What trainers can learn from Formula One racing teams
The world of Formula One may seem foreign to the learning and development space. However, there are some great correlations to be made for success in both spheres. Presenters are often in front of a podium and racing drivers want to be standing atop a podium at the end of the race. So let’s examine some of the key things that trainers can learn from Formula One.
1. Planning
Australian racing driver and motorsports media identity Cameron McConville says “the farther you look, the faster you go.” In Formula One, even before the season begins, a common set of objectives are defined. This will include selecting the driver and crew and developing strategies around which events to focus on, who is best equipped to drive, how the car should be set up, and how fast they want the car to go. Without a clear strategy, your Formula One team turns from contenders to someone that owes a bunch of fast and expensive cars. Likewise, if a trainer doesn’t possess a clear strategy for how to engage their audience, convey their messages and develop the competencies of their participants, they are really just someone with a captive audience, which they are unlikely to captivate!
2. Practice
Pit crews of all the teams involved in the world of Formula One consider practice as paramount to success. Realistically, their mantra is “practice, practice and practice again” until they can do a tyre change blind folded. Jonathon Wheatley, Team Manager for Formula One team Red Bull says that they “do about 1500 pit stops in practice and envision all possible scenarios that might unfold during a race.” This is great advice for trainers too. Put simply, the more we do it, the better we get at it. And the better we get at it, the easier it looks! Further to this, practicing for a range of variations and audiences will enable trainers to become more well-rounded and better able to manage things when something unexpected happens.
3. Timing
In a sport where seconds could be the difference between winning and losing, the pit crews in Formula One have transformed changing four tyres into an art of flawless precision. Timing is also something that can be the deciding factor in success for trainers. Many beginning trainers and trainers of new content source timing as one of the the most critical challenges they face in the conduct of their role. So what can we learn from Formula One that can be of assistance? Aside from the time refining that practice provides, here are some other tips we can learn from the sport:
- Planned breaks: (Regular pit stops help to keep everything running smoothly and provides an opportunity to tweak or replace things that are not working well)
- Defined time limits: (Set time limits for activities and keep everyone to them – although in the training world sub 4 second limits for activities may be ambitious!)
- Bodies in Motion: (Everyone has their assigned job and the correct tools to execute the task. They come together as a team to bring about the final outcome. No single person has to do everything!)
4. Context
It’s not all just about speed and strategy either when it comes to Formula One. There needs to be a certain understanding of the “personality” and characteristics of each track. This helps to direct decisions about the best driver for the race, the right tyres for the conditions, amount of pit stops required, as well as track positioning. The same is true for trainers. If content is king, then context is the kingdom and trainers need to ensure that they create the right fit for the audience and environment they find themselves in.
So whether you are looking to be through the checked flag first or simply want to be effective in explaining a checklist to participants, the four areas of planning, practice, timing and context will put you in a winning position!
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Marc Ratcliffe
CEO, MRWED Group
Follow Me on twitter: @MRWED_CEO
Looking after yourselves, your people and their families
I recently returned from the HR Summit in Bangalore, India where I gave the opening keynote address around the topic of Learning and Development Strategies for Human Resources Effectiveness. There were more than 450 delegates in attendance and they all had one thing in common – they were looking to advance the standing of their profession and the opportunities of their organisations.
I explained that they were the custodians of the future success of their organisations and they had to take their learning and development roles seriously. Rather than simply being a support function, their role was the engine room for growth. More importantly, I said, when we stop investing in our people, both personally and professionally, we stop investing in long term viability and competitiveness.
We need to remember that we have living, breathing human beings driving our organisations, not just numbers. Whilst, I recognise that business is inherently a “numbers game”, once we lose sight of the people factor, we also tend to forget that our customers are people too. Soon we will quite literally be “running on empty”, as consumers look to businesses with heart and personnel move to employers of choice who value their input and show them a pathway where they can think and grow.
When labour is cheap, you can always throw more people at a problem and get it done. However, as the demand for skilled labour increases, and concurrently, the expectations for working conditions and remuneration also increase, we have to learn to do more with less. Stretching our people professionally and building a learning organisation therefore becomes the new learning and development mantra.
