Practice helps us own our knowledge

"The benefit of a flight simulator is that it allows pilots to internalize their new knowledge.  Instead of memorizing lessons, a pilot can train the emotional brain, preparing the parts of the cortex that will actually make the decision when up in the air." -- Jonah Lehrer, How We Decide  

Great point.  When faced with a situation that requires action, we rarely have time to think, "What was that approach we talked about during Day Three of management training?"  We act from the gut.  And we train the gut through practice.

The case for in-person learning

Valuable blog post by Deborah Laurel on why interpersonal skills need face-to-face training.  Her points 3 and 4 focus on practice, immediate feedback, and trial and error -- and how they help learners master and retain new skills.

Interactive skills require whole body learning. In other words, just because a participant intellectually grasps the steps in a specific type of interaction does not mean that the participant is able to effectively handle the interaction in real life. The only way that learners will achieve confidence in their own competence is for them to practice their new skills in simulations that are as real to life as possible.  

 a. The participants can evaluate whether their verbal and nonverbal behaviors are consistent with each other, or whether they are giving inconsistent messages.

b. The participants get a chance to see how it feels to actually say what needs to be said to the other person.

c. The participant has to adjust to and handle unexpected responses of the other person.

d. It gives participants the experience of having to think on their feet.

I've got to agree!  Practice that's designed to be authentic, realistic, and unexpected (combined with a chance to coach and be coached by peers) is tremendously powerful.  It's the difference between reading a recipe and tasting the dish.

Photo by Jill Brazel
at a Workplace Interactors program

From "Ha-ha" to "Aha!"

New study on puzzles, problem-solving and laughter, demonstrating that people find it easier to solve puzzles through a flash of insight after they've watched something funny.  I love this from two points of view:

As a puzzle maniac, I agree that even thinking about a good one (cryptic crosswords are my drug of choice) induces a pleasant mind-state - something they found in the study.  And that moment of insight when the answer suddenly appears is one of the great joys of life, to me.

And as a creator of leadership-skills practice sessions which always combine laughter with serious practice, I constantly see how insight follows the loosening-up process of watching a funny live scene.

Glad to have the neurology to prove it!

Stepping up

British corporate change expert David Bovis wrote in a discussion on LinkedIn, "Neurologically / psychologically, we are 'designed' to learn from mistakes, and we learn quicker from environments that provide positive reinforcement, forgiveness & understanding following mistakes."  He goes on to give the (wonderfully vivid) example of how we encourage babies learning to walk. No one ever says, "You little idiot, you'll never walk.  Why even try again?"  And yet our feedback and evaluation systems tend to focus on what we've done wrong, in a punitive way.


That reminds me of Marshall Goldsmith's wonderful Feedforward exercise, which we've used with a number of different groups:  clients, our religious community, and even just between Dan and me.  Instead of focusing on the past (which we can't change, anyway), feedforward encourages us to consider ways that we can do better as we move ahead.  


If you haven't tried it, I urge you to check it out.  Marshall's clever format helps stop our usual resistant brain-chatter and opens us up to true listening and real possibility.  People report feeling truly cared for after the exercise and tend to come away with a few good ideas for improving their lives.  One baby step at a time.

The wisdom of crowds

Online training has become an accepted, often cost-efficient way of training in the corporate setting.  E-learning allows people to work at their own pace, during their own available time.  But what's lost?


One answer is hinted at in a blog post by Jonah Lehrer at The Frontal Cortex.  The topic is buzz and how it works to sell products, especially movies.  But near the end of the post, Lehrer writes:  "For too long, we’ve tried to understand ourselves in isolation, as we test people one at a time in the psychology lab or rely on their past preferences to predict behavior. But these conditions and algorithms are artificial. In the real world, we are deeply intertwined with each other, dependent on our social networks for all sorts of advice."  


I thought back to a recent workshop we gave, in which 24 newly-minted supervisors watched each other deal with various realistic management situations, live and impromptu.  Participants commented on how valuable it was to see how other people handle things - even if their style is different from yours (or perhaps especially so!). Even though back on the job these folks will often have to act alone, the collaboration they experience in training helps give them a repertoire of possible approaches that they're more likely to remember when they need them.


We often emphasize the practice aspect of our workshops, and of course that's vital:  nothing makes learning stick like actually trying it out.  But the group process may be equally important for topics (like supervisor skillls) that involve social interaction.  In a culture that still tends to overemphasize the individual, it's useful to reaffirm the wisdom of crowds.


Photo by Jill Brazel of a Workplace Productions program

The clock is ticking, part two

I had a chance to try out the 10-minute rule at a program we did for Northwestern University last week.  The workshop is called "Grace Under Pressure," and it focuses on how to recognize and relieve adrenaline flooding - the fight-or-flight response that shuts down your ability to think clearly.  It's really cool material, mostly developed by Andra Medea, who wrote Conflict Unraveled and certified me to teach this stuff.

