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Leading People
Gerry Murray talks to leading people about leading people. Get insights and tips from thought leaders about how to bring out the best in yourself and others.
Leading People
Are We Still Confusing Training With Learning?
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What if the problem with workplace learning isn’t a lack of content, courses or technology?
What if we’re still confusing access to information with actual learning?
In this episode of Leading People, Gerry Murray welcomes Stella Collins back to explore how people really learn at work and what organisations need to do differently if they want learning to translate into better performance.
Stella’s new book, The Learning Organization, challenges some familiar assumptions about training, self-directed learning and the role of L&D.
Together, Gerry and Stella explore what helps learning stick, why self-directed learning is more than giving people access to a platform, how managers shape the learning environment, and what AI may change about how people develop skills and expertise.
They also discuss the changing role of trainers, the neuroscience behind effective learning, and why measuring attendance and completions may tell us far less than we think.
If you lead people, design learning, manage change or simply want to help others grow more effectively, this conversation will give you plenty to reflect on.
Connect with Stella on LinkedIn
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Welcome And What Matters Here
SPEAKER_03Welcome to Leading People with me, Jerry Murray. This is the podcast for HR leaders, LD professionals, and senior leaders who want to bring out the best in themselves and the people around them. Every other week I sit down with leading authors, researchers, and practitioners for deep, honest conversations about what great leadership actually looks like in practice. And how your own mindset, behavior, and presence shape everything around you. If you want thinking that challenges you, tools you can use, and conversations worth returning to, you're in the right place.
SPEAKER_01There's more than enough of it out there. I think AI is very interesting, potentially very dangerous. My biggest concern around it is that you know, you and I and most people in the current workplace, we learn to do things by kind of by doing the doing, by by following, by copying, by role modeling. We did the work. We have to do the thinking, we have to do the processing and the analyzing. If people don't have to do that basic work anymore because AI can do it for them, how will they learn to do the tasks?
SPEAKER_03When Stella Collins first joined me on leading people back in 2021, we talked about the neuroscience of how people really learn at work. Since then, quite a lot has changed. AI has dramatically increased our access to information. Learning technology continues to expand, and organizations are under increasing pressure to help people acquire new skills faster than ever. But does providing more information, more content, and more training actually mean that more learning is taking place? Stella's new book, The Learning Organization, explores what happens when we shift the focus from delivering training to creating the conditions in which people can learn for themselves. In our conversation, we explore self-directed learning, what neuroscience tells us about how learning actually sticks, the changing role of trainers and managers, and the opportunities and risks AI creates for how people develop skills. And perhaps most importantly, we ask a deceptively simple question. Are we still confusing training with learning? So let's get into my conversation with Stella.
Stella Collins And Her Path
SPEAKER_03Stella Collins, welcome back to Leading People.
SPEAKER_01Lovely to be here with you again, Jerry.
SPEAKER_03Now, I've invited you back on because you've published a new book. And you were here in the early days in 2021, and you published a new book called I think The Learning Organization, and we'll get to that shortly. But first, so my listeners can get to know you a little bit. How did you get to where you are today, especially ending up in the learning and development field?
SPEAKER_01Crumbs, that's a long story, but I'll give you the short version. I studied psychology at university and absolutely loved it, loved understanding how people work. And I studied the neuroscience of how people work at university and my solid psychology degree. I then fell into the world of um IT, so I worked in IT for years and years and sort of got handed this. Um at the time I thought it was a poison chalice of being the training manager, and I didn't want to be the training manager. Um, but I ended up uh employing somebody who was really inspirational, inspired me to really understand what learning is, and then I realized this is all my psychology coming back. And 25 years ago, I think it is now, I set up my own company, and I've been completely passionate about effective learning that leads to performance and improves you know people's careers, improves business. Um, ever since so I've kind of run my own company for many years. I ran a startup um co-founder startup uh tech company for the last six years, and now I'm back being an independent consultant, author, keynote speaker.
SPEAKER_03Great. So
Why The Learning Organisation Now
SPEAKER_03why this book and why now?
SPEAKER_01I really wanted to write a book about um helping people learn to learn. That was the book I really wanted to write because I think you know, we have so much learning that we need we need to do at work, you know, whether it's formal learning or informal learning. And people often go about it in not necessarily the most effective way. Um, but my publisher said, no, no, we really need to write a book for an organization instead. So because I'm very fascinated by self-directed learning, the learning that people do on their own without being kind of encouraged necessarily to do it, um, I wanted to write a book that helped individuals but also helped the organization create that culture of self-directed learning. And you hear a lot of organizations saying we're going self-directed. And that has sometimes meant we're going to give people access to an online library of resources, which isn't really self-directed learning, that is information and resources. And I wanted to bring out the fact that it's about learning, not just providing resources, it's about changing people's behaviors, habits, attitudes.
SPEAKER_03Okay, so all about learning to learn. Uh fascinating subject, by the way. I've done I've been doing some research into it myself. So it's um definitely uh something that is timely in today's uh world of AI and everything else. So here's a question for you.
Training Versus Learning In Real Life
SPEAKER_03Um, you make this point that organizations don't learn, but people do. And so are we still too focused on providing training rather than creating the conditions in which people can learn? And does that mean we're still confusing training with learning?
SPEAKER_01It's such an interesting topic. What is training? What is learning? Um, training really is something that you join um kind of deliberately and consciously and hope to learn from. Some training is very good and you do learn from it, some training is extremely poor, and you just get bored and fed up and get put off the idea of training. Um but training can be incredibly valuable, it can really help people to build skills, to build confidence, um, and to you know, to learn to be able to do new things. Learning is the process in the learner's brain and body. I always refer to the body as well, I think it's really important. Um, and that's an internal process and is what the person needs to do in order to move from one state to another state in order to kind of change the neural connections and solidify those neural connections, new neural connections in their brain. So there is a difference between training and learning, and I think the conversations that happen within sort of L and D communities sometimes mix them up. And of course, you know, we went from being the training department to being um you know the learning learning and development department. I think the development part often gets missed out.
