How to actually help people learn new skills
Summary: most people spend time generating interest in a skill rather than actually mastering it. To do so you need to reflect with your peers, learn by doing and teach others.
As we all know by now, digital transformation is a widely used, yet rarely understood term. For us and an increasing number of others, it is about people over processes and tools — even though they are important. If you start by looking at the individuals that make up your organisation, you’ll have longer lasting and more radical change — although it might take a little longer.
Developing the capabilities of your people is difficult. It can take a long time just to get them to buy into the need, let alone pick up the skills required. If you’re embarking on this type of work, it’s worth looking at a 1970s model of learning — The Four States of Competence by Noel Burch, of Gordon Training International.
The Four States of Competence
Self awareness to start moving
When it comes to a particular skill we all start off by not having any idea of what we don’t know. This is often accompanied with a thought of ‘how hard can it be?’ At this stage we haven’t learnt enough about the topic to understand its full range and depth.
If we are to start moving to the next stage, we need a trigger to help us see the opportunity we are yet to realise. This can come from instruction of a manager or the experiences of a peer. It may happen because we have been thrown into the deep end of a project and are quickly surrounded by people who know more than we do.
Whatever the trigger, you need a level of self understanding and the humility to accept incompetence to ever move out of this box.
Conscious Incompetence to Conscious Competence is where most people focus
Running a training session around a particular skill, for people who have actively signed up for it is where most activity takes place.
The attendees are individuals who have identified a gap in their skills and want to fill it. The trainer is usually someone who has been charged with upskilling the rest of the organisation on a topic like email broadcasts.
Through a well thought through and delivered training sessions or courses, skills can be genuinely be transferred from one individual to another. You need a practical element combined with theory but it can and does happen.
The problem is retaining that knowledge and progressing
The issue we see more often than most, is how to help people retain that knowledge if they are not practicing it day in day out.
Email broadcasts are a classic example. A digital team may be sending dozens of these out a day. However a marketing or product team might only do this once or twice a quarter. As such, by the time they come to use their skill, they have lost confidence and knowledge of it.
In addition, if people are rarely practicing this type of skill, they will never progress to mastery of it — ie Unconscious Competence.
How to develop genuine mastery in a skill
The step from 3 to 4 is often a long, hard road. Organisations struggle to deal with this type of concept and want change delivered right away — usually through a series of easily billable workshops. However, if you want to try and facilitate and possibly accelerate this process, these are a few tools to use.
1. Reflect with your peers
By talking about a skill with people you trust, you will develop your and their understanding. Often known as ‘Action Learning groups’, these sessions should focus on recent experiences, what people have tried that has worked and what they’ve attempted which has failed.
At the end of each session, capture what has been discussed and use as the basis of the next discussion.
2. Learn by doing
Many digital skills can only be developed through practice — and you might get this opportunity rarely. For example, understanding user needs and contexts in order to develop content, navigation and products is a core tenant of modern practice. This is best developed through a website project — something people only do once every few years.
As such, never forget to include upskilling the organisation in any digital project aims or objectives.
3. Train others
Once an individual has reached a state of ‘conscious capability’ you can get them to help others do the same. This in turn improves their own confidence in the skill-set and moves them towards ‘unconscious capability’.
When you’ve explained something a dozen times to others, you’ll have helped yourself work through all the little niggly bits that you didn’t quite get the first time round.
