As part of our commitment to bringing the concept of Learning Power to businesses, public and third sector adult learning groups, we worked in partnership with NHS Dumfries and Galloway to offer a two-day programme for L+D professionals on July 13 and 14 2011.

Day 1 was an introduction to ELLI and the 7 Dimensions of Learning and was attended by seven participants, from within the NHS, the Scottish Police and Brathay: organisations with a commitment to developing people through the provision of high quality learning.

Day 2 was an optional ‘ELLI Champions’ training day, designed to ensure that those who wish to use the profiling tool within their own programmes have achieved the required level of understanding and competence to represent and administer the tool correctly and in line with the intentions of ViTaL Partnerships, who retain the ownership of the profile and associated research material.

As we have experienced in previous workshops, there was a very positive response from all the participants about the potential value of ELLI across a broad range of applications: in personal coaching and development, in career coaching and in performance management and goal setting.

Participants felt strongly that the ELLI profile is, as it has always been described, of particular value when it forms part of a supportive yet challenging coaching or mentoring relationship. Particularly during Day 2 there was a focus on the principles of effective coaching and the need to use the profile as a trigger for high quality developmental conversations with individual learners.

However, there was also strong agreement that simply understanding the 7 Dimensions, and their implications for the design and delivery of learning experiences, was of enormous value to those professionals who are responsible for the selection or creation of learning activities, programmes and events, as well as the ‘curriculum’ around formal training inputs and mandatory training.

Ann introduced a number of short, example activities on Day 1 to illustrate how, once a need to develop one or more dimensions had been identified, experiential learning methodology can support skills development. Specific example of this included short exercises in connecting apparently random images (Meaning Making), a group puzzle that could only be solved by generating multiple questions (Critical Curiosity) and the use of a visual mapping tool to review past learning and plan for the future (Strategic Awareness).

On Day 2, participants rehearsed their own coaching skills, observing each other and offering and receiving feedback. This process helped them to explore the ‘layers’ that ELLI unlocks: learners’ thoughts and feelings about learning in general, themselves as learners, their motivation and learning needs. Following this, they began to explore how and where ELLI could be integrated into their own work. Examples included an organisational induction process (with recommendations about how to make this much more learner-centred and participative), working with operational managers to help to ensure that appraisal and performance management discussions were more focused on learning and the value of integrating the Learning Power principles into Action Learning sets.

Whilst we recognise that there is still work to do in creating materials and ’seamless’ access to ELLI profiles, the programme re-confirmed RSVP Design’s belief that this is a simple and powerful model that should become core knowledge for every L+D professional.

Specific thanks go to Sandie Wilkie and Louise Hughes of NHS Dumfries and Galloway for their support in setting up the programme and providing the venue and logistical arrangements.

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I am delighted to announce that Interel Inc. from San Francisco and RSVP Design Ltd. are forming a new partnership that will see their respective product portfolios merge and both organisations work together to continue to support customers around the world with the most effective activity-based learning tools and learning design support. Although RSVP Design and Interel have worked together informally for several years this is a new development in formally providing all shipping and logistical support for both sets of products. Interel in the US will support all US customers and RSVP Design in the UK will support all non-US customers – both sets of products will be available for purchase from either location.

Key product designers Boyd Watkins, Geoff Cox and Ann Alder have worked together before but this announcement signals an intention to provide a truly global and probably unparalleled level of experience in designing effective learning environments.

You can download the official press release here: RSVP Design & Interel Press Release

Please visit the RSVP Design online store to see the additional Interel experiential learning devices now added. Larger scale devices like Pyramid, Network and Mosaic provide some fantastic new tools for large group meetings and for use in outdoor environments.

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I read the recent Chartered Management Institute Review which stated some interesting and disturbing statistics for UK managers:

CMI recently questioned UK managers to find out which aspects of management they thought they were best at. Of the 2,158 managers polled, almost half (44 per cent) said they excelled at managing people. Twenty-one per cent were target-busters, 19 per cent believed they were strongest at managing themselves and just 14 per cent felt they were born to lead.

CMI has since put those perceptions to the test by inviting UK workers to use a specially-developed self-diagnostic tool to work out where their strengths and weaknesses lie. The results strongly contradict managers’ perceptions, revealing that, in practice, UK managers are best at getting results (41 per cent) and strong leadership (37 per cent). Just 14 per cent of the 6,056 people who used the tool excelled at people management and a paltry eight per cent proved to be best at managing themselves.

