Learning Questions

As a technical instructor, I made myself familiar with the questions we all ask as learners. During the learning process, we all ask certain questions and usually in a specific order whether we realize it or not. It goes something like this:

1. Why? – If we don’t know why we are learning something, then odds are we won’t learn it. At the very least, we won’t want to learn it. Why is it relevant? Why should I invest my time?
2. What? – Once we get past why, we want to know what it is we need to know or do so we can act upon it.
3. How? – After we get what we need to know or do, we want to know how we are going to apply it and how to do it.
4. What if? – If we have maintained interest in the subject long enough to learn how to do it and want to learn more, then we move on to this question, which is ongoing and takes us to ever greater heights in our learning. What if I do it this way? What if I do it in this instance?

It is that first question that is on my mind today. While it is an important one, it is also a dangerous one; particularly if we are asking it of the persons we are learning from. It is one thing to ask why we are learning a subject. It is quite another thing to ask the person you are learning from questions like “why are you doing this?” “why did you do it that way?” or “why is this important to you?” These questions are more about the person than the subject. The reason I say it is dangerous is because it can elicit a host of reactions or responses and must be treated with care and clarity. For example, if we ask “Why are you doing that?” in a rhetorical or sarcastic way, we have just launched an attack on that person and his or her purpose and should probably expect some kind of backlash or shutdown. That same question, however, asked in a such a way that it is a clear attempt to better understand his or her purpose, it will either be met with profound insight from that person or will trigger a greater level of introspect resulting in mutual improvement in person and process.

All of this to say that we all benefit greatly from questions and it is worth investigating how we can make better use of them for everyone’s benefit.

~ John

Experience Rules

It took me years of serving as a technical trainer before I realized that experience trumps all other modes and delivery of learning and retention. It trumps lecture, repetition, memorization, reciting, etc. The temptation and tendency when training is to focus on the subject being trained rather than the people being trained. For example, let’s say you come to a Microsoft Excel class I am facilitating. My approach could be, “Okay, we are here to talk about Excel. I will be showing you how to use Excel by demonstrating its technical capabilities.” At first, this sounds reasonable. If it is an Excel class, it makes sense that we will be talking about Excel. The problem with this approach, however, is that it does not address why the participant needs to learn Excel. People generally learn Excel in order to do their job more effectively, so a better approach would be, “We are going to be talking about improving your work by learning how to use Excel more efficiently. We will do this by walking through examples of your work and developing best practices.”

I am reminded of the mantra that materialized in my tenure as a trainer; it’s not about the technology, it’s about the people. This essentially means that as long as the focus is on what is being learned rather than who is learning it, the transfer of learning will never be as strong as it should be. Likewise, if the focus of the training is on the technical aspects of the tool rather than the experience of using the tool, users will not “get it” or use the tool to its full potential. This concept, of course, does not just apply to technology or training, but in all aspects of life. If adequate focus is placed on the people and improving their experiences, then learning will happen. How did you learn your first language? Experience. How did you learn to ride a bicycle? Experience. No amount of explanation, memorization, etc. helped you more with these two “simple” examples than the experience of doing it.

Takeaways? Seek new experiences often. Get to know the people around you and what they do. Any others?

~ John