In the keynote I suggested that the prevailing global trend for HR effectiveness was to look after ourselves, our people and their families. The best investment we can make is in the human capital that drives a business forward and this starts with the professional development of individuals. Pat Galagan wrote in the December 2011 edition of T&D Magazine that “HR will play a significant role in advancing thinking and practice about work/life balance in a digital age.” At this time of the year, it is also important to take time to reflect on whether this balance is actually happening for our people. Further to this, Ian Ziskin (Organizational Dynamics, October 2011) suggested that “we are in an age of agile co-creativity”, where people want to be co-producers of business success. Moreover, he said that “organizations are moving from hero leadership to collaborative leadership”, which demonstrates a shift, both in expectation and in the very nature of how business operates.
The race for talent is back on and the organisations that consider learning and development as the centerpiece of their people management will prevail. The challenge will be in wrestling the steering wheel from management teams that seem satisfied in using 19th century practices to solve 21st century problems.
Marc Ratcliffe
CEO, MRWED Group
Follow Me on twitter: @MRWED_CEO
How to get your Assessment Cooking with G.A.S.!
I was recently invited to write an article about developing effective assessments. In fact, I was asked to discuss how to ‘develop assessment tools that even an auditor would be proud of’. Now, it is great that an auditor loves your work, but ultimately the true test of a successful assessment tool is whether it is a good fit for the benchmark standards, the candidate/s and the workplace the competency is to be applied. Moreover, just because it looks good and ticks all the auditor’s boxes, this doesn’t necessarily make it right for all occasions.
According to the TAE10 Training Package v2.0 (p101) “There is no set format or process for the design, production or development of assessment tools”, however there are key things that successful ones share. Therefore, I have sought to identify some of the best practice features that support the development robust assessment tools.
Essentially, there are six steps in the assessment design process:
Step 1: Familiarise yourself with benchmark standards
Step 2: Identify evidence requirements
Step 3: Select appropriate assessment methods
Step 4: Develop assessment tool/s
Step 5: Collect Evidence
Step 6: Trial and refine tools
Traditional assessment was focused on the testing part, rather than the learning part. In this way we were trying to catch the student failing, rather than capturing them in moments of success. However, these days we concentrate much more on verifying success (competence) than confirming failure and as such, it is critical that we develop evidence-gathering tools that help us to best support a candidate’s claim for competence.
Like all professionals, assessors need to understand the capacity of the tools they use, and be able to adapt them to meet the particular requirements of the task and expectations of that task in a workplace setting. Rather than simply regurgitating the old mantra of ‘we have always done it this way’, they should be continuously striving to enhance the tools to meet the changing needs of their unique settings.
So how does it all fit together? The relationship between the 6 steps in the process may look something like the information below: (Taken from the SFL10 Unit of Competency SFLDEC201A Assemble floristry products)
- Benchmark (The Standards against which a candidate is assessed) e.g. Assemble hand tied flower and plant materials.
- Evidence Requirements (The information that when matched to the benchmarks, show that a candidate is competent) e.g. Ability to construct multiple and diverse fundamental floristry products.
- Assessment Methods (Techniques used to gather different types of evidence) e.g. Observation of Actual Performance, Production of Items
- Assessment Tools (The instruments and instructions for gathering and interpreting evidence) e.g. Observation checklist and review of portfolios of evidence and third-party workplace reports of on-the-job performance by the candidate.
- Evidence Produced (The information on which the assessment judgement is made) e.g. Demonstration of multiple hand tied flower arrangements
- Trialing and Refining (Checking fitness for purpose and seeking improvement options) e.g. Trialing your tools before they are used formally with candidates could enable more user- friendliness in the format and clarity in the instructions.
So what is the G.A.S. all about? Put simply, Gathering appropriate evidence Assures Success! If you continue to follow the six simple steps of assessment tool design, then your assessment practice will be more effective, you will gather better evidence, there will be more consistent outcomes for the workplace application and you will be cooking with gas as an assessor!
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Marc Ratcliffe
CEO, MRWED Group
Follow Me on twitter: @MRWED_CEO
Is success as a Learning Leader is about Attitude or Technique?
