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Sticky Learning Lunches #28: Making Learning Stick & Making a Difference
Today’s topic, After Training Courses they Do Nothing Different Part 2. Discover 7 ways to help your people to achieve behavioural change, and make learning stick after a training course.
You Can Read the Full Transcript Below:
Nathan Simmonds:
Good afternoon everybody. Welcome to today’s 50th Learning Lunch. I’m just breaking my whiteboard. We’re just waiting for the last couple of people to show up today for part two of How to Make Learning Stick. Hello Colin. Good to see you Darren. Thank you. Karen. Hello again. Matt Brown. Hello Susan. Tim, see you. Thank you for being here again. It’s very, very appreciated. Very appreciated.
Nathan Simmonds:
We’re just gonna give it 30 seconds while we’re letting some more people show up and then we’re gonna get into some stuff he says in floating speech. Marks loving these sessions. I’m loving these sessions too, Karen. Thank you very much. It’s appreciated. Benjamin, great to see you And no, I was not. I did not have makeup on my shirt the other day. I know you made a comment about that. I had a check and it must’ve been a shadow, but it definitely wasn’t makeup.
Nathan Simmonds:
Not very often that I do wear makeup. My agent, it’s not very often you get it on your shirt either. No, not even at the weekends, right? Let’s make sure we’re setting everyone up for success as people are coming in. Let’s zero out the distractions as always. Let’s make sure the phones on flight mode a hundred percent attention on you. A hundred percent attention on the information rings available. I actually have a warm cup of tea today, which is good and we’re gonna dive into this in your pen. So what have we covered so far? Actually, whoa, skip him back.
Nathan Simmonds:
How’s everyone? Still got their goals written down from yesterday. Thank you Colin, for the reminder. Appreciated. Get off the full screen. Has everyone still got their goals written down from yesterday of what they would like to achieve from this session? Yesterday’s session about how to make learning stick. Have you still got that piece of paper handy with that single learning objective that you wrote down for yourself?
Nathan Simmonds:
Can hear the flapping of paper as you’re scurrying back through your notepads? Wanna find that page? Good. We’re gonna come back to that in a minute. The second thing to help you set, Lauren, the third thing to help you set help set you up for success as I have done in previous sessions, is making sure you’ve got a fresh page or you’ve got a fresh piece of page to write on for your keepers. And at the top of that, you are gonna write keepers.
Nathan Simmonds:
These are the things you wanna remember and be reminded of and reread that is gonna help bring that memory and that thinking and that imagination to the forefront to help embed and make the learning stick. Starting to see where I’m going with this. Early doors. Good. What did we cover yesterday? Let me ask that question to you because this is, you know, one of the things I’ve got a degree in is asking questions. What do you remember from yesterday? What are the key standouts for you from yesterday? Carrying in there? Like fire wtt, what’s in it for them? Number one from yesterday.
Nathan Simmonds:
What else do we remember? Good. What’s in it for them? Good. What else do we remember from yesterday’s session that helps Pete, that’s gonna help you to make your learning stick? Hello Helen. Good to see you. Hello Haley. Great to see you again, Emma. Thanks for being here again, change as a change resisted, absolutely engage leaders. Absolutely they need to engage our leaders so that they can engage their own development so other people are inspired to engage with theirs. And what’s the last thing we’ve got?
Nathan Simmonds:
Experts Is get experts deliver what they’re passionate about. Be the example. Phenomenal, some great memories coming up here. Really glad to see you. You are digesting and taking this on board. So we’ve got the single learner objective that we, we wrote down from yesterday. Today we’ve got the keepers in place, the things that we wanna remember. So the reason I ask you this question now is what do you remember from yesterday? Is bringing back that memory to the forefront. Those memories to the forefront with the ERs idea. With this, it is about
Nathan Simmonds:
Helping you to embed those memories. So write down the thing that’s, I need to remember that. Oh, I need to share that. Oh right, I need to go back to that because that’s gonna make me think in a different way. And we’re helping to embed the learning at different points in the journey. Eben House talked about the forgetting curve and it’s something we talk about at MBM as well and how over the course of time what you remember gradually disappears. And if you don’t use it or you aren’t reminding yourself, that curve is quite steep over a very short period of time.
