By William Seidman Learning is the most important part of “training.” So often, training initiatives fail. Companies waste thousands of dollars on programs that promise and don’t deliver. We use significant new approaches to learning (which is different from “training’) to produce both higher levels of initial engagement and better long-term, sustained capabilities. How is this done?
- Emphasize the “purpose” of the role. A sense of purpose is a primary motivator of performance.
- Use your organization’s top performers’ “secret sauce” as the foundation for the content. This makes the content real and applicable. There is a body of research on the role of “positive deviants” in organizations, including the role in developing others.
- Structure the learning tasks to promote a sense of honor and dignity for the learner (the science of fair process), to promote and reinforce the use of positive images of performance, consistent with the neuroscience of learning.
- Structure the learning and management environments so people have time to actually apply the positive images of performance to real situations.
- Develop management to understand and be able to execute their role in supporting sustained learning.