See http://www.hrreview.co.uk/articles/hrreview-articles/hr-strategy-practice/half-of-managers-misjudge-their-workplace-performance/10058

I wondered when I read that where do:

1. Most managers go to find out more about their own learning strengths/preferences and personality/thinking preferences? As little of this is taught to most undergraduates where else can ‘ managers’ get this insight, except through their organisation’s L&D team-building or other activities? Should this be mandatory on all undergraduate courses?

and

2. Managers (new or experienced) go to ‘practise’ their management skills? So much of what we see in corporate/organisational L&D is about presenting theories, models, competency frameworks, performance monitoring etc and less about offering these delegates the chance to practise new skills or behaviours. Group learning through experiential activities is a great way to offer people a non-contentious and safe ‘practice field’ for a wide rnage of management and ’soft skills’ rehearsal – but how do we get employers to provide more of it?

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I’ve been reading and watching a lot of interesting stuff recently. For example there is a wonderful piece of an animated, annotated presentation from Dan Pink on motivation here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc

There’s also a really interesting new leadership study from IBM here: http://www-935.ibm.com/services/us/ceo/ceostudy2010/index.html

However while both give some examples of why what we’ve previously thought about motivation and leadership might be wrong, and tell us what we ought to be doing, neither give the L&D community much insight into HOW we help people get there. As an engineer by training I’m more interested in how to apply theories than the basic research of how they came to be ‘agreed’. While I reckon that some great individuals will be able to demonstrate the behaviours and skills described as ‘ideal’ ,  I also reckon that most of us need to learn new skills, unlearn old behaviours, and practise to get better. So how do we do that? What practise fields do people use to make sure these theories and concepts move from just being an understanding at an intellectual level to a level where they they are understood by heart as well as head, and demonstrably improve performance?

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One of the key things I look for when I’m delivering learning events is whether the people around me appear to be having fun. It’s the same with designing new learning environments. Part of my “Is this good design?” checklist is whether it offers both facilitator and learner the opportunity to enjoy the learning process.

I don’t know where this “fun’s important” approach came from but perhaps it’s a reaction to the long, mind-numbingly boring classroom hours that characterise much of my own education. I never wanted a repeat of those experiences so why should I inflict them on anybody else? Wherever it came from, I can’t remember a time when “ People learn best when they’re having fun” wasn’t a part of my professional vocabulary.

Today I was browsing the subject of the Personalisation of Learning when I came across a fascinating chapter by Manfred Spitzer. The chapter is part of the OECD book Personalising Education (2006) and is called Brain Research and Learning Over the Life Cycle. As the title suggests the subject area is what we know about the function of the brain and how this should translate into educational practice aimed at different age groups.

There’s a lot of good stuff in this chapter, but the real “Eureka!” moment for me came when I read the part that deals with the way we attach emotions to what we learn, and how this affects our ability to remember it (always a pretty important feature of any learning design!).

In short, when something is learned in an environment that allows us to attach positive emotions to it, we store the memory in one part of our brain, the hippocampus: where the associated emotion is negative we store the memory in a different part of the brain, the amygdala. The learning in our hippocampus then transfers over time to the brain cortex where long-term memory happens. Conversely the amygdala is the part of our brain where fast learning and future avoidance of unpleasant events is controlled – learning what not to do. Thus our reaction to the associated memory is not about creatively applying it to our future lives – it’s about never getting into the situation of ever having to apply it!

Not at all what we want as learning designers.

So it seems that, intuitively, I was right all along – people do learn best when they are having fun: and I’d say that that’s a pretty big message for anyone setting out to design any kind of learning experience.

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We regularly run in-house and open sessions where trainers can come along to see how our learning tools work and consider how they might use or integrate these kinds of tools in to their development programmes.

Here are some confirmed dates for these programmes:

• London (Wallacespace) June 3rd 2010
• London (Wallacespace) July 8th 2010
• London (Wallacespace) August 19th 2010

To obtain a booking form please email kim@rsvpdesign.co.uk or call +44 141 561 0387

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Most of you are probably familiar with the concept of right-brain and left-brain thinking. You know the basis – left brain logical and mathematical, right brain imaginative and expressive. However, you might not be aware of the ‘Whole Brain’ model developed by Ned Herrmann which extends this into a really simple but valuable way of ‘thinking about thinking’.