On the final day of our recent Learning Leaders Summit, we had a debate which posed the question is success as a Learning Leader about attitude or technique.
During the banter we argued that techniques can be learned, but attitudes like respect, empathy and humility ultimately define success in the application. Moreover, all the technique in the world will not bring about success if it is not delivered in the right spirit. As the old adage goes “a champion team will beat a team of champions” because they are willing to combine and extend their strengths, rather than simply replying upon their individual talents.
In our game, we want people to be engaged and to get a sense that they can do this too, as opposed to being in awe of a presenter and feeling that they can “never to that”! Presenters don’t need to have a flawless technique and it’s often their quirks and individuality which makes for a more authentic experience. Further to this, having a sense of vulnerability makes them real to an audience and this can help to connect and build rapport with participants.
We have all probably experienced presentations that were delivered by people who were technically good, but it all lacked a bit of soul or others where the presenter made us feel like they were doing us a favour just being there. Attitude therefore becomes the x-factor that transforms presenters and subject matter experts into genuine leaders of learning.
It is important to remember that attitude is carried around with us like a pair of glasses and it helps to tint our perception of the world. If you view the audience as being difficult and unwilling to learn, that is what they will become. However, if you look at each group as a unique opportunity to grow and you turn up committed to creating the best learning experience for them you can, results will improve and you will enjoy what you do more.
The truth is, both technique and attitude play a healthy role in achieving success as Learning Leader. The challenge is to build technique like a pro, but adopt an attitude of a new-starter and find the balance of patience and timing during delivery with the enthusiasm and passion for subject. Next time you go out there make sure you are doing it with 20/20 vision and not the rose-coloured glasses.
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Marc Ratcliffe
CEO, MRWED Group
Follow Me on twitter: @MRWED_CEO
Are Teachers Redundant?
Yes and No. In a sense the traditional concept of “teacher” is one which has diminishing impact. The notion of what a teacher is and does is changing and being increasingly replaced and extended by the role of guide and mentor. More than “redundant”, teachers are at risk of becoming irrelevant. No longer are teachers the bastions of knowledge and harbingers of a single, right way of doing things. Moreover, learners are not looking for that structured, linear style of learning either. In a Post-Google world, learners are wired to use networks and search engines to find answers quickly. If they want to know something, they will look it up immediately, rather than waiting until the teacher plans for it. And with one in two Australians owning Smart Phones, they are doing it in increasing volumes than ever before.
Textbooks, centralized-curricula, and even the educational system itself are the products of a mechanistic past. The empirical reality is we are living in an age of networked-learning and the sooner we embrace this, the quicker the transition will be to effective facilitation of learning. The fact remains that teachers are necessary in supporting and driving learning. However, rather than focusing on the function of teaching, and assuming learning will happen, it is important to focus on the mechanics of learning and the individual learning needs of participants.
When e-learning took shape over a decade ago, there was a concern that this would replace the need for teachers. However, it really it only changed the skills teachers required. Further to this, in spite of the e-learning explosion, face-to-face training has continued to flourish, largely in part to the learning generated through the connected-ness of groups. The ongoing challenge for educators will be effectively combining the connections both in and out of the learning environment.
In summary, the future will not be so focused on how much we know, but how much we are willing to grow to meet the expectations of learners and the networks with which they rely. Ultimately, success will be measured on how willing we are to adapt to these technologies and communication tools and how quickly we can seamlessly integrate them into our own training.
Marc Ratcliffe
CEO, MRWED Group
Follow Me on twitter: @MRWED_CEO
5 ways to get participants back on time!
One of the most common challenges for trainers is getting the group to refocus and return to their seats after an activity, particularly when this activity has been noisy or ends in bursts of laughter. Similarly, a lot of time can be lost to the trainer when their group does not return in a timely fashion after a break. A few months ago we went to our brains trust of training colleagues and former students with the simple question: How do you get your participants back on time?
Below is a summary of the best tips we collected:
1. Tune them in!
To get their attention and get them moving back to their seats, pick a brief, up-beat song. Explain to the participants that every time they hear this tune, they will have 30 seconds left before the session resumes. You will be surprised at how effective this will be.
