Real World Learning: Teaching vs Learning

I promised I would expound on what I meant by the concept of real world learning. So here we go!

First, let me differentiate between teaching and learning.

Teaching tends to be passive. It is the transfer of knowledge or skills from one person to another.

Whereas learning can be characterized by those AHA moments when someone says, "Oh, I get it!" They think they arrived at the answer themselves, but really you guided them there.

So how do we go about learning people rather than teaching people?
(Yes I know that's poor grammar. I hope it elicited a chuckle because that's what it was supposed to do!) 😜

How Do We Help People Learn?

𝗔𝗦𝗞 𝗤𝗨𝗘𝗦𝗧𝗜𝗢𝗡𝗦: Do you think the inspector would approve this? What would be the logical next step? How could you prevent this from happening again in the future?

𝗔𝗦𝗞 𝙁𝙊𝙍 𝗤𝗨𝗘𝗦𝗧𝗜𝗢𝗡𝗦: Do you have any questions for me? How can I help? I'll check back in 20 minutes to see if you have any questions.

𝗖𝗛𝗘𝗖𝗞 𝗜𝗡 𝗙𝗥𝗘𝗤𝗨𝗘𝗡𝗧𝗟𝗬: When you’re asking people to learn something that stretches their abilities, don't simply give instructions and walk away, check-in with them frequently. How's it going? Any hiccups? Anything I can help you with? Don't forget, my job is to help you do your job better.

𝗣𝗘𝗢𝗣𝗟𝗘 𝗟𝗘𝗔𝗥𝗡 𝗧𝗛𝗥𝗢𝗨𝗚𝗛 𝗥𝗘𝗣𝗘𝗧𝗜𝗧𝗜𝗢𝗡: Remember how long it took you to master the alphabet? Easily a year or more. And the alphabet was just the 𝘧𝘰𝘶𝘯𝘥𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 for where you were going... creating words, reading sentences, understanding context... Don't be frustrated when you think to yourself, Why have I said this three time already this week? That's how people learn!

And finally, 𝗣𝗘𝗢𝗣𝗟𝗘 𝗟𝗘𝗔𝗥𝗡 𝗕𝗬 𝗗𝗢𝗜𝗡𝗚. Remember when you learned to drive a car? Did the classroom portion of driver's ed teach you? Or the actual driving portion? It was the latter. It wasn't a trick question.

Things can make sense in theory and be entirely different in practice. People need hands-on interaction with what they are learning - whether that's how to run a cash register, or how to ask open-ended questions...

None of these tactics require going to a training class, they require consistent application of learning principles.

This article was originally published on LinkedIn.