SPEAKER_03Yes, because it development in its just by the definition requires more of a journey type approach where it's an ongoing something only develops over time and that and uh so so do you do you think that learning and development was just a convenient label, but at this most of my experiences are, and this is no disrespect to people in that that area, is that they're still just offering training.
SPEAKER_01I think they're still offering training, um, they're still offering resources, which isn't always training, it's often just information delivery. Um and you know, and I work in that area, I currently work in an organization in their talent development team, but yeah, it's the same, it's just another name for the same thing. Um, and I think a lot of people mean very well and have very good intentions. I think the technology often causes big problems because tech companies tend to not have a learning mentality. I've probably jumped ahead to thinking about tech roles, but I think they don't have a learning mentality, they have a technology mentality and a desire to sell. And they kind of sell these systems to big organizations that trap everybody into following a certain way of or into thinking in a certain way about learning, and they trap them in what I call the knowledge trap. So that you know, we think that gathering information or being given information is enough for learning. But if you actually think about learning yourself, if you think of anything you've learned in your life, you can't do it just by having information. You have to do the doing, and that's from you know, learning to ride a bike, drive a car, become a leader, whatever it is you you learn to do. Play an instrument. You know, you can't play an instrument just by watching a video or or even reading a you know a deep and in-depth book. You need to actually get that instrument out and play it.
SPEAKER_03You're stealing all my lines, my best lines. I have a co-trainer who I some lady I work with from time to time, and she keeps quoting this one thing I said, you can't play, you can't learn to play the guitar by watching somebody else play the guitar, no matter how good they are. And she's got been going around propagating this now for the last five years, and she quotes it in many sessions. She says we have to remind them of this. Um so if if we if we look at there's a lot of technology. So let's unpack a little bit that technology thing, because there may be some interesting misperceptions out there.
The Knowledge Trap In Learning Tech
SPEAKER_03First of all, perhaps that people who work in technology companies have the best training uh, you know, on learning um tools, etc. But my my experience has always been if we take, I suppose we shouldn't name them, but if you take some of these well-known platforms, which uh they they even present it as skills development, and you go in there and basically all you do is watch somebody in a very nicely produced video telling you stuff. And so in many ways, it gives you the maybe some of the why and the motivational aspect of the learning and it gives you a lot of the what. And there is uh even if they try to introduce some sort of how aspect to it, it's only a quiz or something. So it's only really testing your recall and your kind of whether you've processed the information, it doesn't uh test whether you actually can do what they've been presenting. Is this just a transition then? Is it is that just should we just accept that that has to necessarily transition towards a better model in the future? And what might that better model be?
SPEAKER_01So yes, the first easy answer is yes. Um, and I think the first thing to note is that even if you get tested, you're only being tested on can you recall it immediately? Which is really not testing your memory at all because you know you can testing is vitally important, but you need to test over time. You need to have space repetition. So, yes, I think you know, information, um access to new thoughts, new thinking, you know, nicely produced is is helpful because it kind of gets people more interested. But actually, you can have the worst produced piece of learning, as in, you know, does it look beautiful? But actually, it might be much better because you're actually getting to do something with it and you're stretching the learning over time. In order for our brains to learn, we need to take time to create new neural networks or connect networks up, and that takes time, it doesn't just happen overnight at night, it can take days, months, years sometimes, depending on what you're learning and what depth you're learning is at. So the process of learning is a long-term thing, it's not a short-term thing. And I think the um the stuff that tech is offering is what I so I use this gear model, which is about transfer, it's about making sure that people can actually do the the job without having learned some new skills, some new tasks, or even some new information. And the gear model sort of the goal of it is to get transfer all the way through this model, and it kind of has four gears in it. Um, there's a kind of a chain, a connecting chain that is motivation because we need to be motivated in order to learn. If we're not motivated, we we just won't put in the effort required for learning. And the first part of the gear model is is guide. So you've got guide, experiment, apply, retain. And the guide is very much what the tech can provide. It can provide guidance, it can provide information, it can provide a starting point. But if you don't do the experiment, apply, and retain, you may retain some of that information, but you'll probably forget most of it. And it's the learning, it's the self-directed learning that people often do following up from that that is actually what helps to embed their skills. And I think that's what we we need to connect the tech more, which is what we did when in my previous company, we connected the tech the tech to the whole journey. It was it was too early for the world to take on, unfortunately. But you know, we we were talking about taking people on that whole journey.
SPEAKER_03We'll be right back after this short break.
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Micro Learning Moments That Work
SPEAKER_03It's interesting because you talk about the sort of let's call it the little the little ropey type video, and and actually YouTube is full of them, but if you want to chick learn how to do something like cook something in your kitchen or um I I one thing I sometimes when the battery runs out on my um my car key and it doesn't happen very often, I go back and I find that video and I watch this guy with you know, and it's not the most amazing production, it won't win any Oscars, but it'll certainly win an Oscar for me at the time when I want to get my battery out and I'm afraid of breaking the casing. And then I see the guy. Oh, I was helping my daughter move into her apartment in uh her what they call a cot here in Belgium in Maastricht there a few weeks ago, and there were raw plugs in the wall, and trying to take them out. I I didn't really know. And then all of a sudden I get a video, two minutes, and I and there's that one little thing you have to do to get the raw plug out, which is actually put the screw back in, and it's counterintuitive. And all of a sudden, I was looking for raw plugs all over the building. I was having so much fun because I was able to pull them all out, but it it's that kind of like uh little aha moment, that micro moment that seems to be and so maybe let's get into this self-direct because that's a self-directed process. I'm going, I don't know, this is not working, whatever I'm doing is not working. I need to find a way to make it work. All of a sudden, I find a way, I find a little video, I watch it. Oh, that makes sense. I go do it, find that it works. Don't need to watch the video again. So is that is it an example of self-directed learning? And and how would you then uh illustrate that from an organization within an organization, that type of approach?
