Concluding Reflections on Telling Ain’t Training
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This final chapter has three purposes. The first is to pull together the contents of this book into a coherent summary and to leave you with a rationale and memory of the journey you have undertaken with us. The second is to revisit and reemphasize the key messages we have shared with you. We wanted this book to be a conversation. As in all engaging dialogues, we sometimes ramble on and digress from the main points. We won’t feel right until we make sure those points have been realigned and restated. The third purpose is to share some final reflections on training and telling. Through this, we wish to leave you with some food for thought as you go forth and figure out what to do with what you’ve learned.
A Rapid Review of Telling Ain’t Training
Chapter 1 was a teaser chapter designed to whet your appetite for more. If you’ve made it to this point, we succeeded. We are so delighted! More important, the teaser was created to trigger reflection about how you have learned. Our guess is that it wasn’t mostly from telling.
In chapter 2, you encountered four key terms: training, for reproducing behaviors; instruction, for generalizing learned behaviors to novel instances; education, for building general mental models and values that guide us in how we deal with life’s events; and learning, the change in mental structures and behavior repertoires that allows us to face the world and survive. You also became acquainted with the now familiar mantra: learner centered, performance based. No matter whom you train, what the subject is, and how you deliver it (live or otherwise), this mantra should remain with you as a constant guide.
With the rationale for focusing on learner-centered and performance-based training established and with the goal of transforming our learners so that they can perform in ways they and their organizations value, we turned to the learners themselves. To transform, you have to know how learners perceive, process, store, and retrieve information. You have to identify facilitating and inhibiting characteristics of the learners. Finally, you have to be able to use your knowledge of the learner’s learning capacities and limits to trigger successful transformation. That’s what we shared with you in chapter 3.
If I know so much, why can’t I make people learn? That’s a question frequently asked by SME trainers frustrated because they can’t seem to “make them learn.” Here’s where you encountered declarative (talk-about) and procedural (do) knowledge. In chapter 4, you also came face-to-face with the paradox of taking SMEs with highly developed procedural knowledge and having them explain things declaratively so that learners can perform procedurally. What a mess!
Chapter 5 introduced you to four key adult learning principles: readiness, experience, autonomy, and action. It demonstrated how consideration of adult learning characteristics greatly assists you in building an effective instructional message. In chapter 6 you discovered the five-step model for structuring training, based on six universals from learning research. That simple model pulls together all the pieces you encountered earlier. It takes into account the mantra, the learner’s characteristics, and the adult learning principles to provide a solid structure for building high-probability-of-success training sessions. Chapter 7 added more detail on how you can structure successful learning sessions and help the learner learn more easily by taking into account metacognitive skills and exploiting or enhancing cognitive strategies. In that way you shore up specific weaknesses while strengthening the overall ability of your learners to learn more efficiently.
Chapter 8 introduced four major approaches to training that are used in the workplace and described their features, benefits, and limitations. It also presented you with a large array of ready-to-use activities that can be broadly applied in terms of learners and content, are easily adaptable, and totally respect the principles of Telling Ain’t Training.
Testing was the theme of chapter 9. You now possess a set of tools you can apply to develop appropriate tests. As we explained in that chapter, testing is a great way to enhance learning if it’s done right. Chapter 9 provided you with guidance and support to do it correctly.
Chapter 10 was an important chapter that connected training with technology and attempted to present a balanced view of what to expect when you turn to technology to support or deliver training. It also offered cautions about the overpromise and underdelivery frequently associated with technology hype. Key to exploiting technology appropriately is determination of precisely what your goal is; critical review of not just the technological options, but the hard evidence of successful application; prudent decision making based on fact, not hope; and, finally, well supported implementation with evaluation of results. Technology is just as capable of delivering telling as any poor trainer.
Chapter 11 examined the numerous ways you can make technology work for you to produce effective and efficient learning. Starting out with commonly held “mythconceptions” about learning and technology, it swiftly drew you into dealing with such issues as what drives quality online learning and what decisions you and your organization first have to make before investing in technology-based learning. This chapter also introduced blended learning in its various guises, emphasizing how true blending requires intimate integration of information and collaboration with instruction. Closing out the chapter, you encountered an array of Web 2.0 resources you can begin exploring today and exploiting tomorrow.