2. Set a Timer
Set a timer so the participants know exactly how much time they have, then give out playing cards for the people that make it back on time. At the end of the day, the person with a winning hand (either the best poker hand, highest sum, best card, etc.), wins a prize. People are suckers for free stuff…and the better the prize, the more likely they are to be on time!
3. Make them responsible
Get someone else in the group to be responsible for them coming back on time. It can be an open challenge where everyone knows, or you can give one of your slightly tardy participants a secret challenge (where they only win if no one knows that they have the role to get people back and everyone is back on time).
4. Share the Magic
Inspire the group by scheduling a magic trick immediately after a break. People can be intrigued by magic and a good, yet simple trick will give them an incentive to come back on time. You could build it up if you like, promising a truly mind-bending activity after the break. (However, you will need to deliver upon the hype and have a well-rehearsed and visually stimulating trick!) A variation on the magic trick is to do the trick before the break and tell them you’ll give them the instructions (or the secrets) after the break. Again there is some incentive to return on time.
5. Reward them
When all else fails bribe them with chocolates, coffee, bags, books or other prizes for returning on time. This may include material that you were already planning to give away. However, by using it as an incentive, you have a chance to modify the group’s behaviour. Over time, the participants will get into the routine of coming back when they should and you can wean them off the material prizes.
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Marc Ratcliffe
CEO, MRWED Group
Follow Me on twitter: @MRWED_CEO
What trainers can learn from Standup Comedians
Perhaps I have been watching too much late night television, but recently I have come to the conclusion that there are a lot of things that trainers can learn from stand- up comedians. As a result, I have compiled a list of advice that I think crosses over well:
1. Know your audience.
The most successful comics tailor their material to the audience. They will add some local references and avoid jokes that may put that audience off side. The same can be said of successful trainers who consider their audience before developing content and resources.
2. Use stories and everyday observations to make your point.
Some of the funniest humour comes from a shared experience. Comedians will often use reference points to things the audience can easily connect with. With the context in place, they can focus more on the joke, as the audience is already part of the way with them. Conversely, if a trainer uses a common reference point as a trigger for content, they will have a greater chance of creating the connectedness required for learning to stick!
3. Make the rehearsed seem spontaneous.
At the end of a long tour, the comedians that can hold the same energy and freshness as the opening night are the ones that ultimately enjoy long and successful careers. The sets need to be tight, but the audience still needs to feel that they are getting a unique experience. The same can be said for trainers, particularly when they deliver the same workshops regularly. The lesson here is to continue to keep it fresh and engaging for every audience, regardless of how often it has been delivered!
4. Handle the hecklers.
Good stand-ups will have some redirection techniques in their bag of tricks, to deal with hecklers. Whilst the same routines may not work in a classroom, the methodology is the same. For example, if a participant constantly interrupts the trainer or others whilst they are talking, the trainer needs to be able to redirect the behaviour. Additionally, difficult situations can be often be diffused with a little humour.
5. Don’t take yourself too seriously.
Comedians will often be the source of their own humour. This grounds them and gives them an everyday quality that enables them to build rapport with their audience. From the trainer’s perspective, it is also important to build a sense of authenticity – you are a real person, who has flaws, but has learned from these and has experiences to share.
6. Don’t be afraid of failure.
Almost all comedians experience failure in their career. What defines the successful ones, is the ability to refocus, rebuild and keep trying. Similarly, as trainers, we can all experience difficult groups, behaviours or situations, but like stand-up comedians the true test of our mettle is in the getting up, the trying again and searching for learning from each experience.
Marc Ratcliffe
CEO, MRWED Group
Follow Me on twitter: @MRWED_CEO
Farewell to Kirkpatrick, but not the end for evaluation!
Last week I attended the ASTD International Conference in Orlando, Florida and was lucky enough to catch the last public presentation from Donald Kirkpatrick. He is someone who has had such a profound effect on our industry and I thought his contribution was worth reflecting on this month.