SPEAKER_01So that's a great example. And what was interesting was you said that when you have the key, so the relevance of it is you know, I have a problem, I need to solve it, I will learn how to solve it, I'll go to YouTube. Uh, what was interesting was you said about the key thing is that you have to go back to that video again because you haven't actually learned it, because you do it at the time and it's successful, but unless you repeat it multiple times at the time, if there's a big gap between the first time you need to fix that key and the second time you need to fix it, you're gonna need to go back to the video. Maybe after 10 repetitions, maybe you might not need the video anymore. You it might kind of be embedded. But I think that's really important that even with self-directed learning, even when we can um you know quickly solve the problem, unless we consciously repeat the solution and teach ourselves without having to go back to the video, it always remains access to information, it always remains a guide. But if you do the experiment, I'm gonna try that with something else. You know, I think it works with roll plugs or it works with you know key. What else can I apply this to? Um, and if you experiment, if you apply it regularly and you repeat it and you sort of reflect on it to help yourself retain it and you you know talk yourself through it. So you're still using the gear model, which is why I kind of want people, if they are doing self-directed learning, and it's something they need to know, that they understand how this model works, they understand how their brains work, so they can be more efficient about it instead of having to go back to the video again the next time. So that's a perfectly that's a perfectly functional way of doing it. If you don't if you only need to do it occasionally, you don't need to put in the effort to learn how to do it. You can always just go back to the video.
SPEAKER_03Well, I probably don't put the effort into um the retain part of the gear thing. At the time, I I I I get the guiding, I experiment a bit because I'm a little bit maybe nervous, and I apply it and I don't do the retention. But as you spoke, you reminded me of of course my favorite analogy is my world of music. And um it was even having a conversation with this very um accomplished friend of mine who was over here playing at the weekend, and um because he plays in a lot of different ensembles, and there was this the question did come up about how do you remember all the tunes? Um, and um if I relate that to uh my own experience, you forget pieces of music if you don't play them regularly at one level. However, if you've practiced them intensely and performed them, um, they're there. And and he actually, and he wouldn't have much neuroscience background or ever, he kind of says, I I need to get it out of my long-term memory back into that. He used the term short-term memory so I can use it in that context. Um, but it's there, you see. He he's able to go back, and with a couple of hours of practicing the repertoire, it it comes back to him. It's in the proprioceptive memory of, you know, as you say, those neural connections are there. He just needs to actually just need to go in and turn on the light again, I think, trip the switch, and and they all kick back in again. There'll be mistakes probably in the rehearsing, and eventually they're all there.
SPEAKER_01Um, yeah, does that does that sort of link into the and I think that's true of most of the things we learn, you know, most of the skills we learn, whether it's sports, whether it's whether it's leading, you know, communicating with people. It doesn't matter what it is, that that if you've learned to do it, it will always be there. But you, as you say, if you don't regularly do it, you might have to go back and refresh that learning by recalling the information and then practicing it again.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. So let's let's dig a little bit deeper then into like we've given some people can probably easily identify with those examples because we've all had this sort of household thing where we needed to do something, we've gone in, and and and the distinctions you make around the gear model where we we put may not retain that for longer-term use, so we have to keep going back. My musical analogy probably is a better example of the gear gear model because we do embed it in with deliberate practice and expert guidance, you know, those great things that we talk about and we put in there.
Role Models And Mentoring For Growth
SPEAKER_03Now, let's take that into the an organization, and you mentioned that you're also working uh within an organization at the moment, and you did a lot of probably a lot of exploratory work when you were in the startup here in Belgium, and you know, and you probably talked to a lot of people and and sometimes found pilots that worked and but still didn't maybe get the traction or whatever. So, what what what are some examples of where you've seen self-directed learning for let's say uh just somebody doing an ordinary type of like type of job in an organization, whether they're in an accounting department or whether they're in a marketing department or HR or operations or whatever it is, what sorts of things have you seen uh evolve over time where people have have progressively uh you know self-directed and you've you've not only seen it happen, but you've you've had feedback that that something worked, you know.
SPEAKER_01So I've got a very good example of this from the company I'm currently working in. Last year we did some focus groups with people about you know their their responses to learning, how how they felt learning happened within the organization. And one of the things that kept so we we interviewed um sort of individual individual participants in in training, but we also interviewed some leaders. Um and one of the things that kept coming up as to what helped you learn was um I I actually watched my Leader, or I watch my manager, they have very good skills, and I really observe what they do, and I try and apply, copy and apply what they're doing. And this social learning came up so many times of people just you know observing what somebody else does, observing the result, and then thinking, okay, I'm gonna try that for myself and repeat it over time. Um, and I think that's a really good example of self-directed learning, just recognizing that learning from others is a valuable way to learn for yourself.
