Have you ever heard this line in the office, "I have to get through this training so I can get back to my real work?" It's the unmistakable sigh of resignation that accompanies most workplace learning initiatives. We've all been there. Watching the clock, mentally calculating our growing inbox, wondering if anyone would notice if we multitasked during the webinar. For many professionals, corporate training has become something to endure rather than embrace, a checkbox rather than an opportunity.

The gap between mandatory learning and meaningful growth often comes down to fostering one critical dimension. Agentic engagement. When this powerful aspect of learner participation is activated, it fundamentally transforms how professionals relate to their own development. Rather than viewing learning as something done to them, professionals with high agentic engagement become active architects of their own growth journey.

What Is Agentic Engagement, Anyway?

Agentic engagement is cultivated when adult learners have the opportunity to take initiative in their own learning. It's when they ask questions, express preferences, and actively shape their learning experience rather than just consuming it passively.

Research shows that engagement operates across four key dimensions (Frazier, Schwartz & Metcalfe, 2021):

1. Affective (emotional) engagement: How professionals feel about learning opportunities
2. Cognitive engagement: How they think about and process new knowledge
3. Behavioral engagement: How they act during learning activities
4. Agentic engagement: How they initiate actions around their learning

That fourth dimension is where the magic happens. When adult learners become agents of their own development, they transform from passive participants to active contributors.

The Four Modes of Learner Engagement

Drawing inspiration from research on student engagement (Rebecca Winthrop, Center for Universal Education), we can identify similar patterns in how adult professionals engage with workplace learning. While the original framework focused on students, these modes also translate to professional learning environments:

Passenger Mode: These learners show up physically but check out mentally. They're going through the motions, doing the bare minimum to complete the training requirement. You know the type. Checking emails during the session, waiting for it to end.

Achiever Mode: These professionals dutifully follow instructions and often perform well on assessments. But here's the catch. They might be completely extrinsically motivated, focusing on completion certificates rather than applicable knowledge.

Resistor Mode: These learners actively disengage through disruption or avoidance. They're the ones challenging the relevance of the material or finding reasons why it won't work in their specific context.

Explorer Mode: This is the gold standard. Professionals who demonstrate curiosity, ask questions, and genuinely want to apply what they're learning. They're intrinsically motivated to grow.

What's fascinating is that these aren't fixed identities. An adult learner might cycle through all four modes within a single training session. The goal, then, is to design learning experiences that encourage employees to spend more time in Explorer mode.

This focus represents a fundamental shift in L&D priorities. Training completion rates have dominated metrics for decades, but now we're witnessing what many learning leaders describe as "the age less of achievement and more of agency" (Smith & Oyserman, 2015).

And honestly? This shift makes perfect sense. In an era defined by unprecedented technological change and evolving workplace demands, we simply cannot predict which specific skills will translate to future success. The roles of tomorrow may look nothing like the roles of today.

Rather than simply equipping people with skills, organizations must create environments and opportunities that help people develop and strengthen their agentic dimension of engagement, creating conditions where they can become adaptable, self-directed learners who thrive amid uncertainty. In today's rapidly changing workplace, where AI and other technologies are creating constant needs for reskilling and upskilling, fostering this dimension of engagement is more crucial than ever.

Building Learning Systems That Support Agency in Organizations

The challenge for organizational leaders is to create learning experiences that offer more than isolated moments of engagement. Effective learning experiences have the power to serve as a connected ecosystem that continually fosters agency and engagement across the organization.

At Desklight, we recognize that fostering agentic engagement requires a systems-thinking approach. Workplace learning should be more than content delivery. It should create environments that empower professionals to take ownership of their learning and development.

Traditional approaches often fall short because they view challenges like disengagement as isolated problems rather than symptoms of systemic issues. When faced with low engagement, organizations might add more features or incentives rather than considering new ways to foster agency.

A more effective approach is to build learning ecosystems that:

1. Equip teams with capabilities to solve today's challenges and anticipate tomorrow's
2. Capture insights from diverse stakeholders so knowledge doesn't stay trapped in silos
3. Foster collaboration and cross-pollination of ideas
4. Transform complex information into practical skills that professionals can immediately apply

When these dimensions work together, they create an environment where agency can flourish through meaningful and connected learning experiences.

Making It Happen: Practical Steps for Organizational Learning Leaders

For learning leaders looking to foster agentic engagement in their organizations, consider these evidence-based approaches:

1. Design for personalization: Use data insights to create learning pathways that adapt to individual roles, strengths, and growth areas.
   
2. Build feedback loops: Implement mechanisms for professionals to shape their learning experience, providing input on content, pace, and application.
   
3. Create space for exploration: Balance mandatory training with opportunities for self-directed exploration and experimentation.
   
4. Measure what matters: Look beyond completion rates to track metrics that reflect true engagement, application, and business impact.
   

The Future of Workplace Learning Is Agentic

The shift from completion-focused to agency-focused learning represents a fundamental rethinking of how professional development works in a rapidly evolving workplace. By fostering agentic engagement, organizations prepare their people for today's challenges while equipping them to navigate an uncertain future with confidence, curiosity, and the capacity to continually reinvent themselves.

As learning leaders, the challenge is clear: create experiences that transform passive participants into explorers, certificate collectors into innovators, and resistors into engaged contributors. When we succeed, we unleash human potential and drive organizational performance.

Curious to learn more about what agentic learning would look like at your organization? Reach out to sarah@desklightlearning.com to schedule a call with our team.