Developing skills is a necessity for every company. To improve individual and collective performance, and to meet the need for professional development. And sometimes to offer a little recognition, too.
It happens in many ways, more or less formalised.
Day to day, through personal learning or with support. This mode – probably the most important – is also the most discreet, and it is informal, depending on chance, opportunities and the goodwill of all concerned. On collective habits too, on what is sometimes called “corporate culture”. A culture that can be left to live its own life, or that can be actively nurtured.
Should newcomers to a role (whether young or more experienced) be given a structured induction path? And who should they be entrusted to? Or should they be left to discover the “trade”, learn the ropes and confront its realities – leaving them, here too, to identify those who can (or cannot) help them?
Useful informal dynamics
These informal dynamics are very useful. It is not always necessary to support them. But you need to know them, so as not to disrupt them by accident, and to be able to rely on them when needed.
The most formal mechanisms are “training courses”. Mandatory or not, one-off or part of a programme. For non-mandatory courses, often related to the “soft sciences”, “participative” formats are now often used, in which participants gain much of what they learn through interaction with others.
These formats can be questioned.
First, because these “collective” formats must be distinguished from “action learning” (even if the two can be combined).
The principle of action learning (applying the concepts covered in training to one’s daily work) has proved its effectiveness. For practical reasons (off-the-shelf courses, inter-company courses…), these formats often rely on “case studies”, which can stray far from the original idea – and from the expected benefit. Because there is a great risk that, back at work, even after enjoying a well-designed case study, people will have the usual reflex: “yes, but my day-to-day reality is different”. That is why the design of these “practical phases” should, as far as possible, draw on participants’ real situations – even if these are new to the others, which is always better than an artificial situation.
Collective formats rest on other assumptions. This may be the legacy of an ideological rejection of learning through expertise. Especially when the field belongs to the “soft sciences”, which for some are little more than shared common sense. It may also be due to insufficient preparation by the trainer (but let us set that hypothesis aside).
A balance between expert input and practical application
But, more positively, it is also an opportunity to “grow together”. Provided a delicate balance is maintained between expert input and the work of application, which is done collectively, among the participants themselves.
By applying, in a situation that interests and involves all participants and leads to immediate gains, actions that will be implemented as soon as they return to “real life”. Which will also lead participants to sustain, individually but also together, what they have heard, learned and achieved collectively.
These teaching methods are valuable in three respects:
- They deliver the expected benefits of putting the concepts presented into practice, in very real situations – and participants leave with actions they will implement directly.
- They draw on the experience of the other participants, on their viewpoints and their often different understanding. As a result, they not only help understanding and ownership, but also avoid misunderstandings. They anchor what is learned in each participant’s reality, in the light of their situation. But more broadly too, with illustrations from other contexts.
- Finally, they generate synergies that will go beyond the training itself. Because they sometimes help resolve day-to-day disagreements – when the preparation identifies such cases and chooses them as the context for application. And because the application sequence is designed to generate interactions and the adoption of collective actions that will last. Because the skills sought are not only individual, but also collective!
These formats therefore require expertise (for the content), teaching skills (for sharing) and facilitation skills (for running the practical phases). And that is exactly what we had the pleasure of providing, to generate lasting synergies.
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