Why learning transfer shouldn't send a shiver down your spine and how Emma Weber has used AI to turn learning into action.
Why learning transfer shouldn't send a shiver down your spine and how Emma Weber has used AI to turn learning into action.
Welcome to the stellar labs podcast, future learning today at Stella labs, our mission is to bust the technology skills crunch with effective measurable engage in training. We consult on design and deliver the technical and people skills and competencies you need in business. In these podcasts, you'll hear from industry experts and practitioners from the worlds of technology and training. They'll share their experience, insights and inspiration and their visions for the future. With you, keep listening to start your future learning here today, and welcome back to the stellar labs podcast. Today. I'm absolutely delighted to be picking up with a person who I consider to be a friend, Emma, Faber, CEO, and founder of LIBOR transfer of learning. It says it on the 10 labor specialist, a specialist in a truck's very learning into the workplace. And I'm going to let Amber explain all about that as we have this conversation. So Emma, welcome to the stellar labs podcast. Thank you, Stella. Just delighted to be here today and sharing with you and your listeners, my passion for all things learning transfer. Fantastic. So we're going to kind of Gallop through this conversation and it'll go where it goes, but you know, clearly we're going to talk about transferable learning because I think we're both very fascinated by that. We all totally, I would say almost obsessed by it. Um, and for me it's an incredibly important element of what we do at stellar lab. So I think we have a really strong connection there. One of the questions I want to ask you first off, just for a, kind of more of a fun way of starting as a question I asked, I think it was probably the first podcast I ever recorded. Um, I asked, had recently who Pete invite to a learning dinner party and I'd love to know who you'd invite. Am I allowed more than one guest at my learning pattern ended up with about eight? Okay. Well I have a short list. So I was thinking, um, I really, really enjoy Mike Taylor's newsletter every week. It's one of the ones I always click on. I always get value from it. So I would love to sit down and have Mike to my learning dinner party. Um, Bernay Brown is a podcast I'm loving her work. I've been loving her work since Ted and I would love to have her as a learning dinner party because she started her life in learning and then went onto her research career. So I think it would be fascinating to have Bernay Brown and the, I don't actually have. So I'm going to, I'm going to follow up on her, whether you must look for an, a up, you will, you will love her work. I'm sure. And um, last time I heard Josh Bersin speak when he was in Sydney and he reduced me to tears and I felt,
Speaker 2:I feel there's a conversation to be had there. So Josh is talking a lot at the moment about action plans, which is very key to me in, in my work around learning transfer. Um, but he, he sort of followed it up saying when someone creates an action plan, it gives them a really good value and don't worry what happens to the action plan after it's created, at which point I nearly fell off my chair. Now I challenged Joss on it. And he said he was, you know, not to be taken literally. And he referred to it later on in the conference, but I would love to pick his brains more about what's happening with action plans at the moment. So I would have Josh Bernay and Mike Taylor would be my three.
Speaker 1:That sounds like a fascinating dinner party, but I do need to know tears of laughter or tears of
Speaker 2:I was in despair. If someone says to me, let's not worry, what happens to these action plans after they've been written? I am just tearing my hair out. Well, what has the world come to when someone is saying that? But I equally know what it's like to be up on stage, just on a roll, saying things, having a joke. And, you know, I don't think Josh was being literal, but, um, I'm quite a literal person and I had,
Speaker 1:Well, I really love the idea of your dinner party. I think you've got a really great line of guests. I like you. I love listening and reading to Mike Taylor stuff and Josh Berson, who I kind of came across relatively recently and I'm now kind of reading everything he writes. So, uh, I think, uh, your dinner party is going to be great. Thank you, Emma. So as we've kind of started talking about action plans and transfer, I really see you as the queen of transfer of learning into, into work. So where did your passions stopped? And what's kind of really, really important for you?
Speaker 2:I think my passion started, um, around getting really interested in behavioral change motivations for people, um, why we do what we do. So a real sort of passion for people, passion for growth, passion for learning and development. And then when I was working in the, you know, the corporate world in London, you go on this training program, you love it. And yet we don't always apply what we've learned and practicing. Maybe we rarely apply what we've learned. And for me, that just was a real fit between how do we create behavioral change for people, especially when we've been inspired and motivated in the first place through learning. And so it was just from personal experience, knowing that that's difficult when you come back from a training program. Um, and through the work I started doing with, with clients. Um, so it was in, um, BMW Australia who first really took the concept of learning transfer that I was talking about and started to run with it. And then as we saw what it, the difference that it actually made, um, we quickly switched our business from doing three different, you know, forms, behavior change just to that one.
