrapersonal”

Build functional relationships with sponsor,

Use Questions instead of Answers to open topics

Create positive relationships with sponsors and learners

learners and amongst learners

Assumes shared responsibility with both sponsor and learners

Role model positive soft skills by maintaining positive relationships

How is relationship between educator and learner defined?

Fluid interdependence between educator and learner

Sell and offer knowledge while soliciting input

Partnership: everyone can contribute to the understanding and evolution of soft skills

What is the Educator’s role? Who has responsibility?

Educators’ & learners’ experience are equal

Sponsor retains ultimate authority

Share own knowledge, create environment for learners to share and ensure sponsor’s learning outcomes are clear

Shared responsibility for learning outcomes among Educator, learner and sponsor

Establish own credibility and credibility of learners at start of workshop

Create an abundance of curriculum; use in workshop and provide resource materials

Create conversations; not lectures

Ensure the workshop experience is positive, provide own feedback to sponsor and encourage learners to do the same

What is the learner’s role? Who has responsibility?

Learner brings both pre-knowledge and experience

Educator shared responsibility with learner for success, which is defined by sponsor, Educators and learners

Learn for public (interpersonal) success, personal (intrapersonal) success and to achieve learning outcomes set by sponsor (transpersonal)

Create learning activities that require pre-knowledge to be recalled and then shared by learners

Create in-workshop agenda based on everyone’s input

Create learning opportunities e.g. roles plays which celebrate intrapersonal growth and how to display such via interpersonal interaction – put softs skills into reality

Orientation to Learning

Unlimited diversity

Prescriptive & Descriptive curriculum: fluid & shared, both Educator based and learner based.

Both drive the process: planned and adventitious experience

Be open to the workshop unfolding

Be flexible within own knowledge to “go with the flow” of the learning experience

Introduce ideas, ask for directions, relinquish control to the group – play all roles

Create movement and down times with frequent breaks

What is the learning motivation?

Transpersonal motivators (both Interpersonal and Intrapersonal) e.g. improved public speaking skills and improved self-confidence

Meaning derived from theory, application and contextualizing in real-life

How is the soft skills workshop valuable to each learner?

What has each learner taken meaningful information from the curriculum?

What soft skills have been refined, gained, changed as a result of the workshop?

If adults prefer options, then applying either pedagogy or andragogy to workplace

learning is not how an educator can better serve them. When the macro parameters of the

learning have been set by a learning sponsor, the Softs Skills Educator can still create personal,

micro choices within the workshop. If time management is the workshop topic, making it relevant

to the learners can happen by asking questions of how or when they are particularly busy: what

does “busy” mean to each of them in their specific role? How can they self-assess the resources

they would require to better manage their “busy” times? Returning to the origin of the suggested

Bonsai Approach, the comparison can be extended to the container being the general topic, the

learners as the plant, and the specific rate and direction of its growth is co-determined by the

interest of the learners (the plant) and the Soft Skills Educator (the gardener). This is often

referred to as the WIIFM – What’s in it for me? – factor in discussing how soft skills learners

explain the value of a workshop’s topic(s).

This Bonsai Approach is multiperspectival: viewing learning from the perspective of the

learner , balancing the sponsor’s interest and the educator’s expertise. It stresses shared

responsibility in the workshop; a collaborative process, with lecturettes (pedagogy-inspired),

autodidactic opportunities (andragogy), and interactive group work interspersed and

spontaneously organized throughout. For adult learners soft skills learning must relate to their

individual life circumstances, and there must be built-in opportunities for those life circumstances

to be discussed (WIIFM). Bonsai methods I have used successfully include group activities

designed to offer learners opportunities to question the curriculum, and inviting the opinions of

others including the educator. Learners often ask “what if” questions, and perhaps celebrate

“aha” moments or generate more insightful questions that may dismiss common truths for better

solutions. The approach can lead to serendipitous learning which can exceed any of the

participants’ expectations: sponsor, learner or educator. The open-endedness of the question can

lead groups to disclosing specific (personal) information that is both relevant and irrelevant to the

general (impersonal) soft skills topic at hand. This can be a learning juncture for Soft Skills

Educators; a segue to discuss how life circumstances either validate or refute the original soft

skills curriculum. It is a way for the sage on the stage (pedagogy), and the guide from the side

(andragogy) to evolve to the Bonsai Approach.