Kirkpatrick is the creator of the Kirkpatrick Four Levels, the world-wide standard for evaluating the effectiveness of training programs. He created the model in 1954 as the subject of his Ph.D. dissertation at the University of Wisconsin. The elegantly simple model has withstood the test of time with over 50 years of application.
Interestingly, he never intended on it being more than just a scholarly pursuit and took 20 years before he penned an actual book on the subject. Originally the Four Levels were published as a series of 4 articles in ASTD Training and Development journal in 1959. More than 50 years on the Four Levels still define how organisations evaluate training.
These four levels essentially measure:
1. Reaction of student – what they thought and felt about the training
2. Learning – the resulting increase in knowledge or capability
3. Behaviour – extent of behaviour and capability improvement and implementation/application
4. Results – the effects on the business or environment resulting from the trainee’s performance
For the record, these were never meant to be an order. Moreover, they are considerations that should take place after every training program. Whilst most organisations do reactions well, the other three are often poorly executed, if done at all. More recently the “Results” stage has been linked to the Return on Investment (ROI) movement , which Kirkpatrick himself prefers to call “Return on Expectation”.
Kirkpatrick, two decades beyond usual retirement age, has enjoyed a wonderful career, sharing his knowledge with people all around the world. “I am so thankful for all of the people who have promoted and used the Kirkpatrick Four Levels over the last 50 years. Without this support they would certainly not be as widely used as they are today”, Kirkpatrick said. I wish him all the very best and as practitioners we should look towards building upon his great legacy through developing evaluation mechanisms, policies and tools which seek to both inform training decisions and improve the learning experience for students.
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Marc Ratcliffe
CEO, MRWED Group
Follow Me on twitter: @MRWED_CEO
Mediocre is the new black for schools!
Whist I normally write about the challenges facing practitioners in the vocational education space, I thought it wise to review the student experience before they reach us and the baggage they may bring from their school experience. I think there are implications for us, if we have a disaffected group graduating into our learning environments and feel the timing is right to discuss some of these issues here. I continue to be troubled by our school system that is high on pursuit of excellence rhetoric, but has internal systems which actively work against teachers who perform exceptionally. Whilst we all agree that there is no greater influence on student outcomes than the quality of the teacher, it seems that great teachers are leaving the profession on-mass and there is no real mechanism for retaining the talent.
Many of the problems are systemic. There are powerful unions who protect the lowest common denominator, using smoke and mirror techniques to demand higher wages without addressing the real issues that classroom teachers actually face. Wouldn’t the money be better spent in reducing class-sizes, having more specialist support, access to improved resources etc? Will increasing remuneration make them better teachers? The simple answer is no… it is more like guilt money paid to hush a broken system. And the system is broken. Unfortunately, the fate of education is a political hot potato and the reforms necessary will take more than a single term of government to bare fruit, even the low hanging ones. At the heart of the problem is a toxic culture of negativity which manifests itself within most schools and even if you attract the best and brightest to the vocation, it won’t take long before the poison takes effect. In such an environment there can be no individual excellence as it makes the others look bad. Further to this, there is no real outlet for Principals to move on poor performing teachers on as they are protected and as the Waiting for Superman documentary discusses, there is a kind of “lemon dance” that takes place where Principals swap their worst performers and hope to get something better than what they gave away. Even the latest federal government musings around performance-based bonuses for teachers values tenure as an indicator of the bonus size – with higher bonuses proposed for teachers with more experience. Surely, outcomes are outcomes and the bonus should be the same if the performance is the same.
We owe it to our children to be better than this. We have a profound responsibility in guiding these students’ futures and setting them up to be capable and confident learners as well as productive citizens. The influence of a bad teacher can have a life-time affect and we often meet these students in our adult learning contexts. These are the ones who have not been instilled with a love of learning and have been unsuccessful in schooling in a traditional sense and lack the confidence to take the kinds of risks required to be an effective learner.
