New Column: Learning That Expands Our Capacity to Learn

Many of us may remember our first day as a working professional, with a mix of excitement, a little anxiety, and a slightly awkward sense of anticipation. After that first step, some of us joined group training sessions, while others were assigned to their departments early on and began learning through on-the-job training. 

Training styles vary widely depending on the company and workplace, but one thing remains constant: new-hire training represents a person’s first step into professional life.

New-hire training is not only a place to learn job-related knowledge and internal rules. It is also an opportunity to experience, firsthand, what “work” means and what an organization truly values.
 

At the same time, new employees are often doing their best simply to keep up with an unfamiliar environment. They are flooded with information and try hard to adapt as quickly as possible. Looking back on our own early days, many of us may recall not even knowing what we didn’t understand—and needing real courage just to speak up and ask a senior colleague for help.

In addition, new-hire training is often designed with a strong emphasis on acquiring knowledge efficiently within a limited amount of time. Learning by building skills and knowledge step by step is, of course, essential.

However, at the same time, isn’t it also important to cultivate a kind of learning that expands one’s perspective—learning that allows people to accept differences, uncertainty, and even failure? Only when this kind of foundation is in place can new skills and knowledge truly take root and become one’s own.

What reassures new employees most is having a place where they are allowed to fail—and where their actions can be transformed into learning.

Failure is something we naturally try to avoid, but within a training environment, people can take on challenges and stumble without fear. By reflecting on questions such as “Why didn’t this work?” and “What could I do differently next time?”, the ability to think and reason develops organically. This approach closely reflects the idea of “Fail Fast.”

Perhaps because many of us grew up in educational systems that reward finding the single correct answer, we tend to carry a deep-rooted fear of making mistakes. Yet if the goal is truly to develop people, training should not focus solely on reaching the “right” answer. 

Instead, it should encourage individuals to face uncertainty, recognize that there is not always only one solution, and repeatedly reconsider their own thinking. Through such experiences, perspectives gradually broaden, thinking deepens, and more proactive behavior begins to emerge.

With this philosophy in mind, we design training programs that are tailored to each individual’s situation and challenges. We hope this perspective will serve as a helpful reference when you consider how to approach new-hire training in your own organization.