We have two fantastic interactors who demonstrate flooding and its solutions, and of course they're riveting.  But there's also a lot of information on the physical signs and symptoms of flooding that I have to convey at the beginning of the workshop.  Last time we did it, a participant complained about the "lecture" (!), so I wanted to tinker with this section to see if the 10-minute rule might help keep the learners more engaged.

I redesigned this chunk it so that I changed direction about every 9 minutes, bringing in the interactors, discussion, etc.  I also made sure that I explained BEFOREHAND exactly how the information would be useful to the learners.  (I'm an awful nerd sometimes, and I tend to get enthusiastic and not notice that listeners may be thinking, "And you're telling me this WHY?")

The redesign worked beautifully!  In fact, one of the participants, commenting on the half-day program as a whole, said, "I don’t think any of us were bored for even one second."

Granted, most of this was due to Ta-Tanisha Jordan and Jack Hickey (pictured above), and their skill at demonstrating conflict and calm.  But at least I didn't get in their way!

Photo:  Jill Brazel

Good words

Teaching depends on what other people think, not what you think. - Deborah Loewenberg Ball, in an excellent article on the elements of good teaching.

Drawing a lesson

A new study shows that people who doodle during boring meetings or classes actually retain more information than those who don't. The theory is that doodling at least keeps your mind in the room, instead of tuning out altogether and daydreaming.

Note: it works in dull settings. So, fellow learning leaders, next time we encounter doodlers, rather than getting snarky about their lack of attention, maybe we need to find ways to engage them more fully. (That's our mission at Workplace.)

Probably not the best thing to point out to the boss, though, during that endless monthly meeting...

Illustration via FlickrCC on a Creative Commons license.
Can't you just imagine the meeting this came out of?

11 Ways Trainers Can Create Terrific Role Plays: Part Four

Facilitation

10. Applaud. Praise and validate the role players' work. Thank them for their contributions. Point out where they used the learning points and how it led to a successful outcome. Applaud them for taking the risk of role playing.

11. When "failures" happen, focus on the process rather than the person. When role players don't follow the learning points, say (for example), "Well, that certainly put him in his place. What might be some of the drawbacks to handling it that way?" Discuss the behaviors. Have the role players try the same situation again, with suggestions from other participants. Thank the role players for providing good material for discussion. After all, the whole group will learn from things that don't work out as well as from those that do.

Role plays can be a great teaching tool, with your help. You can design, introduce and facilitate them so learners:

• Know what they're supposed to be doing


• Aren't afraid of being judged


• Feel free to experiment and have fun

With less anxiety and more targeted learning, who knows? Maybe role plays will become your company's favorite learning technique.

Reprinted with permission from Training Today.

11 Ways Trainers Can Create Terrific Role Plays: Part Three

4. Focus on a small, important piece of behavior. Don't try to do too much in a single role play. If you're training people in a process, work it section by section. For example, in sales training, focus on establishing rapport, then on asking probing questions, etc. -- perhaps with different participants playing the salesperson in each section.

1. 5. Don't be afraid of "negative models." You can inject a lot of humor -- and learning -- into a workshop by asking people to "do everything wrong." For example, in the customer service situation, ask the person playing the rep to come up with three bad ways to handle the complaining customer (such as sounding bored, using sarcasm, and shouting at her), and then let the participants discuss why those approaches didn't work -- the consequences of not using the new learning. You can generate a lot of energy with this exercise, and the humor helps break the ice for further role playing.

Instructions

6. Take role players off the hook. Tell them, "You're not you in this role play, you're somebody else just like you." Refer to the character by another name, not the role player's name. Creating distance between the character and the self means participants don't have to own any errors they make -- they're not really "their" mistakes. Sometimes it helps to set role plays at a fictional company similar to the real one.

7. Strive for a better -- not a perfect -- interaction. Let participants know that you'll applaud any success, even a small one.

8. Bring a sense of fun to the exercise. Keep it light. People learn better through humor, liveliness, and enjoyment.

9. Share the risk. Let role players work in teams, sharing solutions and coaching each other. Have the team come up to the front, so the person who is actually doing the role play can turn to his team for advice. Have team members replace each other in the role, as in tag-team wrestling, so no one has to do the entire exercise by herself.

To be continued...

11 Ways Trainers Can Create Terrific Role Plays: Part Two

Here are 11 ways to make role plays work for you. We've divided these tips into the three phases of creating a role play: Design (how you structure the exercise), Instructions (how you explain the exercise to participants), and Facilitation (how you work with the role players as the exercise is taking place).

