In my prior post I mentioned the fact that recently spoke at the American Society of Training and Development’s International Conference and Exposition in Dallas. The topic of my speech, given to about 175 people, was “How to Stop Failing at Behavior Change Training.”
More importantly, I had an opportunity to bring a new idea developed here at 2Time Labs into the spotlight: when it comes to behavior change training such as time management, the traditional tendency is to try to give users long lists of new behaviors and simply give orders to get learners to follow them closely.
This approach may have worked in the past, but today it results in bored learners who quickly Google the behaviors being shared in the first hour, leaving by lunchtime once they have dug up all the contents of the list. They beat the trainer to the punch, in other words.
Instead, in the presentation, I advocated the approach we use here at 2Time Labs, which starts with the assumption that the learner is an adult who can effectively tackle the challenge of developing sophisticated skills. In other words, they can learn how to craft their own upgrade to their time management skills whenever they want.
The training we deliver in MyTimeDesign Plus (online) and NewHabits (ground) are based on this goal. Having it as a the primary outcome at all times has made all the difference, as you may imagine, as new eLearning technologies have come onstream, as well as better definitions of andragogy – adult learning.
You can pick up a summary of my presentation at the ASTD Conference here – How to Stop Failing at Behavior Change Training – The Case of Time Management.