Nathan Simmonds:
The idea is we wanna shift it from the forgetting curve and turn it into the remembering curve. So we’re causing and putting triggers in that are gonna make you go back to that thing that you learned so that you can reuse it, readdress it, and expand it and develop it. So the keepers is the first piece we’re gonna do on this or one of the key pieces we’re doing. What’s the reason? Then we ask about what’s your single learner objective? What’s the reason I ask this question to find out what you want to get for all of you here, what do you think is the reason that I ask you this question? What would you like to get out of this training?
Nathan Simmonds:
It’s about us, not Nathan, pretty much. What else? What other reasons come up? What other reasons I’m making? I’m asking you this question. So you review it, what’s covered as well? Yeah, for us to remind ourselves why we are here. Absolutely good. Getting some good points coming in through point number one is we’re looking at a single learner objective. We’re also looking for the individual learning objective. Ideally, when we build our training, we want one core concept that that person wants to take away from the training.
Nathan Simmonds:
We don’t want to give them a deluge of stuff. We have one core idea with some subcategories of it. That’s our single learning objective for the session. The individual learning objective is what do you want to get out of it? It’s all well in good HR or your leaders going, go out there, you are gonna do this, da da da da dah. You need to understand why you are in the room and why is it important to you. So the thing is, with this thing, because we’re making it relevant to the individual and we’re helping them to personalize the reason why they’re in the room.
Nathan Simmonds:
‘Cause If they don’t want to be in the room, they’re not gonna learn. We also know for myself and my experiences and through MBM that learning is state dependent. And what I mean by this is you have to be emotionally engaged. How many people here have been in a bad mood or not really concentrating and they’ve read a page in a book and suddenly realize when they got to the end of it, they didn’t actually absorb any of that information? How many people have done this? Yes. No, let’s see what we got. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.
Nathan Simmonds:
Of yeses. And how many people have gone back to the top of the page to reread it? Yes or no? Yes, yes, yes. Yeah, I know, I know what the answer’s gonna be. This. And then you still got to the end of the page and you still didn’t absorb that information because emotionally you weren’t engaging it. Your brain was somewhere else. You didn’t want be there. You were worrying about the email. You are worrying about a conversation you needed to have or had had. Therefore, you know, your state has shifted. So the idea is we want people to emotionally resonate with what it is they’re doing.
Nathan Simmonds:
Let me share some of the stuff that we do in order to make this happen. So I’m just gonna give you a a quick look at some of the documents that we use. Can everyone see my screen? Just wanna quickly check. Can everyone see what I’ve got on my screen? Yes. Good. Brilliant. So the first thing that we do is we have the keeper sheet. And this is something that we provide. ’cause We want to sense, you know, with the different modalities, the different senses connect people to their learning experience. We’re starting to make it experiential. So who’s sitting to the left to their right? What were, were they wearing?
Nathan Simmonds:
What were they feeling? Were they excited about the session and all those different things? And who is, what’s your learner learning buddy’s name? Who are you gonna be coupling up with after this session? To have a conversation with them so that you can bounce your ideas back and forth. And then when you look at the keywords and the notes and the drawings, you can do little doodles for yourself to help just jog that memory. And it might be one word, it might be a picture of something, whatever it is, just to restimulate that thought. If you know, when you go back to those notes, it’s imperative that you know we are going through this reminding process.
Nathan Simmonds:
Then what you want to be looking at is, is looking at those single learner objectives for yourself. What do you want to get out of it? And taking a note of that. Now, at the beginning of this session yesterday, some of those, those single learner, those individual learning objectives were fairly similar, but they mean different things to different people. So you may use the same words, but when I probe into that and say, tell me more about that. What’s the reason behind that? Why is that important to you? The stuff that sits behind, it’s gonna be different because of the job, because of the history, because of the experiences and what you want to use with it.
Nathan Simmonds:
Does it sound familiar? Does it sound useful so far? Getting an idea of using keepers to stimulate learning. Good. Getting some yeses coming up. Thank you. So I’ve got my little agenda here for today. So this is one of the key parts. The other part that we will start looking at is how we start to evaluate some of these these, these thoughts and processes. So the next thing that we want to do is you wanna start evaluating actually the content. Now what’s the normal way that trainers evaluate content at the end of a session? Throw some suggestions up. What are the normal ways that trainers evaluate or they start to evaluate some of the content they’ve got Survey. Yep, they’re still talking to me. That’s one way to evaluate it. Matt.
