{"id":40619,"date":"2022-11-24T21:31:21","date_gmt":"2022-11-24T21:31:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/staging.totara.fortyapp.com\/articles\/disruption-debate-with-clive-shepherd-skills-for-the-new-ld-professional\/"},"modified":"2024-08-02T20:50:35","modified_gmt":"2024-08-02T20:50:35","slug":"disruption-debate-with-clive-shepherd-skills-for-the-new-ld-professional","status":"publish","type":"article","link":"https:\/\/staging.totara.fortyapp.com\/us\/articles\/disruption-debate-with-clive-shepherd-skills-for-the-new-ld-professional\/","title":{"rendered":"Disruption Debate with Clive Shepherd: Skills for the new L&D professional"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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<\/p>\n

Welcome to the latest post in our Disruption Debate series, where Lars Hyland speaks to some of L&D\u2019s top influencers and thought leaders about the most pressing issues facing businesses today. This time, we spoke to Clive Shepherd, founding director at\u00a0The More Than Blended Learning Company<\/a>. Clive has played a key role in the L&D sector for 30 years, with particular interest in technology-assisted learning and communications. We wanted to find out more about Clive\u2019s unique insight into the industry, as well as where he thinks we need to start making changes in our approach to learning.<\/p>\n

Sustained change leading to significant change<\/h3>\n

\u201cThinking about the last 10 years in L&D, there have been some major changes,\u201d said Clive. \u201cFirstly, there\u2019s the shift from events to processes. It is now widely acknowledged that learning is best conceived as a process that takes place over time, requiring a range of different methods and media. This change is hugely disruptive for some L&D teams. At worst, they have acted like travel agents – instead of booking you into a hotel, they book you onto a course in a purely transactional relationship. And even this intermediary level isn\u2019t needed anymore, as learners can book themselves onto a course directly on an LMS.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lars considered how this might affect the outsourcing of L&D services, where the aim is for third-party learning vendors to organise courses for an organisation. However, as Lars said, the model behind this approach doesn\u2019t fit the new reality, as it suggests a lack of understanding about the real business context. Clive agreed, saying that outsourcing only makes sense to introduce efficiencies into the old model of \u2018learning as an event,\u2019 which is becoming obsolete.<\/p>\n

The best of blended learning<\/h3>\n

<\/p>\n

The second major disruption Clive has observed is the move from exclusively face-to-face training to learning remotely. \u201cThis is bringing about major benefits in terms of flexibility and scalability,\u201d said Clive, \u201cbut there are times when learning face-to-face is still the right choice, when we need to make a big emotional impact on our learners, shift mind-sets and help learners gain confidence.\u201d<\/p>\n

Clive compared the choices we make in terms of learning with how we consume media: \u201cWe routinely listen to music streamed on our phones, but every now and then we take the trouble to go to a concert or festival. This creates lifelong memories, but it\u2019s not part of our usual routine. Most of our consumption of music, sport and drama is remote and we\u2019re happy with that, but when we go to a live football match or a play, the impact can be profound.\u201d This is why Clive believes that getting the right balance between remote learning and face-to-face learning is essential for the success of today\u2019s learning departments.<\/p>\n

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\u201cIt\u2019s hard to change mindsets with e-learning or videos. Sometimes we need the emotional impact of a face-to-face experience to make a difference.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Lars gave the example of virtual simulations, where pilots or firefighters may encounter a dangerous situation in a virtual environment for safe practice. Clive agreed, but reflected that while we can take people a long way remotely, there comes a time when learners have to interact with real people, whether that\u2019s a surgeon practising their skills under the watch of an experienced supervisor or a pilot getting into a real cockpit to practise flying a real plane.<\/p>\n

From dependency to empowerment<\/h3>\n
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\u201cPeople now realise that the power to make learning happen is in their hands\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Clive has identified a further disruptive force being the shift from dependency on L&D to determine what learning is done and when to a situation in which learners are empowered to discover content and learn independently.<\/p>\n

\u201cHistorically, we used to moan that nobody attempted to learn anything if they weren\u2019t told what to do and how. But now, people don\u2019t really need to be told – they just do it. Once you\u2019re empowered, there\u2019s no going back, and employers telling you what to do will feel increasingly weird and patronising.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lars highlighted the role of technology in this move towards empowerment. \u201cWe\u2019re living in an age in which people can run a business from their mobile phone. If you can do that, a single person is far more capable than ever before in history. And if you can combine this individual power, you begin to challenge the notion of a centralised structure in an organisation.\u201d<\/p>\n