Design

1. Be specific. Most role plays fail because they're too general, and people don't know what to do. Choose the circumstances of the role play carefully. Fill in lots of detail. For example, if it's customer service training, don't just ask someone to play a complaining customer. Tell the role players exactly what the issue is: "You're a credit card customer who asked last month to have an erroneous charge removed from your bill. You just got the new bill, and the charge is still there." And to the person playing the customer service rept: "Two people are out sick, and you're covering for them, even though you should have gone to lunch a half-hour ago. The last person you talked to hung up on you." This level of detail helps role players believe in the action. They're less likely to be distracted by their own nerves or by others' reactions.

2. Make the role play situation important to the characters. The stakes should be high. For example, a valuable employee is ready to quit because his manager never recognizes his achievements. The manager already has been warned by her boss about too much turnover in her department. When the outcome is important to the characters, the exercise has more energy and interest for the role players and for those watching.

3. Target the learning points. Make sure the situation you choose will make the role players deal with the behavior you want to reinforce. Because new learning feels uncomfortable, most role players will try to avoid acting it out. Close the escape hatches by picking a situation that must be solved by putting the learning points into practice.

To be continued...

11 Ways Trainers Can Create Terrific Role Plays: Part One

You know that role plays are a wonderful tool for turning theory into practice. They can answer that crucial question, "How does this apply to me?" By giving learners a chance to try out new behaviors in a controlled setting, they can jump-start the application of new learning back on the job. They get people out of their chairs and into action.

So why do so many learners hate role plays? You've seen it happen: participants groan when a role play is announced. You can't get a volunteer, so you have to force someone to come up. The role players are too easy on each other, or they give up too soon -- or they just undermine the whole exercise with joking or hostility. What's going on here?

It's simple: they're afraid they're going to make fools of themselves. As a trainer, you know that most people get anxious when they have to get up in front of a group. They're afraid they'll be judged. When that group consists of their peers and co-workers, it feels even riskier. And when they're not sure what they're supposed to be doing, that anxiety goes sky-high.

You can reduce the risk of role plays. You can't take away people's performance anxiety -- but you can minimize it through the way you design, set up, and facilitate role plays. You can create an atmosphere of humor and experimentation, and you can ensure succcess for all participants -- no matter what mistakes they make.

Here are 11 ways to make role plays work for you. We've divided these tips into the three phases of creating a role play: Design (how you structure the exercise), Instructions (how you explain the exercise to participants), and Facilitation (how you work with the role players as the exercise is taking place).

To be continued...

Flying lessons

At Workplace Productions, we create "flight simulators" for new learning: opportunities for people to practice skills in a low-risk setting before they go back to the job. We find it's the most effective way to make the transition from classroom to real life.

One of our favorite techniques is using our interactors (specially trained professional actors) in brief, intense simulations with learners. We do tons of research and create realistic situations that mirror those our participants are going to deal with back at work. They're like role plays on steroids (only legal!), because the interactors know how to keep the simulation on track and don't make it easy for the learner.

But what do you do if you're not bringing us in for a training?

A few years back I wrote an article for the magazine Training Today called "11 Ways Trainers Can Create Terrific Role Plays." I drew on our years of experience working with the form to help people use this great learning tool more effectively with the resources on hand.

With Training Today's generous permission, I'll be posting the article in several chunks over the next few days. I'd love your thoughts on it, so please leave a comment.

Nourishing

A client recently turned us on to Marshall Goldsmith's concept of "feedforward," and we've been happily passing it along.

Goldsmith points out that the problem with feedback is that it focuses on the past (and blame!) rather than on the future (and growth). Feedforward emphasizes ideas that can help you do a better job next time, instead of analyzing where you screwed up last time. Imagine development sessions without criticism, defensiveness, or arguing about who was wrong and who was right. (Hey, imagine a marriage like that!)

Try the exercise Goldsmith uses. We found it a much more productive and respectful way to share ideas about how we can do better. And after seeing a group of twenty practicing, we were delighted by the energy and connection in the room.

Of course, we can't completely abandon talking about the past. But we can use feedforward more often than we think. It's a great tool for keeping communication positive and fruitful. And people eat it up.

Stuck on you

For some months now I've been in love with Chip Heath's and Dan Heath's Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die.

The title of the 2007 book grabbed me, of course, because Workplace Productions has been using the phrase "Learning that Sticks" for five years or so. And as a designer and facilitator of adult learning I'm always looking for new ways to make ideas and skills memorable.

And what a treasure this book is! It's written using its own principles: simplicity, unexpectedness, concreteness, credibility, emotional appeal, and stories.

I'll be discussing aspects of it here (even though the orange cover clashes with my color scheme), and I'd love to hear your thoughts on the Heaths' practice-what-you-preach manual.

So grab your copy, and over the next couple of weeks we'll talk about how these ideas relate to workplace learning. Stick around.