What Your L&D Team Does Not Tell You? What Is Easy (To Learn) & What Is Hard?
Understanding the 4 categories of skills will speed up your learning.
L&D stands for Learning & Development, the team in companies responsible for conducting training and courses.
In my 2-decade career at a bank, I recall attending a lot of training.
Classroom, Offsite, Single-day, Multi-day, at Hotels, Resorts, etc.
In most cases, I recall the location, the colleagues, the travel, and even the people who addressed us.
But if you ask me — what exactly I learned in those, what the purpose was, and what I gained — I wouldn’t be sure.
This sentiment is echoed by Laszlo Bock, Google’s former Head of People Operations.
In his book Work Rules!, Bock writes,
“The average employee (in the USA) received thirty-one hours of training over the year, which works out to more than thirty minutes per week. Most of that money and time is wasted. ..
If I look at my years in large and small professional environments, I’d be hard pressed to point to anything I do differently today as a result of training.”
Most of us will agree with Bock.
Some years back, though, I had an insight that has forever changed how I view any training or learning.
It has helped me to derive the most from any training.
Knowing it will not only help you personally but also help you as a manager to give better feedback, as I found.
Let us start.
What we learn and how we learn is a complex topic.
Here, I want to touch an aspect that has given me a holistic view of the entire eco-system around learning.
The Principle
What we learn can be classified into just 4 areas :
Skill, Knowledge, EQ, and Personality.
I share an image below that illustrates it.
Yes, just 4 areas!
Think of anything you have learned in the last couple of years, and you will be able to bucket it in the above.
Some Examples.
Driving a Car
Learning PowerPoint
Learning to Code
Learning ChatGPT …
The above are examples of Skill.
Skill is any activity that requires practice to gain proficiency.
Ease of Learning: Easy (1/4)
Doing a Course.
Doing CA, MBA, etc.
Learning ‘How to Interview?’
Learning ‘How to give Feedback?’
The above are examples of Knowledge.
Knowledge can be factual or experiential.
Ease of Learning: Medium (2/4)
Most things that we learn are a combination of Skill and Knowledge.
How to Manage Conflicts better?
How to build better Relationships with your Boss and Peers?
How to manage Stress?
How to cultivate Resilience and Positivity? …
These are examples of Emotional Intelligence (EQ) Competencies.
EQ is dealing with the emotions of self and others.
The 2-hour training on ‘Conflict Management’ — or reading a book on the subject - will only tell you the STEPS.
It can take a month or a better part of a year for you to get better at it. That, too, is if one is internally motivated — consistently practicing, reflecting, and noting before one can get better at it.
Why is improving your Emotional Intelligence (EQ) hard?
As per an HBR article on EQ,
“Our ability to identify and manage our own and others’ emotions is fairly stable over time, influenced by our early childhood experiences and even genetics.
That does not mean we cannot change it, but, realistically, long-term improvements will require a great deal of dedication and guidance.”
Ease of Learning: Hard (3/4)
Agreeable, Analytical, Argumentative, Conscientious, Cooperative, Competitive, Cynical, Diligent, Disagreeable, Extroversion, Introversion, Optimist, Pessimist …
Likewise — Attitude, Habits, Mindset.
These are Personality Traits.
Personality Traits are our naturally recurring patterns of thought, feeling, or behavior.
There is a general consensus that our Personality traits are fairly fixed.
Why is changing our Personality Traits so hard?
Our personality is a combination of what we are born with (our genes) and what we go through in the first 15-odd years of our life.
The rest of our life, the pace and pressure therein, means we continue to rely on these specific traits to bail us out in every situation. This, in turn, leads to our traits getting more and more ingrained in our psyche. This is also the reason why acquiring new traits is hard.
In the book Emotional Intelligence 2.0, authors Travis Bradberry and Jean Greaves write,
“Personality is the stable style that defines each of us. Your personality is a result of your preferences, such as your inclination to introversion or extroversion. … Personality traits appear early in life, and they don’t go away.”
Ease of Learning: Very Hard (4/4)
What does the above mean for the Learning & Development team / Training?
- Avoid terming everything as ‘Skill’. It gives the wrong impression that all that is required is — putting in a couple of hours (or days) to master something.
- Clarify where the training falls into — Skill, Knowledge, EQ, or Personality.
- In the case of EQ competency - please mention, “The training will help you to become aware of the STEPS of X. Thereafter, you will need to make the effort to get better at it. Some ways you can practice X regularly are …” Give them something to note and evaluate their progress daily.
- In the case of a Personality trait — Don’t try to change them. Instead, help the employees become aware of their personality traits. There are good psychometric tests like Gallup StrengthsFinder, Hogan Assessments, etc. that will help employees to understand themselves better and work accordingly.
What does the above mean for Managers?
- Evaluate where your feedback falls into — Skill, Knowledge, EQ, or a Personality Trait.
- In the case of Skill and Knowledge — you can help them learn on the job, or send to a training, as the case may be.
- In the case of EQ Competency or a Personality Trait — rein in your expectation of the change you seek in the employee.
- Most of the feedback that a manager gives — “You need to Delegate more,” “You need to be Diligent,” or “You need to develop Leadership Skills” — are in the nature of an EQ Competency or a Personality Trait.
- If a person is not delegating, or not diligent, or lacks leadership skills or public speaking — there is a reason. Address the reason.
- The reason could be — the person is not aware of how it is affecting their work or career, does not have a strong desire to change, does not know how to go about imbibing it, or doesn’t align with their personality traits.
- Some things like — how to delegate more — might come easily for some. But if a person is not delegating well despite your repeated feedback, it is likely that the act is interfering with their — need for perfection, need to be in control, etc.
- In that case, have a good feedback meeting with them like an Executive Coach. Make them aware of the issue and its effects. Your talk will likely lead to insight that will help them to come up with an answer on their own.
- Behavior change is easy once our perception of a thing changes. Help the employee to get an insight that leads to a shift in perception. (In this article, I share how Executive Coaching helped me to get better at decision making.)
- If required, only then send them for training.
Conclusion
The above 4 skill classifications — like a Google Map — give a good view of the entire landscape of learning and training.
It will help you to better evaluate the feedback that you receive, like it did for me.
I find it easier to decide — how relevant it is - whether I should ignore the feedback, work on it and the efforts it will require, or, better still, how I can create a supporting structure to address the feedback with the least effort.
Better still, the 4 classifications will help you to understand people in general.
Frequently, what we see is people exhibiting their Personality traits and EQ competencies.
They will not change, at least not based on our 1-line feedback.
How can you work better with what they already are? That is a good way to go about interacting with them.
While it might seem defeatist, it will actually demonstrate higher emotional intelligence and social awareness on your part.
P.S.
This article is based on a point made in the book First, Break All the Rules: What the World’s Greatest Managers Do Differently (1999), authored by Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman. According to the authors, any job done with excellence requires a combination of skill, knowledge, and (related) talents or personality traits.
Whether you’re an Individual Contributor or Manager, overcome the 28 most common workplace challenges with my eBook, 28 Management Tips.
