Transfer

Know Your Stuff? Share Your Stuff!

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It seems to be a fairly simple concept – effective training should be provided by Subject Matter Experts (SMEs).  They bring knowledge, expertise and, most importantly, credibility to the topic at hand.  They also bring ‘real world’ experience that should help to bridge the knowledge gap for learners that can, sometimes, be pretty vast between the discussion of theory and the application of that theory.

SME acrostic - Subject Matter Expert
Source: Constantin Stanciu/Shutterstock

Using an obvious example, if a trainer was hired to teach trainees how to play hockey, they would have to show people how to skate, pass the puck, and handle the stick.  An effective trainer would not be someone who could just ‘talk’ about these skills or describe how to play the game. They would actually need to be a skilled hockey player themselves and be able to share what it feels like to learn and perform at a high level of expertise.

This concept seems to be taking hold in formal training processes, including post-secondary learning organizations.  It is not enough for a professor to provide theory, they must be able to bring some subject matter expertise into classroom learning in order for students to make the link between theory and ‘real world’ application.

A recent article in The Globe & Mail, highlights the effective use of subject matter experts in traditional business school environments.

Click Here to Read the Article

This article brings forth the wonderful opportunity that business executives can bring to formal learning settings.  It also presents the changing perspective that not all knowledge should be vested in one person at the front of the classroom in a formal learning organization.  It is clear that the more we can bring in the expertise of others into the creation of effective training models, the richer the shared learning becomes for everyone.

Discussion Questions:

  1. Thinking about your own learning experiences, how did you learn to drive a vehicle?
    • What theoretical concepts did you have to learn?
    • What were the practical steps that you had to learn in order to actually drive the vehicle?
    • Who taught you how to drive a vehicle and what expertise did they bring to that learning process for you?
  2. Have you been inspired by any SMEs during the course of your program studies? Who were they and why were they inspirational?
  3. Why does ‘real world’ application matter for effective training and learning?

Is Experience the Best Teacher?

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Source: Patsy Michaud/Shutterstock
Source: Patsy Michaud/Shutterstock

We have often heard the expression ‘walk a mile in my shoes’ when someone wants to relay how a certain experience has affected them.  Usually, the experience was unpleasant, challenging, or just very difficult and we want to have someone else understand how we felt.  Why?  Sometimes, when we experience a difficult situation we want to talk about it just to complain,  but we also talk about our negative experiences because we don’t want to go through that experience the same way, again.  Having a negative experience, especially one that causes us discomfort, is certainly a key factor in changing our behaviour in order to avoid repeating the same experience in the future.  One hopes that what we learn for ourselves, we might help others with as well.

Listening to someone’s negative experience is very different from living through the actual experience itself. A very effective training design technique which implements experiential learning, is being used at the Michener Institute for Applied Health Sciences.  An “aging simulation suit’ is being used to train future healthcare practitioners.  The suit is designed in such a way that it literally allows someone to walk in the shoes of an aging person and to learn, through personal experience, what it physically feels like to be a patient or a client in a healthcare setting.

Click here to read the article and watch a video

Discussion Questions:

  1. Besides healthcare, what types of industries would benefit from having this type of sensory aging & mobility training provided to their employees?
  2. Have you changed something in your own work style because of how you felt someone treated you? What did you change and why did you make that change?
  3. From a customer service perspective, what other types of training tools could be used to relay the experience of aging?
  4. Why is this type of experiential training effective?

Learning to Listen

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Source: Tumblr. The above content constitutes a link to the source website.

Effective transfer of training for all employees is easier when there is a culture of learning.  Creating a culture of learning must come with clear support from the top of the organization through the office of the Chief Executive Officer (CEO).  As we have learned through our studies, two additional key strategies recommended for the effective transfer of training for employees into productive performance behaviours include, management support and on-going performance coaching.  So how does the CEO become more effective in their own performance as a cultural role model for the learning organization?

They too need management support and on-going performance coaching.

Click here to read the article.  

According to this article, there is a 65.4% increase in management productivity due to one-on-one coaching when compared to the transfer of learning that comes from attending a three-day management training session.  Further, most of us forget a significant portion of what we have heard within 8 hours!   So, it is particularly interesting to note, that for the CEO, the focus of performance coaching in this example relies on the continued development of their own listening skills in order to become better communicators.

If the CEO learns to listen more, then employees are more likely to be heard.  If employees feel like they are being heard, then they are more likely become more productive.  If there is more productivity, then there is likely to be an increase in organizational value as a result of employees feeling valued and listened to.

Does it matter?  If the transfer of training by the CEO makes for better listening practices and effective communication, then a positive chain reaction throughout the organization could occur.  This result makes it obvious that it does matter…a lot!

Discussion Questions:

  1. What advice would you give the CEO where you work (or have worked) in order to increase their communication effectiveness?
  2. What types of performance coaching would you benefit from in your current work situation?
  3. How much do you remember from past training sessions that you were able to implement into your daily work routines?
  4. Who would benefit from on-going performance coaching in your current workplace and why?