T
TALKING HEADS
We learn when we feel supported to practise
I
Ewen Haldane
We need to foster
a work culture
where people feel
comfortable looking
like idiots in front of
each other.
64 // Future Talent
t’s been called the “great
training robbery”. Each year,
billions are invested in
learning and development
programmes that promise to transform
our leadership abilities. But according to
studies, only around 10% of training
programmes result in any ‘transfer’ of
knowledge from the classroom into
boardroom behaviours. Should we just
give up on trying to develop our staff?
There’s no shortage of those who
think so. When Patty McCord was
HR director at Netflix, she wrote that
employees had no reason to expect
their company to invest in helping them
learn new skills. In McCord’s oft-repeated
phrase, workers were part of a “team,
not a family”. Immediate performance
and results were essential. Development
and support were not.
At the same time, according to PwC,
four in five CEOs believe that improving
the soft skills of their emerging leaders
is critical for future growth. So, what’s
going wrong? Are learning workshops
poorly designed?
There’s certainly a tendency to turn
some training days into highly efficient
downloads of data, as if we were
updating software rather than working
with human beings. But training sessions
aren’t the main problem. It’s rather that
learning new skills (soft skills especially)
only happens when we take the time to
practise them.
That rarely happens in the workplace,
but it does in the world of sports. When
Tiger Woods was already near the top of
his golf game, for example, he noticed a
minor flaw in his swing that was holding
him back. He decided to deconstruct
and re-learn a new swing from the
ground up.
For a brief period, while he struggled
to embed the new technique, his game
deteriorated and he fell down the
rankings, before emerging as an even
better player a year later. He took the
far-sighted decision that a technique
that had successfully taken him to that
point in his career wouldn’t get him to
the next one.
Similarly, in the workplace, when we
first start to practise a new skill, whether
it’s around giving feedback, coaching
a direct report or presenting more
effectively, we often get worse before
we get better. We have to go through
a dispiriting process of unlearning old,
unhelpful behaviours and replacing them
with better ones.
Unlike Tiger Woods, we have to
do most of our practice in public,
while our peers observe us looking
flustered and anxious about how
incompetent and ineffective we
must be appearing. No wonder that,
in cultures that pride themselves
on presenting an image of immaculate
p ro f e s s i o n a l i s m , t h e e a s i e s t
option is to revert to how we used to
do things.
A number of studies, notably
Robert Brinkerhoff’s, have shown that
when learners aren’t able to practise
what they’ve learned in a supportive
“There’s certainly
a tendency to turn
some training days
into highly efficient
downloads of data”
environment, it’s almost impossible
to embed new behaviours at work. In
those instances, training can become
demotivating, even counterproductive.
Bu t to c re ate a su p p o r t i ve ,
‘psychologically safe’ environment
takes a willingness to live with the
awkwardness that comes with slowly
and clumsily getting better at something
— and helping others to do the same.
Huge long-term benefits will accrue
if we can foster work cultures where
people feel more comfortable looking
like idiots in front of each other in
the short-term. It’s a challenge, but
it’s critical for any organisation that
values learning.
Ewen Haldane is director of content
and strategy for Future Talent Learning.