As a change of pace, I wanted to spend some time talking about training and leadership. Many managers are asked to train others without learning how to train effectively. In order for a training program to be successful you need to understand how adults best learn. You'll need to learn how to lead them into the new behaviors. Anyone who is attentive and willing during class will learn the material. But will they use the new behaviors back on the job? In a manager's role, you'd want to make sure that the time you invest in a learning initiative is time and money well spent.
How do Adults Learn?
Adults learn differently from children. Whereas children can be considered "blank slates", adults bring a wealth of already accumulated knowledge. This is quite helpful to the learning experience and a savvy facilitator will use this to their advantage. Adults also bring different expectations to the learning process. Adults will expect the learning to be a partnership, with the facilitator providing the impetuous and the means for the learning process while the adults expect to be responsible retaining and being able to use the learning. Adults expect to be respected for both their experiences and their opinions.
Adults tend to learn best when they are able to make connections between what they are currently learning and past experiences. They also prefer to be full participants in the learning process.
What is Facilitating?
Facilitating is the art of leadership in group communications. In a training or learning environment, this may mean the facilitator directs the activities and the line of questioning, but allows the learners to come up with the answers themselves. This has several positive effects on the learning experience. First, this interactive environment will be more stimulating for the learner. This increases the likelihood of retention. Second, by requiring the learners produce or generate the information instead of simply hearing it from a "teacher", the learners will develop a stake in the learning process. Learners with a stake in the process will retain more. Third, this allows for more learning by doing, whether looking up information in a manual or on a website and using that information that information in order to process requests.
What's the difference between teaching and facilitating (and why you should care)?
Teaching assumes that the learner knows nothing and the teacher everything. Elementary school, specific tehniqual or Some of the differences between teaching and learning can be summed up in this way.
Traditional Teaching is:
Passive.
Authoritarian.
Delivering information.
Convergence, conformism.
One-way (top-down)
Teaching is delivery-heavy and often requires entertainment to keep attention. On the other hand, if we focus on how to use the expectations and experiences of our learners, we realize that effect learning requires more.
Facilitating is:
Active and dynamic, experiential.
Reaching forward.
Empowering.
Responding to a challenge.
Divergence - going out of the box.
Interactive
Learning through facilitation involves questioning-heavy, inductive/ inferential, hands-on, reflective, interactive. You lead the participants to the desired behaviors.
What does this mean for your training efforts?
In order for your training efforts to be successful, you must be aware of the needs of your learners. Top heavy teaching generally doesn't do well helping adults learn new material or master new behaviors when teaching adults.
Having people participate in the experience will help them better retain the information as well as buy into the experience. Hmm, sounds a lot like a sales situation! It is. Treating your learners as though they are potential customers goes a long way towards getting acceptance of and ultimately mastery of the skills you want them to use.
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