Defining good soft skills and their use in the workplace can vary from one learner to the

next, one organization to another, or from industry to industry. “An understanding of workplace

learning means recognizing its complexities, its competing interests and the personal, political

and institutional influences that affect it….Workplace learning must include a consideration of the

situated ethics of what is being learned and who is doing the learning” (Boud and Garrick, p 3).

This understanding is not one that can be imposed upon learners (pedagogy) nor can we assume

that learners understand it on their own (andragogy). Amongst the sponsor, learners and

educators in workplace settings there is a dynamic system of meaning-making occurring which

informs the Soft Skills Educator to skills being sought or not. Discourse Theory is helpful here

and complementary to the Bonsai Approach. Discourse theorists study the relationship between

texts (spoken and written) and social practices within a defined environment. Life experiences are

the discursive units of understanding. This theory is interested in how people create meaning in

their lives and express them through narratives. A workplace discourse can be understood as a

system of norms, values and symbols (images and words) shaping beliefs and behaviours and

defines it as communication between and among people contributing to a workplace paradigm,

e.g. work-specific training of either hard or soft skills (Fenwick, p 9). Informal discourses are a

means by which a working knowledge is passed from one worker to another; such as whether or

not something is “correct” behaviour (e.g. in accordance with how staff interpret a company

policy). Formalized discourses transmit formal or official workplace knowledge through training or

learning opportunities, like soft skills workshops. Discourses can be constructed or deconstructed

via soft skills workshops. The context-specific definitions of good soft skills (a narrative) can be

the foundation on which a workshop’s curriculum may be designed. The in-workshop experience

may offer supplemental or alternative narratives as learners understand and deconstruct by

making the curriculum applicable to their lived workplace discourses. This may result in learners

changing how they think and feel about at-work soft skills choices they have made or intend to

practice in the future following the workshop. Different approaches to how knowledge is linked to

practice in the workplace are worth exploring. Roxanna Ng refers to ideology as more than a set

of ideas; it is a practice in that it shapes how we act, as well as how we think (Ng, p 351). She

describes how norms may become hegemonic and evolve to be considered common sense in

how we relate to others and even how we see ourselves. She suggests discursive settings

influence how this thinking can become patterns of behaviour (p 351). Benign practices can

populate the hegemony of good soft skills. Individuals make soft skills choices based on their

understandings of what is defined as “good” or “bad” soft skills. They can ask whether “?” is

“correct” for me, here, right now? These understandings are how soft skills workshops can

illuminate what was thought to be commonsensical (one’s conversation-making choices) as

accurately redefined as nonsensical (how one may be offending others in conversation). This

understanding better serves the learner.

Svetlana Nikitina, a Harvard Research Specialist, writes of this contextualizing of

learning as a “process of embedding knowledge in history, culture, philosophical questions, and

personal experience” making the learning more insightful into the human condition (p 257). And

what is an on-the-job discourse but the socially defined and mutually understood language(s) of

the human’s therein and how certain behaviours are deemed appropriate and others

inappropriate? The Bonsai Approach advocates learning as more than the transmission of

knowledge it also vivifies cultural practices or the norms within that organization (Briton, p 55). It

is a lived and tried response to the dynamic work worlds and learning environments that soft skills

education finds itself. The soft skills workshop can be a vehicle for contextualizing and

humanizing the experience of working professionals; creating cathartic opportunities for

socialized experiences which are designed to co-select the preferred soft skills behaviours and

co-reject “bad” soft skills choices. It is an organized tussle between status quo maintenance and

status quo questioning.

Definitions of good soft skills vary, and so it is multidisciplinary strategies that can better

flex to meet these changing demands. Extending the understandings of soft skills education does

not result in definitive conclusions. To better support soft skills learners, educators must have an

inventory of skills to draw upon that are not site-specific (e.g. only applicable in a unionized

environment), or limited to either one theory or one mode of interaction. The Bonsai Approach is

not a theory but a practice. It contributes to and a re-conceptualizes the relationship between

work and learning.

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End Notes

i For clarity I have chosen Softs Skills Educator as my title. There are currently many titles my

peers, learning sponsors and learners use to refer to the work I do including: Group Leader,

Facilitator, Instructor, Instructional Designer, Learning Consultant and Softs Skills Trainer.

ii Certainly there is overlap between the focus of this paper and both blended learning and

web-based soft skills work-based learning workshops.

iii It is perhaps best suited for adult university students committed to learning in comparison to

the multiple priorities of working professionals which may relegate learning to a subordinate

role to other on-the-job responsibilities.