Teaching Skills

"I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand"

As a manager, an important part of your role is to help those you are managing to develop their skills. If you can encourage the development of skills such as self-awareness, communication, and time management, you will be rewarded with a high-performing team.

People learn faster and retain more information if they have to exert some kind of active effort. The famous quote, attributed to Confucius: "I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand" is frequently used to support the value of learning through experience. A major implication of this notion is that new skills can be learned only through experimenting with new behaviors, observing the results, and learning from the experience. The learning of new skills is maximized when learners get the opportunity to combine watching, thinking, and doing. The experiential learning model encompasses four elements: learning new concepts (conceptualization), planning how to test the ideas (plan to test), actively applying the skill in a new experience (gaining concrete experience), and examining the consequences of the experience (reflective observation). After reflecting on the experience, the learner uses the lessons they have learned from what happened to create a refined conceptual map of the skill, and the cycle continues.

To use the experiential learning model to teach skills you need to: ensure that the learner understands the skill both conceptually and behaviorally; give them opportunities to practice it; give feedback on how well they are performing the skill; and encourage them to use the skill often enough so that it becomes integrated into their behavioral repertoire.

ACTION POINT: Teach new skills by using the following:

• Helping the learner to form a conceptual understanding of a new skill.
• Plan how the learner can test their understanding of the skill.
• Get the learner to apply the new skill in concrete experience.
• Observe what happened and discuss ways in which they can improve.