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Like most parents, I fought with my sixteen year old daughter
about the limits of the newfound freedom that came with her
driver's license. Why did she have to be home by ten even
on a weekend? Why couldn't she drive to a party twenty miles
away? Why was I so mean? She promised she would never drink
and drive. Why didn't I trust her?
My daughter and I get along rather well but this dispute
keeps coming up. This is somewhat surprising since she is
now in her thirties. She would never have done that to a child
and she won't do that to her child. We'll see, I say. No.
This was the worst thing I ever did to her as a child. She
says back. (I can't help but think that this is actually a
nice thing to hear her say - but that's me.)
Last week something interesting happened. I became a grandfather.
I couldn't resist. As she sat there feeding little Milo I
gently inquired: Do you think he can stay out until 3 AM when
he gets his driver's license?
No was the simple answer.
Funny how that worked out.
And what does this tell us about learning?
Obviously my daughter learned something within the first
few days of the birth of her son. What did she learn? She
learned about herself. She learned how it felt to have a child.
And, she learned how she felt about potential dangers to that
child. (This latter epiphany came from some of the initial
worries and trips back and forth to the hospital that are
routine for many newborns but were hardly routine in her life.)
In short she learned how she might feel if something were
to happen to her son and she can extrapolate sixteen years
forward. Of course, as all parents know, she ain't seen nothin
yet.
What kind of learning is this?
It is the learning that comes from powerful emotions. It
is also the kind of learning that causes irrevocable change.
You would not expect my daughter to change her point of view
any time soon. She has undergone a profound experience that
has caused deep emotions which in turn cause irrevocable change.
If only you could harness this kind of learning in corporate
training. If only some emotional experience could cause irrevocable
change in employees.
Hmmm…
Why not create powerful emotional experiences in your trainees?
Or, to put this another way: how can you expect trainees
to really learn something, I mean really know it in their
hearts, if they haven't had a powerful emotional experience?
What would such experiences look like you ask?
Before we answer that we must think about the domains in
which such experiences might be possible. For example, they
would not be possible in basic orientation to the company's
policies and procedures. They would not be possible in training
in the use of Excel. They would not be possible when teaching
people how to prepare a business plan.
Why not?
For the same reason that it was not possible to tell my daughter
why my policies were what they were when she was sixteen.
You gotta feel it and you aren't gonna feel all that much
about Excel.
So, besides babies, what do we feel powerfully about?
Not policies that's for sure. Not methods for preparing a
report either.
People feel powerfully about human things. About how others
perceive them, for example. About their own sense of self
worth.
Or to put this another way, what aspects of business are
like having a new baby around?
The training that you do that involves people, management
training and sales training for example, is a candidate for
what I will call powerful-emotion simulation training (PEST.)
How does it feel to lose a key client and cause the company
to head towards bankruptcy? Bad? Really bad? So terrible it
makes your stomach hurt for days? Do you think you might remember
an experience like that? Do you think you might think about
what happened and work to never see anything like it happen
again?
The issue in simulations is to be a PEST creator. You must
knock your trainees for a loop when they make a mistake in
a way that causes them never to make that mistake again. Now
obviously, you can't do that all the time. You need to do
it when it matters and make it feel real. Also obviously,
this is not something you do light-heartedly (or when there
might be a law suit.)
So what if you want to be a PEST? What do you do?
You create baby-worrying equivalent experiences. What in
business life feels like worrying about a child? Worrying
about whether others like you perhaps, or think you are competent?
Worrying about how your career will work out? Worrying about
if you are infective or if you can improve on things you know
you are bad at? Actually people worry about a lot of things
besides their own children with great passion. You can be
pretty upset if you think your business life is simply not
going to work out. And, if you do think that and found there
was something you could do about it, you might just work real
hard at doing it.
For years in speeches I have pointed out (by giving a test)
that people remember nothing of the long winded safety announcements
at the beginning of every airplane trip. I suggest that if
the airlines wanted you to remember what to do in the case
of a crash they would have a simulated crash before every
flight. Of course they don't do this. They also don't really
care all that much.
But, you do.
You need to create situations where people get fired, or
lose a client, or get physically attacked by someone they
have wronged, or get brow beaten by someone who thinks they
screwed up, or actually feel they might die. How do you do
this? Be a PEST. Create simulations, live or on a computer,
that feel so real they really frighten people.
Crazy?
Maybe.
But people don't forget really frightening experiences and
not forgetting is the same as learning. We don't forget what
we deeply feel.
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