The HBDI (Herrmann Brain Dominance Inventory) shows how we use 4 different types of thinking in our everyday lives in order to deal with different situations and relationships. Very briefly, the HBDI breaks our thinking down into 4 areas which could be summarised as analytical/logical, organisational/administrative, inter-personal/expressive and imaginative/holistic. Each of us uses all of these but, as with most of our skills and competences, we prefer, trust and rely upon some more than others.

Knowing something of our own preferences enables us to play to our stengths and be aware of things that we might miss when we think through a problem or seek to take advantage of an opportunity. Knowing something of the preferences of others around us helps us to understand their priorities, avoid potential conflicts and work with them in ways that are most likely to produce positive ans satisfying results.

The HBDI model can give great insights not only into individual thinking and behaviour but also into how teams work. Within the core RSVP Design team of four, we have four significantly different profiles. Which is just as well, because if we were all the same the business would be destined to fail. Geoff’s profile suggests that he is ‘off-the scale’ in the types of thinking that allow him to be creative, see possibilities, make unusual connections and find alternative solutions to old problems. That’s great for our Design Director, but it is just as well we have Graham to apply logical, rational, critical thinking to balance Geoff’s innovative ideas. Kim manages our sales office so we are glad she has a high level of structured, organisational thinking – we need someone to control and pay attention to details. And my profile, pretty well balanced between the 4 areas, allows me to provide a ‘translation service’ and explain Geoff and Graham to each other!

HBDI gives us some great insights into our learning design. By taking a ‘walk’ around the four thinking styles we can check that our experiences will appeal to diverse learners and that our processes are complete and balanced. Conscious decisions, like selecting activities that will appeal to different types of thinking, and asking questions that come from each of the thinking preferences, mean that we present and review experiences from very different perspectives.

We find the HBDI model much more user-friendly and immediately useful than other popular profiles such as MBTI or DISC. We’re surprised that not many people know it. We think you should!

You can find out more about Ned Herrmann’s work on www.hbdi.com

We’re also planning a series of half-day, introductory ‘Whole Brain Thinking’ workshops and further full-day workshops for those who would like to apply the model to their training and learning design – ‘Whole Brain Training’. If you are interested in finding out more, drop us a line and we’ll help you to get as excited as we are about this integrated thinking model.

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At RSVP Design we are committed to providing relevant, engaging, challenging learning experiences that will change behaviour and provide measurable benefits to individual learners and their organisations.

One of our clients, Senn Delaney, a major culture change consultancy, has commissioned and published research recently that suggests that a key factor in  the creation of a ‘thriving’ culture in which individuals and organisations succeed is the demonstration of a ‘learning mindset’. The correlation between having this learning mindset and thriving, even when times are hard, is so strong that work is being done to develop this positive ‘embracing’ of  learning as an active part of executive education.

One of our goals at RSVP Design is to encourage a desire to learn by creating challenging, engaging and lively ‘learning environments’ in which people collaborate, share experience, problem-solve and plan how to apply their learning to get valuable personal and organisational benefits. It’s always interesting to see how, as adults, some of us have come to associate the learning process with discomfort, failure and dis-satisfaction. What happens to the inherent ability of children to delight in learning, seek out new experience and accept that failure is part of the learning process?

I believe that much of our formal education, whilst being highly successful at teaching ‘knowledge’, actually diminishes many of the capabilities that we are born with that allow us to be great learners. It seems I’m not alone in this belief. A research project at the University of Bristol funded by the Lifelong Learning Foundation and  jointly owned by the University and the Foundation has developed EllI – the Effective Lifelong Learning Inventory. This identified 7 key factors in making us effective learners. The research project gathered data on nearly 2000 learners from the age of 7 through to adult learners. What was clear from this data was that over time, and through the course of formal schooling students actually become weaker on ALL learning dimensions, but especially creativity. At the same time they actually become MORE dependent and fragile as learners.

I wonder whether the same is true of corporate learning? I’d love to hear what you are doing to ensure that your organisation helps to create a ‘learning mindset’ and avoids the type of formal education that disables us as learners and limits our ability to play, enjoy and create as part of our development process.

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Welcome to RSVP Design’s website and online shop. We are designers, authors and facilitators of a wide range of activity based learning tools, resources and programmes.

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