SPEAKER_03Can I can I put a slight um slight reframe on that? Um I'm putting myself in the shoes of a listener now. Um could we reframe that to finding a role model rather than a manager? Because there might be a lot of people out there thinking, I don't want to be like my man. Because most people most people will can tell you out of if they've had five or ten bosses, no, if 10% of them or 20% of them were were the uh the bosses where they learned the most, where they felt comfortable, etc. That can be probably I'm I'm making that up a little bit, but I think that statistic is reasonably reliable and in most people's careers, except perhaps for a few people who are on the coattails of somebody as they moved up and they just that was always but it'll still be that one person. Um is it is the role modeling aspect and and how do organizations create the opportunities to role model? Because that that would be it's okay saying that I see a guy over there, and every time I see him in a meeting, he's he he's just brilliant. I just I just can't imagine how does he do it and that, but it but I have no direct contact with him except for those two or three times every six months that I'm in a room with him. How how do organizations create that space for that?
SPEAKER_01So thank you for pointing that out. It was it was just in this particular organization they were referring to their leaders, but role model is absolutely the right the right thing to say. Um, I think in organizations now, one of the things that is happening or seems to be happening more and more is mentoring, both official mentoring and unofficial mentoring. So a lot of organizations have mentoring schemes where you can approach somebody who you think is a good role model and say, Look, you know, I I would really like you to mentor me for you know a particular length of time or to do a particular thing. Um, and then there are sort of, and that could be formalized, or there can be informal mentoring where you, you know, you might even be more peer-to-peer where you just sort of say to somebody, Look, you know, I'm trying to learn how to do X, Y, or Z. Can you show me how to do it? And perhaps you can give me some feedback, and then maybe imagine it's presentation skills, maybe you could come to a presentation with me and actually see me in action and then give me some some helpful tips afterwards. So I think there's informal and formal mentoring. And I know talking to lots of organisations at the moment, there's a lot more um reverse mentoring. So mentoring traditionally was you know, the more senior person mentored, the more junior person. I think that's really shifting now because of changing skills. And often it can go the other way. The more junior person may well be able to show the more senior person, you know, how to do something, give them some really good tips, um, support them in it, motivate them to, you know, to take the next step. So I think this mentoring is probably how that happens in a formal, a formal way.
SPEAKER_03I actually have a direct experience of that. I have a young lady working for me and uh with helping with all my marketing. And we have we have learning conversations all the time. She seems to like, if she's listening, hello Valeria, but she seems to like the fact that she learns stuff from the fact that I've been around a long time. I'm learning all the time about we discuss which technology she's using for this and that. And you know, she teaches me stuff about the technology. I I'm reasonably up to date on technology. I've always attempted to be, you know, well informed about these things, even if I'm not the best at using it. Uh, but it's a very um what do you call that word? Um I've lost the word now, but it's one of these um situations where there's a mutual benefit to both of us. Uh symbiotic, I think is the word I'm looking for there. Where you know we both are able, and and and what it does is it it means that you do genuinely get a one uh what one plus one equals three uh out outcome of that type of thing. But apart from the mentoring, then what other things seem to work? So mentoring, I think people have heard of it, they may not be experiencing it. Uh, totally get your point about this, you know, some young people with the technology today are definitely should be older people should be going to them. And and it those people will be actually respect you because they're the the fact that you ask them what they can bring, they feel well, they're being seen, for example, they feel maybe that they're they have some worth in the organization, that you know they're not just the young person on the block. But what other types of approaches have you seen working quite well in terms of self-directed learning?
Action Learning Sets And Peer Problem Solving
SPEAKER_01So I think uh one I really like is action learning sets, which have been around for years and years and years, and they're a very structured way of people solving problems together. So it's a kind of peer, peer-to-peer type learning, and it's kind of like it's a little bit like group coaching. Um, so somebody comes, and I'll just very briefly try to somebody comes along with a problem, which may be a problem that everybody in in the group has, or maybe only some of them have, and they say, I've got this problem. They have to articulate clearly what it is, and then the rest of the group basically just ask them questions. So they don't provide answers at this point, they just ask questions, and the person writes down all the questions, 20, 30, maybe even 40 questions, and then they take a few minutes to reflect and they kind of think, okay, so these four questions feel to me as if they're unlocking questions, and they go back to the rest of the group and they say, These four questions are really important to me. They seem to unlock some thinking for me, and then you can start to think about solutions that might help to answer those questions. So it's a sort of it's a kind of coaching approach, but it really focuses on understanding, get getting questions first as opposed to providing solutions to understanding more. I think that's an excellent way of doing it. Um, I think there are lots of peer-to-peer groups, you know, if you if you're working in in tech, they often have these huddles, they call them, where, you know, they just every morning they just say, okay, where are we? What did we learn yesterday? What do we need to do today? What do we need to be able to learn in order to do this thing that we might be experimenting with? And the thing that really resonated from what you were just talking about, and I mentioned in the book, is that smaller organizations tend to be better at self-directed learning because there isn't the opportunity, or there's less opportunity for formal training, formal learning. We just tend to learn because you kind of have to do it. And also in a smaller organization, you're probably more likely to have multiple roles. So, you know, you have to learn how to do accounting. You have to, and yes, you might get people to help you with your marketing or accounting, but you've still got to be aware enough of it. Whereas if you're working in a huge organization, you may not need to know anything about the accounting, you might just need to fill in your expenses sheet at the end of the month. Um so I think smaller groups can actually self-direct their own learning, and I think that's something that organizations can think about doing is to how do we create small groups where we learn from each other as opposed to only doing the formal and it happens naturally. People just you know naturally will form groups. They say, Well, should we just have a quick meeting and see how we can work through this problem? I think problem solving is another way to really support people to to learn is to focus on you know, how are we going to solve this challenge? Um, so pre and post-mortems around um projects are very good to support learning.
SPEAKER_03Okay.
Psychological Safety And Useful Feedback
SPEAKER_03Um what occurs to me in all of this uh I mean, I'm going to use one of these worn-out cliches, and at the same time, I'd like you to just speak about psychological safety would seem to be quite important here because to ask somebody for help, you have to be prepared maybe to be a bit vulnerable, and at the same time, um maybe sometimes admit you haven't, you know, maybe succeeded, and at the same time feel that that person is going to respond in in a constructive way. What's your experience?