Speaker 1:Fantastic. And so you made the switch from London to Australia, there's perhaps a, another interesting thing. Just if you don't mind sharing why, why that happened?
Speaker 2:So I moved 18 years ago. I always wanted to start my own business in London. So I moved when I was 30, but it's giving the game away. Isn't it. Um, but I really moved here because I thought if I stayed in London, I'd try and start my own business, but people knew me and I thought someone would offer me a nice job, a good salary in a flash car, and I wouldn't be able to resist. So I thought if I go to Australia where I know no one, no one will offer me a job and I'll just have to make the business thing work. And that was really my rationale between the moving to the other side of the world to start a business.
Speaker 1:No, it's fascinating. I really didn't know that about you ever. That's a really amazing, brave, and probably very wise thing to do.
Speaker 2:I think I had six weeks. I still it before I was offered my first job. And I thought, well, clearly my plan was unfounded,
Speaker 1:But
Speaker 2:I'm still very good friends with the person that offered me that first job. And I told them I had to turn them down because I said, I can't give up after six weeks. Um, so yes, 18 years later I still have my
Speaker 1:Business. And I think there is something about the Southern hemisphere. I mean, I've lived in New Zealand for about four years and people bear seemed much more supportive of you starting a business. And I think there's also some something around the fact you're a, you know, a stranger in a strange world. They kind of, I don't know. I don't know whether they're, you're a curiosity. So you stand out more or people think you're braver than you perhaps with VR or perhaps you bring your brain. I don't know. I find it. I find it curious that people seem to think when you've traveled somewhere that perhaps you're more capable of doing these things. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And, and I've had huge support locally here just from networks and friends and, and yeah. Very, very supportive country to be building a business in.
Speaker 1:Fantastic. Okay. So let's keep talking about, about learning transfer, because that really is your big thing. So why is this important for organizations? I mean right now, um, I think COVID has caused a massive increase in people taking time off work. Maybe they're learning, but I'm not sure they are learning. I think there's a lot of people who are looking at content. So I've had a lot of response to my LinkedIn learning program, which, you know, really is content. Uh, however hard I tried to turn it into a learning program. It's a video, uh, with some questions, I've had lots of people telling me they'd been watching videos. I had people say, they've been reading, they've been doing Elan, but I think a lot of it has been content based. And I'm curious as to how much they're going to apply what they're learning in the workplace. So perhaps in the context of that, you can tell us a bit more than that.
Speaker 2:And I think partly it's around, how do we educate ourselves as to what is the value learning and what is learning? And so there's something about educating the learners because I think a lot of the time people think they've learnt something when they have watched a video, when they've read a book and you may intellectually know it, you may even be able to recite it. You may be able to even ask a question about it, answer a question about it. But if you don't actually put that into place, it's going to be a very little value to you. And so
Speaker 1:On the side hymn sheet is may I'm at, because I think, you know, this idea of getting the learners to, to really understand what learning is and that it's, it's perhaps a harder process than they think it takes time. It takes effort. Uh, and, and when you get it, it's, it's fantastic, but it's not just reading or listen to, that might inspire you is true. Might inspire you to go more in depth, but just needs so much more.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And so I think it's both educating the learners and the organizations as to the stages of learning and what, um, you know, learning transfer is a phrase about applying the learning back in the workplace or in your day to day role. Um, but really to, you know, to some extent you could say, well, all of it is learning. And whether we talk about the application of learning, the embedding of learning, the retention of learning, it's all in the semantics, it's actually, well, what are we doing with that learning? What's the outcome. And, and for me, there does in many places need to be a mindset shift thinking about what's the outcome that we're creating through this learning. And, you know, it stems right back to the very beginning of what's the outcome we're trying to create.
Speaker 1:And that comes down to, you know, what can people do when they get back to work and how can they continue to build on that? Learning, I think is also, I was talking to a client recently who, um, they want to train the trainer program and the people I'm working with are absolute experts in their field. And I think they currently believe that after the train, the trainer program, everybody else is going to have the same expertise as them and everybody needs to learn that expertise, you know, in, in a full day while it's, it's probably a six month program, but, you know, in a four day kind of interactive element, and they're not, they're not going to come back as experts at all. They're going to have some knowledge, they're going to have some skills practice, but they're not going to be experts. They're not going to be able to actually do until they go back to work.
