I wonder how many of my readers have children? Quite a lot of you I imagine. Even if you don’t, I’m sure you know someone who does and have probably witnessed the pride parents take in their child’s first successful steps.
Have you ever stopped to reflect on how we train children to walk?
I imagine that most parents use a PowerPoint presentation. Slide one shows a picture of a child on the floor. Slide two contains the following bullet points, giving the child all of the information and knowledge they require in order to successfully negotiate the living room floor on two legs:
- Step 1: Put your left leg forward, placing the heel back on the ground a short distance ahead of you.
- Step 2: Roll your forward foot forward onto the ball of your foot.
- Step 3. Repeat the process with your right foot.
Slide three moves on to how to hop, skip and jump and by slide 6, they should be ready for the decathlon.
I hope you’re laughing and that none of you are nodding, saying, ‘yep, that worked for us’.
At heart, we all know that we don’t learn from being given lots of information and knowledge. We learn from our experiences. So, why do so many organisations still expect to change their employees’ behaviours by PowerPoint?
I’ve been working with a number of different organisations recently, helping build engagement with Trainers’ Library. It’s been incredibly rewarding because, in a few cases, I’ve been able to help trainers transform the way they think about and deliver training.
I’ve watched people leave the workshops ready to let go of their PowerPoint presentations, realising that they don’t have to be the expert in the room and the source of all knowledge. Instead, they’re going back to their organisations ready, with the help of Trainers’ Library, to create situations and opportunities in which participants discover and learn for themselves. And they’re learning to inject more fun into the courses and workshops they run. In short, they’re moving from trainer-led training to learner-led learning.
That learning should, for the most part, come from the participants’ own experiences is a fundamental principle behind Trainers’ Library and the training activities we design. That’s because experiences are the way we all naturally learn – from our very first steps.
p.s., You might also be interested in
this article from Nick Heap, which uses the analogy of baby steps to illustrate the principles of Accelerated Learning.