I love getting ‘evaluation’ forms back at the end of my training events with straight ‘excellent’ ratings. Who doesn’t get a warm glow from these? Especially if the scores are accompanied by comments like, “Loved it!” and “Fantastic course!”.
But what do these happy sheets really tell us? Well, at the risk of putting a dampener on all these little moments of personal triumph, they tell us that the learner enjoyed the learning experience - and not a lot more.
Here at Trainers’ Library, we design our training materials around a learning model that focuses on three key stages. The first is Retention and here, the fact that learners enjoyed learning is undoubtedly good. It presumably means they were engaged, and I’m firmly of the view that learning should always be engaging. An engaged learner, who is learning through experiences, activities and games, is much more likely to retain knowledge and ideas than someone who is struggling to keep their eyes open as the presenter narrates a long series of PowerPoint slides.
But not everyone will enjoy ‘engaging’ learning. If the challenges are tough, if they ‘fail’ one or two tasks or if the learning identifies skill gaps they don’t want to admit, they might not enjoy the learning so much. That doesn’t mean that they didn’t and/or won’t learn from those experiences. Some people continue to learn from a training event long after it is completed, as they reflect upon experiences that shine a new light on things that happen at work.
And just because someone is engaged during the learning experience and therefore, hopefully, will retain something from the day, does that mean they’ll want to do something differently as a result? Again, not necessarily. We could be engaged by a game of ‘Pass the Parcel’ or ‘Musical Chairs’ – but these experiences aren’t very likely to change our worlds. For training to make a difference, it must be relevant, and it must affect the learner at an emotional level. This is the stage in our model we call Inspiration. We need learners to see how the experiences they’ve shared relate to their situations back in the workplace and we need them to want to apply the learning immediately. That immediacy is important too – the more energy, passion and determination we can instil, the more likely it is that they’ll make time to prioritise putting their learning into practice, when faced with the day-to-day demands of their job.
And that leads us to the final step in our model – Action. Once we’ve created learning experiences that our learners retain, and which inspire, we need to ensure they have the resources and support necessary to act. The only true measure of any training’s success are the changes that happen as a result of it - for me, that’s evidenced by the emails and conversations I’ve had long after the training, where I’ve learnt that learners have re-written courses or workshops and/or dramatically changed their approach to training as a result of attending one of my sessions.
Action requires a team effort between the learner, their manager and the Learning and Development function. It’s here, in particular, that Review Activities (for example Action Planning) help learners reflect upon and clarify the actions they want to take. It’s also where tools like Managers’ Library, designed to engage managers in the learning process, really come into their own too.
If you’d like to know more about our Retention, Inspiration and Action learning model, and how to design training that achieves these goals, why not join me for a Trainers’ Masterclass in September? I’d love to see you there – more than that, I’d love you to join the long list of people who have taken action as a result of coming along! ?? |