Speaker 2:And still, it's not even a case of what people can do. It's what do they do? So, you know, you can get to the point where you can demonstrate it and you can be, you know, a very good effective listener or whatever it is you're trying to achieve, but it's in the heat of the moment when it really matters. Do you do it not, can you do it or can you demonstrate it?
Speaker 1:That's so true. That's so true. So can you give us some ideas, some insights into what you do to lead the transfer of learning, learning to friends? We
Speaker 2:Can believe as Dallas. So this is all good. Um, so for us, we've created a methodology, which is, um, the methodology is called turning, learning into action, but I really feel whatever type of methodology you're using at the heart of it needs to be reflection and accountability. So we need to get people slowing down, reflecting, but specifically reflecting on the actions and behaviors that they intend to put into place. And then we evaluate and work out what's been successful within that. So I think a lot of the time when we think about reflection in learning, we think about reflection to actually create that insight or that aha moment. But if we can make this reflection specifically about an action plan or the actions that we intended to put into place, then you have a much more powerful reflection piece because you're actually driving reflection and accountability at the same time. So that's what we're aiming to do with turning, learning into action. Um, as I say, I've been working, you know, the businesses 18 year up 18 years old, specifically in the space of learning transfer for 15. And we very much worked for the first 15 years solely on a human, um, human my team, my fabulous team around the world, 12 different 16 countries, 12 languages delivering over the phone and actually having turning, learning into catching compensations with people, very short, sharp, focused, deep conversations about behaviors, thoughts, feelings, values, beliefs, fears, and needs control our behaviors. So we need to be having a conversation at that level, not just about the behavior. You've got to get people underneath the iceberg to work out why they're doing what they're doing or why they're not. And I was, um, I always say to my team, remember, it's not about the participant talking to you. It's about you helping the participant have a conversation with themselves. And one of my team said to me, well, Emma, if that really is true, why can't we do it with artificial intelligence? And this was probably about five years ago. Now we were having this conversation. And I of course said, no, never will be never clever enough. We could never do that. Not in my lifetime. And then, you know, when as a leader, you've gone into that defensiveness space and you realize you're just justifying and proving, and I thought, hang on, hold your horses. Um, just consider whether it could be possible. And that sort of started it on this journey of creating, putting our methodology into an AI and now having[inaudible], which is our artificial intelligence, narrow artificial intelligence coach, where people can have a learning transfer conversation using our methodology with coach em. And sometimes they have conversations with the human team and co-chair, or sometimes for some projects, they're just talking with coach N but that's essentially what we're playing with Stella. And I know you've had amazing success
Speaker 1:With coach, and I think I've seen some, um, some case studies you've had where you've found that people are most engaged with it, perhaps more than a coach, a human
Speaker 2:Human coach. Yeah. So I was, you know, I was in denial at the very thought that it could even be possible with AI. And then I was, I think I went through a fairly skeptical stage, but willing to experiment just because I didn't want to be defensive. And then I thought, wow, this really works. And then we kind of got really excited because of the level of conversation that people will have. And I think we can learn a lot of what's happening in the medical space with artificial intelligence and chat bots. Um, so for example, in the us, um, American veterans who are suffering from PSTD or PTSD, sorry, disliked on those, um, those initials, um, get better results working with the defense forces, Ellie, rather than a, um, psychologist, especially in the therapist, especially in the initial conversations, the reason being the psychological safety is so high because technology can't judge you. So you have no fear of being judged, so you can be more open. And I think we're starting to see trends like that in coaching.
Speaker 1:That's a really interesting idea, isn't it? That despite the fact, you know, you can feel, you know, coaches work really hard, don't they to, to create psychological safety, but I guess there is always that human element or, but they might think this is where strange, bad, good, whatever it might be, even that kind of, you know, wanting them to think I'm, I've been a good girl and I guess, yeah, the, the chatbot can't do that. So that's really interesting. And how have your clients reacted to the idea of having a chat between two perhaps human coaches? So
Speaker 2:I think the, I think the kind of the case studies and the experiences that we've been having, um, and the results that we can demonstrate has really opened people's eyes to what's possible. And I was doing a demo the other day and, um, the clients sort of said, they said, Oh, I just came to the meeting. Cause I, you know, a colleague had invited them to this meeting about this chat bot demo and they got halfway through the demo and they really got into it. And then they just said, at the end of the meeting, I got really engaged. I kind of got just hooked into this conversation of not knowing where it was going, but with chatting with the technology, even though initially coming into the conversation, they hadn't expected to be enthusiastic about it. So I think a lot of the time, it's only when you actually get it in your hands and really experience what it's like to have a conversation in that way, that you can really then start to understand how people engage and create this safety and create this depth of reflection and importantly, slow down to have these conversations. I think one of the challenges still are not just in learning, but in all across businesses is that we are just so busy. We don't give ourselves time to think, and this is a tool that really just slows you down in your thinking and through answering the questions by default of answering the questions, you are thinking things through,
Speaker 1:Hi, I have a question you may or may not have the answer to this, but you know, many of us are addicted to our smartphones. We find them, you know, just in themselves are engaging. Do you think that's part of it?
