Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die is an eye-opening book about how to communicate ideas, which is an important part of leadership.
I recently read an interesting section of it that I thought had to do with training. Three groups of college students who were experiencing a problem were given different sets of instruction.
The control group was given some general instructions on how to deal with their problem and sent home.
The second group (the event stimulation group) were kept in the lab and asked to mentally review how the problem had unfolded, to go over the beginning of the problem, to go over the first incident in detail, to go over the incidents as they occurred. To visualize the actions they took, remember what was said and done, the environment, etc. They were to retrace their steps. They focused on causation.
The third group (the outcome simulation group) was instructed to mentally stimulate a positive outcome. To picture the relief and satisfaction from dealing with the problem. To picture the confidence they would feel by successfully dealing with the problem.
Who do you think did the best? Why?
Not sure if there is a right or wrong answer but there is probably a quicker positive result from one of them. I tend to embrace the third group’s approach when dealing with the staff as a whole and focus on the second group’s approach in smaller groups usually comprised of our managers and key associates.
It is important to identify the cause of issues so they can be corrected and eliminated/minimized in the future. This benefits the guest and potentially the staff’s confidence that they can get things right a second time around. Unfortunately, it often takes a more skilled set of individuals to drill down to the root causes and focus on the improvement of processes.
The positive reponse focus of the third group allows the staff to envision how the encounter should go and prepare or practice for when they face a specific challenge. I feel it is also much easier to communicate the “roses and sunshine” outcomes to a staff consisting of different experience levels. Everyone understands what it feels like to do a good job and all skill levels can relate to this type of training/communication. This is similar to the role play discussions in department meetings.
Just my thought…right or wrong I look forward to other folk’s viewpoint.
The event stimulation group did better in every way. They were the people who visualized how the events unfolded. Simulating how the event unfolded is more helpful that simulating future outcomes. They were more likely to have taken specific actions to solve their problems. Thet were more likely to have sought advice and support. They were more likely to report that they had grown.
That’s kind of counterintuitive to the current run of gurus that urge people to visualize success.
Why does it work? We can’t imagine events without evoking modules of brain that are used for real physical activity. Thinking about throwing a ball stimulates the very same parts of the brain that are stimulated by the actual activity.
This could play an important role in how we train. Mentally stimulating an event helps plan, anticipate and avoid mistakes. It can also help build skills. Sitting still imagining the performance of a task successful from start to finish improves performance significantly. It is two thirds as good as actually physically practicing the activity.