Finally, chapter 12 presented a number of training myths—ones to beware of. It also provided you with ammunition to do battle against those who would impose these myths on your organization, your learners, and you.
So here we are. We’ve traveled far together in a short time. We’ve shared with you much of what it’s taken us many years to learn on our own. Accept it with our best wishes and support. Hold on to the key messages:
- Your success is the result of your learners’ success.
- Learning effectiveness is not in the packaging, but in the design and structuring.
- Information is inert. It gains value only when learners seek it out and mold it to their characteristics and needs.
- Telling ain’t training.
One more key message to retain: live or virtual, synchronous or asynchronous, on-the-job or in the classroom, one-on-one or one-on-many or many-on-one, face-toface or technology delivered—it’s all the same in terms of learning. Begin with the learner. Determine the desired outcome. Design training to help learners progress from where they are to where they ought to be. Adapt the delivery system to the characteristics of the learners and the content. Avoid pseudoscientific ways of determining and labeling learner characteristics. Those are the essentials.
Something to Think About—Reflections From Carl Jung1
We are not Jungians. We are learning and workplace researchers and practitioners. A number of years ago, however, we found a model of teaching-learning inspired by the work of Carl Jung that intrigued and touched us (see figure 13-1).
The teacher consciously (TC) formulates a message to which the learner consciously (LC) attends. They engage in conscious dialogue (1). However, the teacher doesn’t consciously plan every word she or he will say. Unconsciously, the teacher (TU) draws from inside the right words, analogies, and responses. She or he sets up a dialogue between the conscious self and the unconscious self (2). Similarly, as the teacher’s message reaches the learner, he or she also sets up an internal dialogue between conscious and unconscious (3). While this is occurring, the teacher begins to respond not only to the learner’s conscious remarks, but also to nondeliberate but nevertheless important cues emanating unconsciously from the learner (LU) who, in turn, unconsciously responds to the teacher’s remarks (4). Similarly, the learner consciously reacts to unconscious teacher cues (5) and vice versa.
Ultimately, a more profound dialogue emerges. In this deeper communication, one type of dialogue takes place consciously and on the surface (1); the other, which is much more meaningful, occurs unconsciously (6). It is at this unconscious level that, irrespective of the words, the true messages are conveyed.
One of our favorite classics is the late 19th-century novel by Edward Eggleston titled The Hoosier School-Master.2 At one point, the young schoolmaster walks a servant girl home after a spelling bee, which she has won much to everyone’s surprise. Although not in a teaching-learning context, what follows well illustrates this deeper dialogue that Jung has described.
You … wish me to repeat all their love talk. I am afraid you’d find it dull…. Ralph talked love when he spoke of the weather, of the crops, and spelling school—these were what his words would say if reported. But below these common places there vibrated something else. One can make love a great deal better when one doesn’t speak of love. Words are so poor! … The solemnest engagements made have been without the intervention of speech….
Hannah lay awake until the memory of that walk through the darkness came into her soul like a benediction…. She recalled piece by piece the whole conversation—all the commonplace remarks about the weather; all the insignificant remarks about the crops; all the unimportant words about the spelling school. Not for the sake of the remarks. Not for the sake of the weather. Not for the sake of the spelling school. But for the sake of the undertone.
Notice how the real message each has sent to the other is not explicitly articulated. It occurs at that deeper, Jungian, unconscious level.
We leave you with this final reflection. In training, especially as the pressure of accelerating new knowledge requirements tempts us to head for the content and exploit increasingly sophisticated technological means for conveying it, there is a danger of losing our most important message to our learners. If we focus only on words and the superficial, do we lose the essential transformation we seek? As you reflect on those who influenced and taught you most and best, was it via their words? Or was it something else?
Our aim is not to leave you with some mystical meditation. We simply raise a caution about maintaining a focus—what it is that the learners, the organization, and you value most. We have tried to follow our own principles within this book format. We have taught you through the words and activities we offered you. We have prompted you to try out some of the strategies, job aids, tactics, and activities and have offered cues and suggestions for their use. Now we release you to go forth and train well. We hope that beneath the words we have conveyed to you our deep passion and commitment to helping adult learners and you achieve success. Reflect on what you want to make of your training role. As the Jung model and the contents of this book suggest, training is one heck of a lot more than simply telling.