Nathan Simmonds:
The key thing that most trainers are doing, whether the delegates were engaged or not, also doing this as well, is, you know, what did you think of the content? What did you take away? Would you recommend me to somebody else? And how did you feel about that? What would you say to other people? Okay, great. For me and for MBM, we wanna make sure that that learning stays in. Now my aspiration personally and through making business matter is to deliver the highest possible content at any given time. Me personally, I’m aiming for a round of applause at the end of training. How many training sessions have you been in where actually the trainer gets a round of applause at the end?
Nathan Simmonds:
This for me is the highest possible level of, of feedback and engagement from an audience, from a, from a, from a a training space. I’m working to this. What our concern is that when we’re working with an organization that this content is staying in, it’s being used and it’s creating impact to people’s expectations, relationships, and to their bottom line. So we go back and we start speaking to people about, okay, well what are your learning objectives?
Nathan Simmonds:
Whereabouts did you get to in relation to your learning objectives? Tell us three things that you have learned which will help you to achieve your learning objective. ’cause Again, going through this questionnaire at the end of session one with, with our delegates is helping to embed and reinforce and making sure that content is really wiring into the gray matter so that when they walk back through the door the next day, the action is immediate, absolutely vital.
Nathan Simmonds:
Then what we do is you wanna take them in a little bit deeper. So when we get back to session two, because we break down our trainings into incremental steps, but it’s not just one one dump of content. It’s built up and layered over a course of time to really support individuals. So as we go into session two, that is level three behavior, okay, whereabouts in relation to you are, are you in relation to your objective on a percentage? Have you created a new habit? ’cause We know it’s gonna be the habits that are gonna actually affect and affect a change and infect the way that they’re working to the highest possible, most positive level.
Nathan Simmonds:
And what are three key things that you are now doing differently as a result of engaging with the foundation training course? What are you doing differently? What habits have come up? What actions are you now taking? ’cause The content I’m delivering, as you’ve seen with these sticky lunches, is all about affecting small incremental changes, building it up and doing something different. Why I want to challenge your thinking so you can become more incredible than yesterday. And even if you take one thing from each session, your day is gonna become 1% better than it was before.
Nathan Simmonds:
So we look at the three key things. What are the top three things that you are doing differently now, which is really, really making a difference. Questions just come in here. Do you do the evaluation at the end or the, or the end of the program? I have started doing an online one the next day to try and address Evan House. Absolutely. So initially when we’re doing the, the training needs analysis and before people are coming into the room, we’re starting to figure out where people are in relation to this.
Nathan Simmonds:
When we get to the end of session one, we wanna find out what they’re taking away and where they are in relation to those individual learning objectives and their learning. Then when we come back, 6, 8, 10 weeks later, whatever it is for tho for our individual client, then we wanna see where those habits are and how they’re embedding them. We’re constantly getting the delegates and the individuals to address and readdress and re-look into what it is they’re developing and how they’re performing and how they’re improving.
Nathan Simmonds:
So at the beginning of session two or the end of session two, then we’re looking at these percentages and we’re asking about the new habits that are being built up. Then at the end, understanding the benefit of the training for you and your business, we wanna find out how these changes are actually reinforcing, developing and growing your business from the inside out.
Nathan Simmonds:
Whether it’s the single individual, singular relationships, what’s different, what are the benefits, what are the new habits? And also at the macro level inside the organization, how’s it impacting the growth of the business? And this could be anything from 10,000 to 10 million pound in some cases depending on the, the change that has been developed and implemented and how that’s actually been grown inside the business as well. So when we’re looking at the evaluation process.
Nathan Simmonds:
We are using it as a memory tool and as a guidance mechanism to help people really build the learning and create the remembering and create the habits and really counteract the Evan House effect that he talked about in 18, whatever it was. Hope this is useful kind of as a, as a viewpoint of how to do some of evaluations. So the first part we wanted to look at, lemme just do a quick recap on that. Two is going back and looking at keepers and getting people to take notes in a way that’s gonna remind them and think differently. Number three is then looking at the evaluation process.
Nathan Simmonds:
And the idea that we do the evaluation process again, like I say, is just to build the memory, to reinforce the learning at every single stage that we take three people through to really make sure that we set out to achieve what we do in every single session, which is to make that learning stick. And when we come back to find out that the delegates are still using those skills.
