How to design learning for behavioural change
Transfer of learning… Retention… Embedding… Sustaining… Reinforcement… Effectiveness. We all use many different terms to describe the transition of new skills and knowledge from a learning event back to the workplace. But what are we really trying to achieve? The Holy Grail that lies beneath all of these pursuits is behavioural change.
Last year I went to an ATD workshop in the USA called “Designing for Behavioural Change” with Julie Dirksen and Dustin DiTommaso. One of the learning nuggets that I loved was the concept of how to define a “behaviour”. After all, if we are designing for behavioural change then we need to be able to clarify what a behaviour is.
I loved Julie’s idea of asking yourself “can you take a photo or video of this behaviour?”
When designing any learning initiative, I always recommend that we ask ourselves “what do I want to see or observe people doing differently as a result of this initiative back in their day to day role?”
If it can be observed, it’s a behaviour. Don’t fall into the trap of getting confused between “behaviours”, “mindset” and “attitudes”. Often mindsets need to shift to change behaviours – but that’s a whole other topic!!
Check out the ATD website to see what other workshops they have coming up, or download a free chapter from my book Turning Learning into Action, which provides a step by step process to create behavioural change after learning.