However, moving to this model of many empowered learners teaming up to accelerate learning isn\u2019t always plain sailing. As Clive points out, there are often cultural resistances to social learning. \u201cIf people are afraid of saying the wrong things, making mistakes or drawing attention to themselves, they won\u2019t feel safe engaging in social learning. It\u2019s a huge waste not to take advantage of social media in a workplace context, but in reality there is some way to go before many organisations can create the safe culture in which learning can thrive.\u201d<\/p>\n

The new face of L&D<\/h3>\n

\u201cThere are lots of new roles in L&D today, requiring many new skills. As one example, take curation – it can be enormously valuable to the population you work with to act as a filter to all the content out there that could be useful. \u00a0As a curator you suggest how people might \u2018connect with this person, read this article, watch this video\u2019 – dramatically reducing the time they need to spend trying to find relevant material.\u201d<\/p>\n

Clive suggests three areas in which L&D professionals need new skills to stay ahead of the game:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Facilitation skills<\/strong>
    \tInteracting with learners to support them on their learning journeys and help them to make the most of available opportunities<\/li>\n
  2. Consulting skills<\/strong>
    \tActing more like a doctor or a lawyer – providing an additional perspective on a performance problem rather than simply acting in a transactional \u2018course booking\u2019 role<\/li>\n
  3. Digital content skills<\/strong>
    \tMaking the most of existing and emerging technologies, and staying on top of the latest developments in digital content<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Lars said that the idea of a professional e-learning production has now shifted. \u201cWe can\u2019t tie activities up in a nice neat bow, ask learners to do them in a specific time window and have them transformed at the other end anymore – that\u2019s not how it works. It\u2019s a continuous experience requiring mistakes and toing and froing – it\u2019s inherently messy.\u201d That\u2019s why, according to Clive, L&D needs to \u2018match the messiness\u2019 of real learning and embrace the way people actually learn today – and that means acquiring new skills to help them do that.<\/p>\n

    Building a sustainable learning infrastructure<\/h3>\n

    Our last talking point was raised by Lars: what exactly does a sustainable learning infrastructure look like?<\/p>\n

    Clive responded: \u201cWe need to be as open as possible to help people access what they identify as useful. Don\u2019t shut doors and make it impossible for people to use their own mobile devices or access YouTube at work. We can\u2019t control everything and we shouldn\u2019t want to.\u201d<\/p>\n

    As well as this, Clive believes we need to be using systems which make it easy for employers to understand their employees and the gaps in their skills and knowledge. From there, we need to be making it as easy and possible to find and share information, which may include user-generated content, as well as just-in-time performance support, such as web articles, videos and micro-content.<\/p>\n

    Finally, Clive issued a reminder not to underestimate the power of personal reward in learning. \u201cPeople like doing courses if they\u2019ll get a personal advantage, such as a badge, a certificate or something that will look good on their CV. But they also have an innate desire to achieve mastery in their work and to fulfil their potential.\u201d This means implementing strategies which enable learners to prove their competence for current and future roles. It\u2019s up to the L&D team of today to prepare learners for their on-going careers, and it is only with new skills and a fresh outlook that we will be in a position to achieve this.<\/p>\n

    Did you enjoy Clive\u2019s take on disruption in L&D? You can follow him on Twitter\u00a0@cliveshepherd<\/a>.You can also share your take on the debate on social media using #DisruptionDebate.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n <\/div>","protected":false},"template":"","tax\/tags":[],"tax\/solutions":[],"tax\/topics":[],"tax\/industries":[],"tax\/article-types":[1021],"class_list":["post-40619","article","type-article","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.totara.fortyapp.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/articles\/40619","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.totara.fortyapp.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/articles"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.totara.fortyapp.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/article"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.totara.fortyapp.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40619"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.totara.fortyapp.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tax\/tags?post=40619"},{"taxonomy":"solution","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.totara.fortyapp.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tax\/solutions?post=40619"},{"taxonomy":"topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.totara.fortyapp.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tax\/topics?post=40619"},{"taxonomy":"industry-tax","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.totara.fortyapp.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tax\/industries?post=40619"},{"taxonomy":"article-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.totara.fortyapp.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tax\/article-types?post=40619"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}