Effective training creates change, and that starts with retention. Rod Webb shares why fun, emotion, and a bit of weirdness make learning memorable and sticky. In the first of three articles exploring the RIA model, he explains how to design experiences that help people focus, remember, and do something different.
The purpose of all training is change – a change in beliefs perhaps, and certainly a change in behaviours. If we want people to do something differently as a result of training, the first thing we need to do is ensure they remember it. People also need to be inspired and to take action.
Contributing to that success is the the RIA model, which I developed to help people understand what supports that behaviour change:
- Retention
- Inspiration
- Action
These three words, in order, describe a journey that helps ensure training results in a real and sustained difference. This article focuses on Retention, and future articles will explore Inspiration and Action.
Presenting isn’t learning
So much training still takes the form of a presentation, complete with copious slides, and often involves the trainer doing more than their fair share of the talking. A key problem with presentation style training is focus, which Elizabeth Kensinger explains is the first step in storing information in memory.
How often have you sat through a presentation and been totally focused on it the whole time? Not once distracted by your phone, something else happening in the room, or what you’re going to do when you finally escape?
There’s an easier way to create learning that really sticks!
Most presentations are largely a passive experience, so if you’re a trainer who uses them, you have to be very, very good. Otherwise, you’re always going to struggle to engage your audience, and hold their focus for the full duration of the training.
The good news is that training doesn’t have to be that difficult – either for us, or our learners. There’s an easier way to create learning that really sticks!
Experience, emotion, engagement
Creating learning interventions that are experiential and learner-led means using activities that put learners in control. This helps to ensure they are emotionally engaged and focused on the outcomes. When participants find their own answers, they’ll not only own those ideas, they’re also far more likely to remember and act upon them.
There’s still more we can do to help people remember what they’ve learnt, and one thing is to inject a little bit of the unusual. Per Sederberg, a professor of psychology who has been researching memory over several years, argues that “You have to build a memory on the scaffolding of what you already know, but then you have to violate the expectations somewhat. It has to be a little bit weird.”
Let me illustrate the importance of weird with a scenario: Imagine you’re walking in a crowded city. Perhaps you’re commuting to work. You see hundreds of people, perhaps thousands if you include those in buses, cars, trains… And you won’t remember any of them.
But then, you turn a corner and right there, amongst the crowd is a penguin riding an elephant. You’ll remember that! And that memory won’t just be there, it’ll be easy to recall too. In fact, you’ll be hard pressed not to think of the penguin on an elephant whenever you’re in those streets in the future, or even just thinking about that particular city.
Sadly, most training content isn’t like the penguin riding an elephant. It’s more akin to the faceless crowds that surrounded them – mundane and ordinary.
The brain, focus and learning retention
Why this matters is due to a small, but vital part of our brains, called the hippocampus. We’re bombarded with information every minute of every day and part of the hippocampus’s role is to filter all that information we’re receiving. It helps us to ignore all the stuff that doesn’t seem important; that lawn mower in the distance, the car driving past, someone else on a phone call on the next desk. Quite simply, if the hippocampus wasn’t there, doing this vital work, we’d be overwhelmed with the sheer quantity of sensory information reaching us.
What we take notice of and are more likely to remember are those things that strike us as odd. Things that make us do a ‘double take’ and that provoke an emotional reaction. Things that are NOT ordinary. What happens if your training is mundane and ordinary? If it doesn’t excite your learners or involve them emotionally? It gets lost amongst all that other sensory noise and quickly forgotten.
Weird is a key weapon in the trainer’s armoury when it comes to retention, but one I often find trainers are nervous of using, particularly if working with senior groups. Our ego, and sometimes that of our learners, or a fear of losing face, can feel like a barrier to embracing a pinch of weirdness. But the way we learn and the way memory works doesn’t change with status or position.
Fun for the win, or the memory
When we introduce a touch of weirdness and fun into our training, we’re not only likely to improve retention, but also participants’ enjoyment of the whole process of learning. In my view, learning should always be fun – after all, we want people to come back for more!
Next time you’re designing or preparing to deliver, ask yourself:
- How can I make this engaging and learner-led so that participants are truly focused and engaged in the whole process of learning?
- How can I inject a little bit of weird or fun that provokes an emotional reaction and boosts retention?
Retention is complex, but perhaps not as complex as we sometimes think. A little bit of lightness can go a long way to navigating this first step on the road to successful training that results in a real change in behaviours. Next in this series of articles is Inspiration: what is it and how do we create it? In the meantime, do you remember what was riding the elephant?
Rod Webb is co-founder of Trainers’ Library®
