From Ticking the Box to Out of the Box
I was thrilled to chair Konnect’s learning symposium last month, it was a great opportunity to learn from others in the field of learning and be inspired by what’s happening within Australia’s organisations.
We heard from Westpac, Tourism Australia and Rio Tinto amongst others and without exception everyone was talking about the impact that learning needs to create back in the business. Great – you can just imagine how excited I was.
The other key theme that was repeated time and again was the desire to do more than ‘tick the box’ – it was music to my ears. Regular readers of my blog and newsletters will know that I’m a big promptest of not ‘ticking the box’ – to the extent that sometimes I fear that I sound like a broken record. Don’t answer that.
What captured my interest though was whether learning and development professionals know what ‘ticking the box’ looks like versus successful learning transfer. My belief is that it all starts with awareness – awareness of what success looks like versus what is ticking the box (see my previous blog Learning Transfer – the tragedy of ticking the box). Often participants come to us wanting to tick the box, not because they aren’t interested in growth or are a mediocre performer, it’s worse than that – it’s because they think that is what we are looking for in a follow-up. Nothing could be further from the truth!
So, I’d like to open up our process to those who want to experience what an out of the box learning transfer conversation could be like. How do we make these conversations really valuable? How do we stop either the manager or participant just ticking the box? Let us show you. Just get in touch – you’ll be enlightened and inspired.
I’ll leave you this quote – this genuine participant feedback is straight ‘out of the box’……
“I found the phone follow up sessions of enormous value. Being able to hear a different perspective, being forced to answer (sometimes uncomfortable) questions and listening to Phenella’s analysis of a wide range of situations and see things from angles I had not even considered was a wonderful learning experience. Also, being able to see instant and positive results that flowed directly from the action plans set was very encouraging.”