Learning sticks best when it feels like a choice. That’s the simple truth behind a shift happening in today’s most effective learning and development (L&D) strategies.

According to LinkedIn, a staggering 94% of employees would stay at a company longer if it invested in helping them learn, and many prefer to learn at their own pace, underscoring the importance of self-directed learning opportunities in today’s workplace.

In the world of professional development, there’s a subtle but profound difference between being taught and learning. One feels like work, the other feels like growth. One is pushed upon us; the other we pull toward ourselves.

The ROI Dilemma: Why Organizations Prefer to Take the Lead

Despite employee preferences, organizations often insist on dictating skill development priorities—and their reasoning is understandable. Corporate learning budgets aren’t unlimited, and leadership needs to ensure investments yield returns. When allocating finite resources, companies naturally prioritize skills with the highest ROI that align with strategic objectives.

A completely self-directed approach risks scattering resources across too many individual interests without building critical organizational capabilities. But letting learners lead comes with its own set of pitfalls—like overestimating what we already know.

The Dunning-Kruger Effect

The Dunning-Kruger effect, the infamous cognitive bias where the least knowledgeable are often the most confident, creates a significant blind spot in self-directed learning. We naturally gravitate toward developing strengths rather than addressing weaknesses we may not even recognize.

Take communication skills. Roughly 95% of professionals rate themselves as “above average” communicators, which is a statistical impossibility that highlights our collective self-delusion. The professionals who most need to improve their communication skills are precisely the ones least likely to seek out resources to do so.

The Third Option: Influence

At this point, you must be thinking this is a lose-lose situation. If we can’t teach people, but giving them the ability to learn on their own also won’t work, what option is left?

You trick them! Or, in more corporate-friendly terms: You influence them.

Influencing learners is the sweet spot between dictating skills and hoping employees find their way. The most sophisticated organizations recognize that the binary choice between top-down teaching and bottom-up learning is a false one. Instead, they create learning environments that strategically position high-ROI content in the natural path of curious professionals.

Influence in learning looks like this:

• Positioning critical skills within real-time challenges
• Showcasing learning through respected peers or leaders
• Offering content in diverse, engaging formats

The goal isn’t compliance but magnetism — drawing learners toward organizational priorities by appealing to their intrinsic desire to excel, not their obligation to check boxes.

Making Skills Valuable

So, how do we align the skills the organization values with the skills employees value?

The answer is, you don’t need to align them — because they should be the same.

The harder work tends to be getting the organization to align on the set of skills they value, but let’s assume that’s already been done. Once you have explained these skills to your current employees and mapped them across your entire organizational chart (explained below), it becomes evident to employees which skills will lead to advancement.

For example, if a customer service rep sees that time management and conflict resolution are key to becoming a manager, those skills immediately gain relevance.

Scaling With Speed Using AI

Unfortunately, aligning individual learning to organizational needs at scale is where the real struggle begins.

Fortunately, artificial intelligence (AI) can help resolve many of these problems:

1. Skills Gap Analysis: Leveraging a combination of digital skills assessments and employee performance data, AI can predict the current vs. desired skill level for every single employee.
2. Closing Skills Gaps: Once gaps are identified, AI can recommend learning programs from your library or on the market to address the skills gaps at an individual level.
3. Dynamic Learning Journeys: AI can guide learners down tailored paths to acquire skills. If learners don’t respond to certain content, it can recommend new paths to acquiring the same skill.
4. Lateral Skill Development: AI can also support cross-functional movement by creating skills profiles for cross-hiring within an organization.

Give Learners the Keys to the Classroom

Learning preferences vary widely. While you might prefer to read, others want to listen. Furthermore, some want to acquire all of the knowledge before they embark on learning a new skill, while others want to try it out first. Instead of forcing everyone into one bucket, it’s time to let the learners decide.

Three Ways to Support Learner Autonomy

1. Create an AI Learning Agent

The most powerful learning tool today is a personalized learning agent that can scan every document in a secure environment, including your learning files, and deliver a response in real-time. It not only gives your learner the fastest answer, it continues to adapt over time, learning how your employees want to learn.

2. Offer Multiple Learning Modalities

Repurpose content across formats. For instance, pair an eLearning course with a text-based summary, a video walkthrough, and a downloadable checklist.

3. Increase Your Reach

Many great learning programs fail because people don’t know where to find them. Don’t lock all of your content up in one place. Distribute learning across platforms employees already use, such as Slack, SharePoint or internal intranets.

What Did We Learn?

As we navigate the future of work, the organizations that thrive will be those that understand this fundamental truth: People resist being taught, but they love to learn.

Ultimately, the question isn’t how to force completion rates. It’s how to make learning inevitable, enjoyable and strategically aligned. That’s the challenge — and the opportunity — for forward-thinking L&D teams.