Nathan Simmonds:
Still referring to their workbooks and still impacting and creating huge amounts of change with the, with the new ideas that we help to share with them. I hope that’s useful as a kind of a, as a methodology and approach to help improve learner engagement. What’s been useful from what I’ve covered? I know I’ve just dumped a little bit of, you know, find a bit of information that you guys very directly what’s been useful from what I’ve covered around that side of things.
Nathan Simmonds:
Learning buddy, great help partner people up, different people different folks, different strokes and all that sort of thing. Get people that are, you know, maybe they work well together but also get some opposites so they can, ’cause they’ll see different sides of the equation, different sides of the table and what one person sees the other person doesn’t. And actually by that shared experience we get to upgrade the learning again as well. Single learning objective and the individual learning overview.
Nathan Simmonds:
Absolutely we go in with one specific goal based on the feedback and conversations we’ve had, but it’s also about personalizing it. And it’s the same with coaching as well. Almost the re-engagement and reflection. Absolutely. When we look at things like habit stacking and these sorts of ideas, we talk about this when we’re doing the, the learning to learn. Part of our trainings where we’re teaching people how they learn and how their brain works is you do little reminders, little jogs.
Nathan Simmonds:
If you are building a new habit, maybe you wanna hide post-it notes with hints and reminders around the house. So when you open up the tea caddy and go to get a teabag, there’ll be a post-it note in there with a question to ask yourself, reinforce the next behavior ideas on taking notes. Doodle along. Yes, absolutely, because some people are doodler, some people are fiddlers, some people are, you know, bullet points.
Nathan Simmonds:
Whatever works for you. And that document idea is there just to, to work with you and your learning style and your intelligence center to get the best possible results. That learning isn’t a single hit. It’s evolution and growth. Exactly. This it for me, it’s like a boxing analogy and it, and you just reminded me of that beautifully, Colin. It is very rare that when you go and watch a boxing match, if that’s your thing, that the fight will be over in one, one punch.
Nathan Simmonds:
Very rare. There is not just a singular punch that ends the match, you know, that that decides who the winner is. It is always gonna be a flurry of blows over several rounds of contest reinforcing the action and the outcome that’s desired. That single learner objective now is, is to create that knockout blow. And now that’s where we want to get to. That’s the destination. But that is gonna take time if we are gonna affect behavioral change at a corporate level. It’s not just gonna be one hit. It’s gotta be multiple individual hits over a course of time that are reinforcing, developing, growing, expanding, and helping to embed that way of thinking.
Nathan Simmonds:
And that takes, you know, the, the, the, the buildup of, of practice before the match, before the contest, which is where the experience comes in. And then when we get in the room, when we get in the ring, then it’s about making sure that we are reinforcing the outcome that we want to get to, which is, you know, widespread behavioral change where people upgrade their skills and become the best version of themselves. Hope this is useful hope. We’re starting to see kind of some of the technicalities that sit behind it.
Nathan Simmonds:
This is why I ask people at the beginning of the session what their goals are. ’cause I want ’em to make it individual because this is how we get ’em to kind of reinforce and what we’re asking, what they tell us they wanna achieve. And then this is how we go back and make sure the the the tools and elements we’re bringing are gonna really stay in place. What questions have you got for me right now? What questions have you got for me about the way that MBM deliver, about how we manage our, you know, we we facilitate and manage our classrooms?
Nathan Simmonds:
What questions have you got for me that would help you to do the same? And I’ve completely forgot announcements from the beginning of the session. Tomorrow’s session. We have a session tomorrow about engaging teams, especially virtually right now. We’ve got some more learnings and more ideas to share about this ’cause we’ve been doing it for a while now. Us as a business and the the worldwide. So we have the link for tomorrow’s session. If you haven’t registered for tomorrow’s session, the link is in the chat book. So you can go ahead and do that after this. Could you share the form to record, evaluate learning?
Nathan Simmonds:
Possibly, possibly not. I will come back to you on that one, Susan. It might be, I mean you’ve got it on the video content here. You’ll be able to see it afterwards. What we can, what you can do is you can take some of that text out there and create your own document that may be more fitting to your business to help develop them if we can. And I’m able to then we’ll follow that up. I’ve got a yes here. Absolutely. So I just had one of the team just come in and say, yes, we have a chain of evidence example that we can share. So Susan, we will organize that via email for you.
