What makes something tick? What makes us follow our gut or instinct rather than logic and reasoning? It is the limbic part of the brain — that “feels” rather than “reasons”. What can we as learning designers do that will enable us to better communicate our content to the learners? How can we add that little “inspiration” to our learning that will have the learners pull the content rather than us pushing it down their throat? Well, the answer lies in our ability as designers to let the content “speak” to the learners.
A new hire orientation course, for example, is the “to-go” course that is meant to align this new individual with the rules and regulations of the collective tribe. How can we as designers help the new hires align with the organizations’ vision or mission? But of course, by training them on the tools that translate this vision into something tangible — the WHAT part of the business, such as what are the tools the organization uses to foster productivity, what are the processes the organization follows to ensure quality, what are the services the organization provides to its customer? Everything here is tangible. However, all courses in the world will fail if the individual is not inspired. Do they want to take this training because they have to, do they want to take this training because it will help them gel with the tribe or any other reason? Whatever be the case, we as Learning Content Designers have to ensure that this WHY is a major part of our training. It can be a new hire program or new software that the organization is using to improve its processes — in any training scenario — the WHY will always matter. If we can clearly bring out this WHY, it will help inspire the individual taking in course, and in turn will make them better at what they do.
What the organization does (design products, sell tires, develops software, and the list goes on and on…) are facts that can be memorized, and how the organization does it (tools/processes/procedures) are skills that can be learned. But what cannot be rationally learned or memorized but only felt is what is the purpose of this organization. Continuing with the new hire training program example, the new hire will feel far more connected to the organization if they understand this why. As Instructional Designers, we often design new hire orientation courses that focus on the what and the how of the organization. It would be a rather refreshing idea to include the why of the organization. That will surely bring the orientation to the New Hire Orientation course.
By the end of the course, in addition to the standard metrics (we know something tangible is required), let’s ask the learners — how did this course make them feel? Did they enjoy it? How would they interpret the vision or the mission based on their role? What can they do to align with it more? Some of you might think that these are questions that would be too heavy for people just joining, but always remember — a great team member will always align with the organization’s beliefs and ethics. Their responses will be good indicates or who they are and they will be the ones that you’d watch out for.
I read in Simon Sinek’s Start with Why that “We are not thinking machines. We are feeling machines that think”. This got me thinking (no pun intended!). We design courses by keeping the thinking learner in mind. Add this content as an interaction, add this question and provide feedback, and so on. Do we ever think about, “Hmm.. will this make the learner feel happy or sad or whatever emotion that would be suited to the scenario?” A scenario-based course would be the answer, right? Well, it depends on if the question is able to fire the emotional part of the brain to get the correct action.
If your scenario is just testing on the content, for example, the scenario question says, “Jim is the newest sales rep. Jim is confronted with an irate customer who wants to cancel the contract as they are not satisfied with the product. What should Jim do?“ This will not be able to do anything but a simple recollection of facts that were somewhere listed in the content and is a typical oversimplified version of a scenario. In addition, the learner has the safety net of reattempting the question if they get it wrong the first time or even the feedback option to tell them what they did wrong. My question would be if the new hire Paul who took this training and aced this test is presented with a similar situation in real life — will he remember the correct answer? Maybe. Why? Because we did not let Paul make an emotional connection with the character, Jim, and “feel” his dilemma. One way to make Paul apply the solution presented in this scenario to his current job problem would be to establish an emotional connection between him and Jim. By doing that, Paul’s limbic brain would kick in, and using this trigger, Paul will be able to recollect the better course of action.
Triggers are a very strong internal tool that acts like a navigation system that initiates quicker and easier decisions. In simpler terms, this trigger is also called the “gut feeling”. We can activate these triggers but engaging the emotional part of the brain (that is the limbic one) much stronger, much faster, or even much easier than the analytic part of the brain (the thinking and reasoning neocortex part). There are two aspects of written or verbal communication that helps us activate the limbic brain — what we say and how we say it. If it is written communication, we will use our content as a trigger, while if we are talking, we will use the tactic as the trigger. Now, what would be the best way for Paul to interact with this scenario remember it later on?
Since the scenario falls in the written communication category, we can rewrite the same scenario but add some things that would trigger the emotional brain of the learner, Paul in this case. For example, one version can be “Jim is a new hire and has recently become a father. He has no experience as a sales rep and he needs this job as he is already struggling to pay the hospital bills to keep his newborn in his neonatal care. He’s been having a bad day as six out of the eight people he was asked to call did not purchase any product. His manager shifted him into customer care when he realized Jim is struggling with the new sales process. Now, Jim is confronted with an irate customer who wants to cancel the sale and is threatening to leave a bad review on social media based on his experience. What do you think Jim should do?”
Paul should now be able to “feel” Jim’s desperation. Why? Because the backstory that we provided for Jim triggered Paul’s limbic brain. As I said earlier, we are feeling machines that think — if we can design courses that make the learners “feel” something instead of “think”, the content will stay with them for a longer time and they will be able to translate the content and apply it to their daily jobs — all because they were able to emotionally connect with the content. As simple as that.
Always remember that no one wants to fail. Every single one of us wants to succeed. If using the trainings that we design helps them succeed in what they do and they become a better version of what they were yesterday, I think we have accomplished our goal.
I know that some of you might think that leveling up the scenario (Bloom’s Levels) is what I have done there and have simply added more details, it is not about the content but rather the context that I provided. Content would be adding in things that are related to the practical applicability of the information that we would have provided in the course — rather I feel that if we can add a human touch to the context, we will make the content or the scenario or whatever piece of information we’re trying to put across, more relatable. We relate because we feel, and if we feel it, we will remember it.