SPEAKER_01So I I think with self-directed learning, you're trying to create a culture of self-directed learning, and you're absolutely right, you know, psychological safety has to be one of the key features so that people feel it's okay to ask questions. Um, you know, there is no such thing as a stupid question. Um it's okay to make mistakes so long as you learn from those mistakes. And Amy Edmondson's got a new a new book that's the exact name of it.
SPEAKER_03I think I've got it behind me here. Hold on. The right kind of wrong.
SPEAKER_01Yes, yes. I love it. I'm only about two-thirds of the way through it, but I'm really enjoying it. Um so if you can create that kind of atmosphere where people feel it's okay to make mistakes, but we must learn from them. Um that's very powerful. And then I think the the psychological safety to accept and receive feedback and process it. Process it before you decide whether to accept or reject it. You don't have to take on all feedback, it's it's not you don't need to take it on, but being open to feedback is hugely important. And I think again, with psychological safety comes that feeling of Okay, so they've just said something to me and it kind of feels I wasn't expecting it. But I'm gonna I'm gonna take that away and I'm gonna reflect on it and think about from their point of view, that's how they see my behavior or the world, whatever it may be. So that's a valid point of view, and I think that's another part of psychological safety, feeling feeling okay about taking, even if it's criticism, or you feel it's criticism, actually taking it away and kind of having a look at it and seeing if it's is there some value in that.
SPEAKER_03I think Amy makes a point. Psychological safety is not about being nice to everybody all the time. It's uh it's it's the intention behind the interaction and it's all about the idea that of learning and being able to acknowledge that things don't go according to plan. And the value in acknowledging it is that if you can learn something and do something different the next time to improve that and her examples, of course, were drawn from the the medical profession where and you know we have examples from flying airplanes and that where when things go wrong, they can go horribly wrong. So um yeah.
SPEAKER_01It's about outcome, isn't it? It's about making sure that you achieve the correct outcome. Yeah. And take people with you along the way, but that doesn't mean you have to be nicey nicely all the time. Sometimes it's really important that you have that difficult conversation.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. One way to show you you care about somebody and and their development is to hold them accountable.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_03And that can sometimes mean saying, I'm sorry, but you're not making the standard here. I I think you should, you could be making the standard, and here's how we might get there. And sometimes that's not easy to accept or take, but most managers who are good at this do it out of a positive intention to help the person be you know accept their own self-accountability. And also, if they move into management themselves, learn the art of how to ensure that that other people also take accountability and responsibility for what they they've been asked to deliver. So it's not just about being nicey nice, is it?
SPEAKER_02No, definitely not.
SPEAKER_03So now I want to get into a little bit uh for those, particularly those trainers who might be listening now and sending off resumes to God knows where now looking for new jobs.
What Trainers Do In Future
SPEAKER_03I just I I just wanted to get into um uh okay. So if self-directed learning was to become the norm, what what what what can you see happening to what we call a more traditional trainer? And are we moving to a world towards a world where the the real skill is now designing the conditions for learning rather than delivering content, or is it a balancing act between many factors?
SPEAKER_01Um, it's definitely a balancing act between many factors. I think there is always going to be a role for trainers because sometimes you need to learn things in a particularly safe way. So, you know, imagine learning to drive a car. Um, you could do that self-directed, but I think it's much safer for everybody if you are taken out in a in a car that you know the the the teacher has like the the brakes they can slam on themselves, can't they, very often? Um, and they can teach you how to do it appropriately. And there's a you know, there's so many it's a very complex task, but it's also there's you know, there's there's danger to it if you get it wrong. So I think there will always be a requirement for trainers. I think one of the shifts is more towards facilitation so that we're facilitating learning, and as you say, we're creating an environment in which learning can happen every day. And some of that is is kind of educating people about look, you know, you you have you have you know two weeks ago you were here, you've just started a new company. Two weeks ago you were here, um two weeks later you've you've got here, so you have learned in that process and helping people to reflect on well, what helped me learn there? You know, was it working with other people? Was it um really doing some self-reflection? Was it the practice? So I think there's that kind of um kind of guide on the side, I think it used to get called, isn't it? So you can guide people through it. Um coaching, definitely, but facilitating so that when you are people love to learn from, or many people like to learn from each other, and we you know we often learn from talking to other people, understand that they, oh, they have the same experience as me. Okay, well, I wonder what they do about it, and that's shared learning. And I think facilitation can really help there because that enables people to have those conversations. Whereas old-fashioned training, whereas kind of the trainer stood at the front and talked at people, that doesn't give that peer learning, it doesn't enable that learning from each other, which I think is hugely important. Because often, if you're uh an expert trainer, you see this often with with sort of subject matter experts or experts in their field, they want to share absolutely, you know, they're super enthusiastic, they're really great, but they want to share everything they know, which I'm not ready for yet. You know, I've I've got a very basic knowledge of this thing, and the people around me may well be, you know, there might be one step ahead, two steps ahead, they can help me through it. Whereas the expert trainer may just be too many steps ahead and even can't unpick the basic steps at the beginning. That's often a challenge for subject matter experts. They can't unpick. How do I do that? I don't know. I just do it. I've I've I've embedded it into my being so that it's now just a routine in my brain. And like I if you ask somebody how do you actually ride a bike, it's almost impossible to say, well, peddling. Well, how how do you explain peddling? Um so yeah, I think facilitation is is facilitating the learning between others is where we need to be going.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I've heard that referred to the curse of knowledge, you know, you cannot not know what you know, and if you then feel the the urge to tell everybody. I actually like your driving instructor analogy quite quite a lot because I've got two young daughters who are going through that process at the moment, and and having been in the hot seat a few times, um one of them decided that she was going to just pay for the lessons. So it might be a reflection of my well, I'm I'm not a trained driving instructor. I I I I can only relate how I would drive the car, how I've learned to drive the car and myself at the same time. Yeah, it's a bit of it was a bit of a challenge at times.
