Team Building Article

Learning Then Doing or Learning by Doing
by Patrick Handley, Ph.D.

Was Aristotle right over 2300 years ago when he said,
"What we have to learn to do, we learn by doing."

How does this apply to team training?
The answer lies in our beliefs about how we help people become skilled team leaders and effective team members. It influences how we design learning sessions, deliver training, coach individuals, and ultimately, how we develop our organization's learning culture. At some point it all boils down to the ratio of classroom education vs. skill practice that we utilize to help people learn.

How do people learn technical skills?
It has generally been accepted that "technical" skills are best acquired through a “learning by doing.” This involves practice, coaching, and feedback. To learn to ride a bicycle the child must get on and start peddling. To learn a sport, the athlete must get on the playing court. To drive a truck, the student driver has to get behind the wheel. Yes, good coaching and feedback speeds the learning along but, it’s done as the learner takes action.

So what’s new about this?
That’s the point. This isn’t new, through the ages apprenticeship programs where students work under skilled masters and “learn by doing” has been the accepted and most successful way of teaching new skills. One didn’t become a stone carver without spending years as an a apprentice. This worked for centuries, if not millenniums, before modern day educational systems came along.

What is our current learning model?
Unfortunately with mass education “learning by doing” has taken a back seat to “learning by sitting and listening.” And sadly, corporate training is mirroring a model (classroom lecture) that education has proven just doesn’t work well. Oh sure, highly motivated, patient, academic oriented individuals can master it, but most students just endure it and escape the first chance they get.  Worse yet, many action-oriented, restless individuals just drop out either by leaving the scene or sitting there but mentally leaving – just spacing out. Most people just aren’t learning!

But people are learning new skills aren’t they?
Thankfully, the models for technical training are still fairly heavily based on skill practice, they could be better, but basically they are working. However, in the people skills area, the training model has gone astray and is producing terrible results.

What is wrong with the people skills training?
In leadership and team training, the ratio of classroom hours to skill practice is so out of balance (heavy on the classroom side) that it has little real world effect. Thoughts, ideas, models, shoulds and shouldn’ts are poured into peoples heads via flipcharts and slide show lectures, but in the end, little behavior actually changes. That’s one reason organizations are so frustrated with the small return from traditional leadership and team training. The classroom model just doesn’t work well in developing what are really high level skills. Classroom training doesn’t lead to executable leadership skills.

SO WHAT are THE REAL Question that need to be asked?
I would ask any trainer to reflect on these questions: 1) As an human resource professional, do you believe that teaming skills (such things as collaboration, negotiating team rules, working together to define roles, making use of personality strengths, solving problems, etc.) can be learned by getting more knowledge or need to be learned through behavioral skill development?  2) Can these skills be learned best through classroom instruction or on-the-job skill practice and coaching?  This ultimately leads to the bottom line question? “Does more information need to go in the head or does more action and practice need take place.”

What is currently taking place in the training field?
The people skills needed for teamwork are typically taught with a very heavy (if not exclusive) emphasis on classroom instruction, reading, note taking, and video viewing. Learners are considered “finished” when they complete a seminar and go back to their work settings. Unfortunately they usually receive no specific tools to help them, little follow-up coaching, and seldom any meaningful on-the-job feedback (by that I mean feedback that arrives timely and in a form that helps them improve their performance before they are evaluated on it). Oh sure, leaders get lots of other feedback, complaining from team members, criticism from higher up leaders, nerve racking performance appraisals that come to late and all that. That’s not what I’m referring to.

But ISN’T a lot of leadership training being conducted?
Yes, but much of this only enlarges the problem. The original need is usually to improve team performance. So companies send leaders off to leadership training. Usually, only the team leaders (who are actually only one small part of the problem) are given the classroom training. The team members receive nothing except learning that they can do fine without their team leader around for a week. At the end of the session, these leaders end up with only “head knowledge” and with the added challenge of going back to the work site and trying to teach their fellow team members how to be good team members. This just doesn’t work. Learning information and coaching others aren’t the same skill sets and the leader isn’t prepared for the resistance that is usually encountered. This isn’t a task which most team leaders, particularly new ones, want. So what happens, the try a little something, get hit with a big dose of resistance, and soon go back to business as usual, leading through authority or intimidation.

So the leaders fail IN using their new knowledge?
No, the training system failed at helping the team leader and team members learn the skills they needed to succeed. It’s the classic problem cited in medicine, “the operation succeeded but the patient died.” If as a profession we really believe that high-level team functioning requires more than just academic knowledge, and instead a set of behavioral skills, then we must change the way we train our teams. A part of this involves deciding if the ratio of classroom hours to skill practice currently used is effective.

This sounds like changing what a leadership trainer is
Our roles as trainers clearly needs include the role of TEAM COACH. Using terminology from the medieval learning system, a trainer needs to take on the role of “master” and a new team leader the role of “apprentice.” This team-coaching role will still include some classroom training and instruction (just a little bit will do it, thank you) but a lot of coaching. So trainers will need to learn new set of coaching skills to help teams "learn together as they work together." Individual team members must become a part of the learning process and receive the coaching they need in order to become better team members. Both members and team leaders need top quality, easy-to-use tools, to execute the skills they need to acquire.

What do you mean by tools?
I mean easy to use structured discussion guides that help teams talk through their issues, struggles, challenges and solve problems together. In the end it’s about having productive conversations at the right time. Just in time, just when needed. And these are skills.

Where can these types of tools be obtained?
That’s what my organization, Insight Institute, Inc., does; we produce learn-by-doing team development tools. We think ours are among the best because they were created through real life feedback from teams and tested by teams. Our team development tools are called the INSIGHT Team Development Modules. I’d be glad to send you more information. However, I don’t want to make this article an ad for my materials. I want it to stimulate you into thinking about how to more effectively develop high quality team leadership and effective team membership. So like the medical treatment axiom, “If you don’t get help from us, at least get help from some one.” In that spirit I’ll list what I believe are the criteria for good team development tools. Do your research and find some tools that work for you and your organization.

What are good, effective team development tools?
Let’s start with the end in mind. The real measure of a tool’s worth revolves around the practical issue of whether it accomplishes its intended use. Can the team use the tool by themselves and in doing so produce results, real behavior changes that improve team functioning?”

Tools should meet the following criteria:
• easy-to-use (teams need to be able to use them immediately – no training)
• practical (no fluff, no imaginary scenarios, no touchy-feely activities)
• productive ( lead to important discussions and resolution of issues)
• short – (complete in short 1-2 hrs sessions)
• build on each others (interlinked but stand alone)
• self correcting (if confusion arises, the solution needs to be close at hand)

One more thing, tools should complement each other and be designed for solving different problems. There is a saying, “If the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.” Team development tools need to be designed so that they can be used together, yet each needs to have a specific function. By grouping tools together teams can resolve an endless variety of problems.

Where does that leave us
Here's the challenge! Can we, as human resource professionals and change agents, find ways to shift from classroom instruction to a "real life" team-coaching model? If so, what will it look like? What skills are needed for effective team coaching? What tools are needed to find or develop to help this process along.

Let's bridge the 2300-year gap between Aristotle and current classroom model. Let's find more ways to build “learning by doing” into our leadership training and make a real difference.