Nathan Simmonds:
This is brilliant. I have management development course that have has been halted by Covid today. You you have made me think about how we can resume this. Colin, you’re very welcome. If we can be any support on that, ask us. We’re happy to help on these things. Sorry, not able to do tomorrow as I’m on ILM webinar. Lucky you. Well, will there be more sessions next week? Yes, there will be. Not Monday. ’cause Monday is a bank holiday map and I keep forgetting that myself due to covid-19.
Nathan Simmonds:
On a scale of one to 10, one being not at all, 10 being absolutely, how useful was today’s content in supporting you, making your learning stick? Got crock. I’ve got elevens coming. I’ve got two people hitting elevens up there. Thank you very much. 9.5. Thank you. I’d like to round up. So nine, nine, good. I’m glad this is useful. I’m glad this is kind of hitting some of the right buttons to help you affect some of these changes with your teams, with your businesses.
Nathan Simmonds:
All those sort of parts, certain parts. Look, got the link for tomorrow’s session. There is Mental Health Awareness Week. As I’ve said before, it doesn’t need to be, you know, one week. It needs to be every day that we just have these as routine conversations on our website. We have the mental health coaching cards. They’re there to support you and your leaders. Having the conversation with the people that they need to in order to get them the result that they need to get when they are most challenged.
Nathan Simmonds:
So it’s super important. Thank you very much for today. I really appreciate you taking the time to be here. And are there any other questions? I’ve just realized actually this is the first time I’ve finished a little bit early, so, and I’m not gonna pad this out needlessly. What are the questions have you got for me right now that are gonna help you change the way that delivery is happening in your spaces? And if you don’t have any, you can just say none. I’m okay with this.
Nathan Simmonds:
No, no, no. Look. Okay. So the last question, not a question, but a takeaway become more incredible than yesterday, Christopher. Exactly. This, my soul existence for getting up. It’s the first words that come out in my mouth every single day. And I mean that sincerely. My, my soul existence for being here and doing this and doing the work that I do as a coach in leadership development is to challenge people’s thinking so that they can become more incredible than yesterday. And these are the first words that come outta my mouth.
Nathan Simmonds:
Why? Because I’m the first person awake in the house and I don’t even talk to my cat first thing in the morning until those words are come out my mouth. So the idea is that I’m gonna challenge you, give you new concepts, new ideas that are gonna help this to happen for you, for the people that you impact as well. That’s it.
Nathan Simmonds:
Round of applause for Nathan. Thank you very much Tim. Appreciate it. So you’ve got the link there for tomorrow’s session. You’ve got the link there for the coaching cards, for mental health coaching cards, leadership coaching cards. They’re all there on the website. To buy the huge value at five pound a pack, you know, it’s just about helping you get some more questions and more skills.
Nathan Simmonds:
Who, big last question for me. Who do you know that would benefit from either being in these virtual classrooms, you know, in the, in these sticky lunches with us on a daily basis? And who do you know in your business that would benefit from having a deeper conversation with me and the content that I share? Who do you know that would support this?
Nathan Simmonds:
And my question to you is, if you know people in your business, if you know your business needs to be having a conversation with me where I share personal development, planning, goal setting how to improve your lead, your your learning capabilities, how to improve your leadership capabilities, whatever they may be, we have a virtual classroom that will fit all of those occasions. And with me delivering core content in around the leadership development and soft skills element, also around the cap man category management elements, you know, time management, negotiation skills.
Nathan Simmonds:
There are, there is something there for everyone in our virtual classrooms. If you know that your business or someone you know that will benefit from this, then you need to share this content with them so that we can start to help them become more incredible than yesterday. Do you know someone that needs to have their thinking challenge so they can become more incredible than yesterday?
Nathan Simmonds:
And I have a funny feeling that the answer was probably yes. Direct them to this content, share this video with them, share the links for the next session, and if the virtual classroom is right for you, click the link, join the sessions and let’s have that conversation. Everyone, thank you very much for being here. It’s greatly appreciated. I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day. I look forward to picking up with you again tomorrow to share more of this content, more of these ideas. This’s just gonna put some new ideas, new concepts in there. Everyone have a lovely rest of your day and I look forward to speaking to you.
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