Stop wasting your professional development budget
Learning new things is cool. It's fun, it's engaging, it's a break from the day to day work, it's an opportunity for us to do better, to bring new knowledge back to our teams, and spread the ideas around. But we're seeing a depressing trend of professional development budgets going unspent.
So many lost opportunities here, both for the individual and the organisation! It doesn't have to be this way.
Why people don't take up training
Common refrains - or excuses - to not engage with external learning opportunities have several variants. Perhaps you've heard, or used, some of them!
- “There's nothing out there that's worth my time.”
- “It's faster to learn a technical skill from blog posts/a book/my network of colleagues.”
- “I get more out of the ‘hallway track' at conferences.”
- “Conferences are now online and there is no hallway track.”
- “Conferences are now online but as an Aussie, I'm not getting up at 1am to sit through some webinars.”
- “My budget got axed in the pandemic and now I can't afford the ‘good' stuff.”
- “It's interesting at the time, but the stuff is forgotten by the time I'm back at work.”
- “My team weren't getting much out of it, so now we let them use their PD budget on any kind of learning: it doesn't have to be work-related.”
- “My team weren't using it: we're treating it like a perk and letting them cash it in for extra leave.”
- “I don't get anything out of training or conferences. I find I know as much or more than the presenter.”
Sometimes individuals believe they already possess all the knowledge required for success. This viewpoint prevents them from appreciating the opportunity education provides, and hinders their ability to grow. Bad experiences with training that were light on content, or poorly delivered, can also lead to dismissing all training as low value.
And so, to find training that is going to be worth the time, money, and effort, first we need to understand what good education looks like.
The science of effective learning
Understanding how humans learn is a highly studied field. Biologists, cognitive psychologists and neuroscientists are just some of the disciplines who have researched what it takes to embed new knowledge into our squishy brains. Whether we're learning to walk, learning to cook, learning to code, how to git, how to karate, how to parent, how to drive, even how to balance work with life (such as with one of our workshops), there's some fundamentals that universally apply.
We need active engagement from not just the learner, and not just the expert delivering the information, but also the learner's manager. And we need this engagement across all three phases in order to convert information into intuitive application of the new skill.
- Preparing
- Ingesting
- Internalising
Currently there's a lot of thought going into just that second phase: what is the content and how the learner receives it. By leaving out the other phases and participation of the other people, it's no wonder that our current approach to growth isn't working!
How do we get better at getting better?
Preparing
For any formally delivered training to be successful, there's work to be done beforehand, for all three participants.
Managers: Create and champion a culture that values learning and growth. Understand where the person wants to grow to and identify any skill gaps the organisation needs them to close.
Learners: Clear your schedule, and make preparations, so that there's no distractions during the training. This could be as simple as doing the required pre-reading, or as complicated as handing off personal carer responsibilities.
Provider: Give clear information on learning outcomes (the definition of success), instructions on pre-requisites are given with sufficient time in advance.
Ingesting
Learning is a brain intensive task! To give the new information the best chance of being absorbed, certain things need to happen.
Managers: Protect the learner's attention by ensuring any interruptions to training are only in the most dire of emergencies. Putting in place redundancies is good practice at any time, as it makes space for the team to take effective time off for holidays or training, as well as increasing organisational resiliency by removing single points of failure.
Learners: Actively engage with an open mind, and a growth mindset. Be prepared to feel uncomfortable: you probably aren't used to being unsure of what you're doing. Ask plenty of questions! Regularly reflect on what you've learned, and what it means to you and your normal practices.
Provider: Deliver the information effectively, ideally including validation that learners have understood and questions have been resolved.
Internalising
Managers: Your time to shine is now! Help the learner to reflect and digest and identify opportunities to make use of these new skills. Support the learner to practice (including to fail safely), as well as circulate the new ideas and information with the wider team.
Learners: Review what you've learned. Put it into practice. Get the support you need to try new things.
Provider: Provide follow-up with recommended activities to support consolidation, or offers of additional training/consultation to build on what's just been completed.
Use it or lose it!
The most important part of training comes after the formal learning ceases. But it is rare for this internalising phase to take place. I believe the largest gap is the support from the manager to the learner after the training/conference/webinar/book has been completed.
If you want to get the most out of the new knowledge, managers must make time to review with their team member what has been learned, where they can apply it in their work, build a plan to use some or all of the new ideas, and then provide safety for failure.
It's hard to perfectly implement something new on the first try. This is why the software engineering world has embraced the incremental improvement that agile provides us. That feedback loop lets us learn and course correct as we go, to take account for our unique context and our particular environment.
People need a chance to practice their new knowledge, to fail and learn and try again. Managers need to provide opportunities and protect the time and space for this practice. They need to provide the psychological safety that supports learning by doing, including the parts that don't go to plan.
Model what you preach
Managers, you deserve to use your PD budget too! You also need space to try and fail and learn and grow. Your team won't believe in the culture of growth if you're not an active participant.
Here at Blackmill
I'm really proud of our services at Blackmill and we work hard to ensure that everyone who engages with us is supported to make the most of what we have to offer.
Workshops
- Every attendee is contacted in advance of the workshop so we understand each individual's context and goals. This means we can tailor the content and delivery for what the attendee needs.
- A safe space to practice. We intentionally limit the number of attendees, so that we can support everyone to try out what they've learned and learn by doing. (We could pack heaps of people into a workshop — we'd make a lot more money! — but we offer what we believe gives the best outcome).
- Every day of our workshop we offer time for individual reflections and feedback so that everyone can cement what they learned, and identify any gaps that we then aim to fill on the next day of training.
Coaching
- We aren't just a trusted partner to help you solve your immediate problems (though this is part of it!), but we also help you identify your strengths and build out your resources, tools, processes, and mindset so you can overcome future challenges on your own.
- We offer unlimited asynchronous access, so you don't have to wait until the next session if you have a question or want some feedback or just have a great idea.
- Our sessions (almost) always include accountability. We want to hear how you're going with the changes you were going to try. We are here to help you adapt based on how that went.
Enough of my biased enthusiasm! If you'd like to know more about the science of learning, you can be inspired by Broad and Newstrom's treatise from 1992 “Transfer of training”, or hit up your teacher friend and ask them about evidence based pedagogy.
What's the best and/or worst professional development you've ever had? We'd love to hear your stories!