SPEAKER_01But anyway, there's a lot of emotion in that. I I also taught my dog.
SPEAKER_03There are a lot of anchors.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, a lot of never teaching anybody else.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, there are a lot of sort of anchors we you know installed that that that are are not there when they meet a stranger who does the who tells them you just shouldn't do that. And then you know, you sometimes get, oh I saw you do it last week. Oh, then you're then you're shot basically. Okay, so everybody out there with teenage kids, lots of opportunities to do lots of things uh when it comes to learning and teaching and
Neuroscience That Makes Learning Stick
SPEAKER_03stuff. But anyway, moving swiftly on, um, your your previous deep work was in the neuroscience field. So what what are the couple of things that um you know, when we think about um self-directed learning, what does the brain tell us about why self-directed learning can work so well and what are the conditions that are likely to make that learning stick?
SPEAKER_01So I think the key thing with self-directed learning is we're usually motivated to want to do it. We have a really good reason to want to do it. Um it's relevant. So, you know, your example with the um key or the screws in the wall, it's highly relevant, and relevance is enormously important to learning. If something doesn't feel relevant and the context isn't right, then we're far less inclined to not only be less inclined to want to do it, it just it just sort of sits in a kind of vague bubble over here. You know, I I I could learn to speak Swahili, but I have no need to learn to speak Swahili. But Spanish, I really need to learn every single day because I've moved back to Spain and you know I'm having to cope with my not my my slightly degraded Spanish because I haven't been here for some time. So um I think the motivation part is hugely important. Um second part of your question is what what are the environmental or the cues?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I mean, what are some of the conditions that are going to uh help make the self-directed learning? I mean, from a neuroscience point of view, what conditions will help make it stick?
SPEAKER_01Um sleep. Oh that absolutely yeah, absolutely we need to sleep. For learning anything, um, we need to sleep. So if you're learning something, don't beat yourself up because you know I've tried to learn it today and I just don't feel I'm getting it. Allow yourself to sleep because as you as information comes into our brains during the day, um and we have information from internal, all that information is coming in and it's also inside. Um we're sorting that into our most of it's going into our hippocampus and it's kind of getting sorted out, processed, but it's still not sticking. And at night when you sleep, when you're in deep sleep, all that information goes back out into your brain, kind of the parts of your brain where it was processed in the first place, and it starts to create long-term memory. So long-term memory is distributed across your entire brain. So when you learn to do something, you're not just learning in one part of your brain, it's across your whole brain. Um, so sleep is vitally important both for the consolidation of the memory, but also it seems that when we dream, we're actually practicing skills. So when you dream, your body is completely paralyzed, but your brain is very, very active, and it's often practicing the skills that you have been learning in the day as you dream. So you when you come back to it the next day, and I know this works music, I've heard lots of people talk about it. Yeah, you're trying to play something on the piano in the evening, and it's just it's not working, and you get up in the morning and you go and it's beautiful and sleep. So sleep is massively important, and then all the usual things like you know, get some exercise. Because when we exercise, we create something called neurotranshapit growth factor, which actually helps our brains to build and develop new cells. So physical exercise is again hugely important. So there's lots of you know, things that don't feel like they're learning, but they are hugely important for learning.
SPEAKER_03Okay.
Managers Who Make Learning Real
SPEAKER_03So, what is the manager or leader's role in this? So, as learning becomes more self-directed, what's the role of a manager and what should leaders be doing differently in terms of leading their organizations to help people learn, experiment, and grow? You're listening to Leading People with me, Jerry Murray. And my guest today is Stella Collins, author of the new book, The Learning Organization. So far, we've explored the difference between training and learning, what self-directed learning can actually look like, and some of what neuroscience tells us about how learning really sticks. But coming up, we turn our attention to the organization itself. What role do managers play in creating the conditions for learning? How might AI change the way people develop expertise? And if training attendance, completions, and waiting lists aren't telling us very much, how should we know whether learning is actually making a difference? So let's get back to our conversation.
SPEAKER_01I think the one thing they can do is be honest because they are learning themselves. And sometimes I think when you get to a senior role, either you don't notice your learning or you think, well, I can't, you know, I can't tell people I made a terrible mistake yesterday. And I need to learn to fix it. But if you're honest about that and explain to people, I mean, maybe it wasn't a terrible mistake, but you know, that you're fake, you're also facing new circumstances, new things you need to be able to do, new skills, new knowledge. And if you're open about that and tell people, I'm learning too, you know, it's not like I've got to this place and I've stopped learning, I'm still learning. So that you create that feeling of, ah, it's okay to keep learning. It's not just a thing we need to do when we start a job or start a career. Um, so I think being honest about the learning that you're doing and helping people recognize you're doing it too. And then managers are hugely important in terms of helping people to apply their learning in the workplace. So whether it's informal, you know, self-directed learning or whether it's formal learning, what managers should be doing, you know, almost every day if they can is just say, well, you know, what did you learn today? Um, what helped you do that? How can I continue to help you? Um, what feedback would be the most valuable to you and giving feedback that is you know constructive and helps people actually you know take the next step. So managers and and you know, managers can motivate people to continue with that learning. So, yes, you've got your if you're self-directed, you've got your own motivation. But if your manager is also coming along supporting you and saying, Well, you're doing you know, this is great, this is really valuable for us as the team and as the team, helping you see how your self-directed learning fits into perhaps the bigger strategic or team picture, that can be hugely valuable too, because then not only do you feel I'm getting something for myself, but oh, I'm actually contributing as well. So I think managers have a massive role.