What is necessary is a longer term view for teacher training. It shouldn’t end when they get the parchment. There should be an ongoing mentoring process to ease them from practicum to actual practice. This is something that the learning and development field does well but is absent from most school inductions. There is some light at a national level with Centres of Excellence programs being rolled out across the country. These provide the opportunity for genuine transition from pre-service teaching to full-time teaching and a safety net of advice and support via structured and tailor-fit mentoring activities. I wait with anticipation at the results of these pilot programs and hope they that enable a reversal of the skills vacuum and provide some sustained change in the quality of teachers. However, I fear that this initiative could be hamstrung without a robust examination of and action against the systemic issues raised earlier. I guess for the time being, mediocre is still the new black!
Marc Ratcliffe
CEO, MRWED Group
Follow Me on twitter: @MRWED_CEO
7 Easy Steps for Success for Session Planning
I continue to be amazed at how little preparation seems to go into presentations. Outside of our training and assessment space, I do get an opportunity to see a range of presentations via conferences and workshops and whilst the presenters tend to have good subject matter knowledge they seem to lack an ability to plan for an effective transfer of this. Therefore, I thought it was timely to share my seven easy steps for success when session planning.
1. OBJECTIVE
You should be starting with the end in mind- visualising the prize as it were! The objective is what you want your participants to be able to know or do by the end of the session. Without an objective, you can’t predict the destination of the journey, nor can to check if your participants got there!
As a suggestion, the objective should be written in action-ended terms. The best way to do this is to use a verb in the description. e.g. demonstrate, prepare, describe, state, name, cut or load. Next, you should identify the conditions that should be met by the participants. For example, Demonstrate how to fold a piece of paper into squares, using a ruler. Finally, you should include a timeframe for the conditions to be completed within. e.g. Demonstrate how to fold a piece of paper into squares, using a ruler within 30 seconds.
It is important to remember that the objective underpins the whole session and as such should be the driver of the content and delivery and not the other way around.
2. CONTENT
This is what you have to cover to bring about the objective. For convenience it should be divided into “need to know” and “nice to know”. The “need to know” is the essential information that must be covered in order to fulfill the objective. The “nice to know” is related to the subject and is often used to make the session more interesting, but ultimately is not essential. As such, this material can be removed on the fly, should the session be in danger of running overtime. Conversely, additional “nice to know” content could be imported should the session be under time. It is always nice to have a range of examples, anecdotes, stories or clips, which could be taken out of the trainer’s kit bag to pad out the session when necessary!
3. SEQUENCE
Put simply, this is the order of the content – what comes first and what follows. As a general structure, we often break the sequence into “Introduction”, “Body” and “Conclusion”. The role of the introduction is to orient the group and provide details on the purpose and direction of the session. The body is where the new content is covered and should be done so in a logical progression. The conclusion should wrap it all up.
4. DELIVERY
This refers to how the content is put across to the audience and can include a combination of methods such as lecture, demonstration, group discussion and role play. The challenge is finding the balance between the best way to teach it versus the best way to learn it and these are not mutually inclusive. i.e. It could be a great way to teach it, but not suitable for the audience or it could be a great way to learn it, but the trainer is not capable in bringing it about.
5. TIME
There are two implications for time. Firstly, there is the duration (how long it takes) and secondly there is “timing”, which is when content and activities are actually undertaken. You should consider things like time of the day, mix of activities and the attention span of the audience. As a general rule, the focus should change around every 20 minutes and there shouldn’t be more than 90 minutes of delivery before a break.
6. RESOURCES
The resources are what you need to deliver the content. This could include student materials, whiteboard, flipchart, pens or specialist equipment needed to support the subject matter. When selecting resources you should ensure that they are fit for the purpose, rather than simply trying to make them fit! Remember a resource is not a substitute for good teaching, it is a complement to the teaching.
7. ASSESSMENT
If we look at the objective as “the destination”, then the assessment is the proof that the participants got to this destination. It is important to capture evidence that either confirms that the objective was met or supports a gap analysis post training. Further to this, the assessment tools selected should be appropriate for gathering the proof. For example, if it is a knowledge-based outcome it would be appropriate to use a written or oral test. Whereas, if it was a skills-based outcome, it would be more appropriate to capture the evidence using an observation checklist.
Whilst there is no single right way to plan a session, these seven steps will give you the best chance of success. Good Luck!
Marc Ratcliffe
CEO, MRWED Group
Follow Me on twitter: @MRWED_CEO