SPEAKER_03I'm sort of hearing, apart from the sort of showing an interest, um, I'm also hearing this idea that the manager almost or leader needs to be role modeling, learning, even just if they say I learned something myself there today. I hadn't realized it, but guess what? I learned because that because I I've I unfortunately I've had the experience sometimes of having to do stuff with very senior people in organizations, and I've been told that you have to give them a lecture. You know, you don't get don't don't ask them to do anything because you have to know that they're at a certain level. And you're going, but how how are they going to learn? I mean, I can talk forever about that topic and they can watch a video on it. Why would why what's the point in having me there if they're not going to do anything with it and and experiment with it? They said you don't understand, you know, their their status and that's what that's a killer because if if that's how you're being briefed as an external, think of the way that culture trickles down through the organization. It it can't help. I and my my just my gut tells me it can't help.
SPEAKER_01So I've had exactly the same experience, and I always respond with look, just because they're senior, it hasn't changed how their brains learn. They still need to follow the process, the same process as everybody else. And, you know, they're likely to be a little older. It may even take them slightly longer to learn it. So the more actual practical experience they get, the better it will be for them. So let's have them doing things, not hearing, listening things that they may well already have heard before anyway, because you know they are experienced, they've probably heard more than most of us. So it's even more important that they get to do the doing.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
AI Help Versus AI Dependency
SPEAKER_03So to the the flavor of the month topic is around AI and whether it's helping or making the problem worse. I think you talk about the tidal wave of generic beige content or something, those words. And so, how should leaders think about AI and learning and where can it genuinely help? Yeah, and where might it simply just give us like just more information without any learning, or where might it even be somewhat dangerous? I mean, you've probably heard the the about the recent papers about offloading and surrender. And I've I interviewed uh a guy there a couple of weeks ago, and he talked even about um dependency, you know, on AI, not just offloading, because that's been a normal enough thing with technology since calculators and GPSs, but surrendering and then just becoming totally dependent on AI to do the thinking for us. So, what are you seeing uh it happening in the learning space and and what what should leaders be paying attention to?
SPEAKER_01Um, just uh the beige wave of content is is Don Taylor's phrase, which I I quote, and I think it's great, you know, it's so easy to create content with AI, but we don't need more content that's already there's more than enough of it out there. Um I think AI is very interesting, potentially very dangerous. Um my biggest concern around it, and I don't have a solution to this, and I haven't heard anybody come up with a solution yet, is that you know, you and I and and most people in the current workplace, we learn to do things by kind of by doing the doing, by by following, by copying, by role modeling, and following the role model. Um we did the work, we had to do the thinking, we had to do the processing and the analyzing. If people don't have to do that basic work anymore, because AI can do it for them, how will they learn to do the tasks? So I know that they've talked about it in the legal system. AI can make apparently, you know, quite good legal decisions because it can take all that information and it can make good legal decisions. But how do you know, if you if you have not been through that experience of analyzing decisions like that yourself, how do you know that the AI's decision is good? How do you validate the AI's decision? And I think that's gonna be the hardest thing to work out how we how we enable people coming into the into work now to learn things in order to be able to to check is the answer right? Because, you know, as we all know, AI makes mistakes. It doesn't, you know, we think it has all the information, but it definitely doesn't. It's still incredibly heavily biased, um, you know, toward white Western men, mostly. Um so how do we and and I hadn't heard anyone really come up with a solution to that yet, and I don't have one either. On the other hand, I think it's really good at giving you quick answers to things. Umledge to think, yeah, okay, I think that's the correct answer. It's not it's not a completely wrong answer. Um it's really good at that. So it can teach you things very quickly. I like the fact that you can sort of have a conversation with it, a dialogue. Um sometimes it's just overhelpful and says, Do you want me to do this? Do you want me to do this next? Do you want me to do that? And you're like, no, but sometimes it helps you because it kind of prompts your thinking. Oh, actually I hadn't thought about doing that next, but maybe that is a good next step to take in terms of learning. So it's it's it's a dual, it's it's got, you know, two faces.
SPEAKER_03Okay. Actually, the just as you spoke, the the best attempt at let's trying to understand this. I've seen recently is a is a book came out last year called by a guy called Matt Bean called The Skill Code. Definitely worth reading because he's looked, and actually he's a little bit like Amy Evanson. He he has gone into, he did a lot of his research in operating theatres and the introduction of robotics and how that's affecting we should all be paying attention to this, how this is affecting the junior doctor's ability to actually do what the traditional doctor does. And he remarks that as the technology gets better and the robotics get better, it's more efficient for the skilled doctor to direct the robot, and therefore the intern is not learning anything, and they're not getting that hands-on experience as he talks about their hands in the patient. Um, and he has some he has got some quite useful um thinking coming out. Now, has he got all the answers? Probably not. However, he I think he's pretty he's provoking the conversation a little bit. Like in many professions, how are you going to deal with this uh situation where technology is coming in, taking over those sort of taking over some of that more routine work? And at the moment it's probably working very well because the people running it have done all the training. They know it takes the legal profession, they've all done the case history and defended cases. And he's concerned, I think we should all be concerned about the gap that's emerging there. So that's for anybody who's interested, Matt Bean with Bean with a B-E-A-N-E. Um, and it's uh called the skill code, I think. And I I found it a fascinating read. So it's worth looking at. Um,
Measuring Performance Not Completions
SPEAKER_03so quickly to just finish up on the topic of how are we going to know if learning's actually making a difference? So if we if if if you're if somebody in L and D is thinking, okay, if we stop measuring attendance, the completion rates and the waiting lists that we generate, um, what should leaders and it's particularly L and D people be looking at instead to know whether their learning initiatives are actually improving performance in their organization?
SPEAKER_01We should always have been doing this, but we should always have been measuring performance, you know, asking at the start of some learning, whether it's training or or individual self-directed learning, you know, you should ask yourself, you know, where am I currently and where do I want to be? And then, you know, check in regularly to see, well, have I made progress on that? It has my performance changed, have I got better? Have I got more accurate? Am I quicker? It doesn't matter what it is. Um, we should always be measuring the end result. You know, people in sports don't measure how many pe how many how many runs you did, you measure whether you actually won any races. So that's what we should be measuring. We should be looking at what is it, what's the learning to achieve, and we should be looking at the final achievement. Now that's sometimes very difficult because you know sales is always relatively easy to measure because yes, okay, we've we've made more sales. You might have made more of the wrong sales, of course. You don't know you've made the right sales. Um, but lots of things, you know, the learning is going to be part, but the formal learning is going to be part of the process. The informal learning is much harder to measure a lot of the time because people aren't aware that they're actually learning, they're just doing new things and they don't class it as learning. So I think there's something about awareness and tracking and checking as you go along and accumulating that um those measures. So you can see, you know, do certain things help you move faster along the trajectory? Do some things slow down the trajectory so that you're you're beginning to kind of assess which is the most efficient route through this thing in terms of my own learning. So there are lots of myths around learning. I mean, you know, some really simple ones. People sort of tend to think that if I reread something, um, then I've probably learned it. But you haven't if you just read it, you haven't learned it unless you can recall it later on. And not just later on tomorrow, but you know, in six months' time. If you can recall something in six months' time, you probably learned it. But if you can't, then you haven't. And rereading it won't help you. So I think exposing some of the myths around you know how learning really works is important, and that can help you lead to better measurement.
SPEAKER_03And of course, we won't go there now, but actually being able to define performance standards.
SPEAKER_02Yes.
SPEAKER_03It's amazing how many people can't tell you what what let's say what good performance looks like in in it in it sitting underneath them. Like if you said if that person was performing at their best or at the level you want, what would they what would be the things they'd be doing extremely well and what would they not be doing, for example? Even that type of question sometimes gets a blank um, you know, oh, we're too busy here, we're just fighting for we're just dealing with all this the stuff that comes at us, and and as long as they get through it, that's for me, I'm happy. And you know, yet that doesn't help because the person themselves doesn't know what like you talk about the race, apart from even winning the race, we there's often time trials. So can I get to this speed within this? So people are measuring themselves, calibrating their their sort of lag indicate, sorry, their lead indicators before they get to their lag indicators. So, you know, to get to that race-winning standard, I need to be able to do this, this, and this very well before that. And I don't don't always get a sense that that that's happening so so well. So if we don't can't define performance, then we can't maybe determine whether the training or learning processes have made any difference, right?
SPEAKER_01Abs absolutely. You've got to know where you're going to, you've got to know what the expected outcome is. And I think that's why questions like, you know, how does that look, sound, and feel, what do you see or what do you not see are so important. They're simple questions, but they are they are ones that can actually help you define what it what the outcome is.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. And and you you you highlight something very important related to our neurology. Actually, our senses are some of the most reliable ways of actually knowing whether we what what what what's happening and the feedback we get through our senses. You know, you don't need to intellectualize everything. You just if you're not if your gut is not feeling good, that may be something you need to pay attention to. Uh, for example, and and it's actually a sign that you're something in your neurology that you wants to draw your attention to something. And you know, we should pay attention to these things.
One Move To Start Tomorrow
SPEAKER_03Now, coming to the end of our fantastic conversation, I'm sure we could stay a lot longer and dig deeper into many things. However, for people who want to dig deeper, of course, they can go out and buy the book. But I wanted to cut finish with um what would be, you know, coming to this end now, what would be if my listeners were to take away one big idea, what would that be? Or if a leader was listening to this and wanted to start tomorrow, what's one thing they could do to create a stronger learning culture without launching another program?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, don't launch another program. Um I think it would be building on what I said before, which is about being aware themselves of when they learn and making that transparent to other people. So leading from the front by saying, you know, I am learning too. This is how I learn. Um, you know, here's my top tips for learning. Um, you know, this is how I learn from failure, this is how I learn when I'm trying to achieve a sort of problem or achieve pieces of success. So I think the key thing would be to make it transparent, to make it obvious that learning is happening at every level in the organization.
SPEAKER_03Okay. So, Stella, um, I'll put some links in the show notes. How can people contact you and do you have anything special to offer them today?
SPEAKER_01Uh so you can definitely contact me on LinkedIn. I'm Stella Collins on LinkedIn, very usually fairly easy to find. I also have a website, uh ww.stellacollins.com, also fairly easy to find. Um, if people would like um to read the book, then um they can go to Kogan Page, search for the learning organization with a Z, and um they can use code AHR20, and then you get a 20% discount on the book.
SPEAKER_03So AHR20.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_03Or ah hash air for those who speak other languages, 20 or 20, or swampse, or whatever uh valent or whatever it is that you have. Stella Collins, thanks for sharing your insights, wisdom, and advice with me and my listeners here today.
SPEAKER_00Thank you, Jerry, and uh wish everybody great luck.
SPEAKER_03And that's it for this episode of Leading People. If you're new here and enjoyed today's conversation, I'd love it if you subscribed. It's the best way to make sure you never miss an episode. And if you're a regular listener, the best recommendation is always a personal one. So, if this episode made an impact on you, please share it with a friend or colleague. It might just be the best thing they listen to this week. Until next time.
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