Speaker 2:Oh, that's a tough, that's a tough question. And I actually, at the very early stages of this, I had a bit of a moral dilemma because I was at a conference and someone was talking about, you know, we need to get off our smart phones, which, you know, I am fully supportive of that. You know, we need to get off our smart phones yet here I am suggesting a technology that uses your smartphone. Um, but I think it's kind of do we use it for good or would we use it for evil? That's, that's kind of where I ended up with it. And I think we just have to, um, you know, I am the world's worst with my smartphone. I think we have to accept that it's, it is going to be with us constantly. And actually if we can use it for things that are actually helpful to us, then that's a, that's a positive. And in fact, I was, um, working with someone today and they said they felt because it was conversational and questions. It was more powerful than if they had been answering those questions that had been written down because they felt they were talking it through with someone, even if, though the person, you know, they knew, I knew the person wasn't real in a, in a proper person kind of way, because we do feel quite affectionately towards coach and, um, that they felt more compelled to answer the question in more detail than if they're just, and they said, in fact, if they'd had the last four questions just on a piece of paper, they would have skipped them, but they answered all of them with coach em. So it was quite fascinating, I guess,
Speaker 1:Evolutionarily we have, you know, we learned to speak and listen long before we ever learned to write. So I guess, you know, in some ways that's taking us back before there would be conversations.
Speaker 2:So Sarah, I think that's really interesting when you think about, and you were just talking about speaking to the chat bot, I need to quick create a quick clarification that in most cases, when people are speaking with coach co-chair, I say speaking, but they're actually doing and an SMS text message or messaging through a platform like Microsoft teams or Slack. So it's actually, it's a, it's a text message, you know, where you, where you write it. But funnily enough, we were deploying in France and it was the first time we deployed in a second language. And I had some feedback from the client that one of their team members had used co-chair by a Siri. So they were getting Siri to read the text messages and they were replying verbally via Siri to coach em and it worked to treat. So it hasn't been designed for that, but there's an augmentation of technology if ever there was one putting a Siri on to a chat bot.
Speaker 1:That was really interesting. Okay. So, so the, so my theory is, is poo-pooed immediately. Um, we actually just really love chat. And that's interesting because I was interviewing a young man called Michael[inaudible]. I think that's how you say his name. And he runs an entire business based on learning through text messages. He's working in kind of, um, difficult situations, sometimes war zones and things like that, helping people learn. And the only thing they have is a mobile phone and they, you know, they don't always even have smart phones. They can just do sort of text messaging and he's using text messaging and find that incredibly powerful. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And, and I think it's that people like to chat about themselves and they like to chat about things that are important to them. And so the, the more that what you're actually doing is relevant. And because, you know, in our learning transfer piece, people are leveraging off those action plans that we talked about that are the things that they choose are going to be most important to them, to help them get better at results, get better outcomes in their business. They're already engaged because it's what they actually want to be working on and what they think is going to, to add value for them.
Speaker 1:So, so that motivation thing is important, right? Well, that's, that's always vital for learnings and right at the start, how do you get people motivated? And this is actually helping them because they're feeling it's very much about themselves. Yeah. Their, their actions. And I know
Speaker 2:I still love that. You're really into the neuroscience, into, beyond, into experts yourself, we'll call your neuroscience queen. Um, um, and it's, it's that piece about when people find meaning and purpose, and you can probably talk much more to this than I can, but that, um, the dopamine, dopamine and the serotonin hit that people get when they're really connecting in with what's important to them, um, can really kind of help put themselves and their brain in that space for learning and reflection.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. And that whole thing about, you know, it's about me, but unfortunately we are as humans, we are incredibly selfish Hogan, which we say we want to save the world actually that's we want to save the world because it makes us feel better personally. Very often. Yeah. So just to go back to the, um, perhaps the, the organizational side of it, because we've talked about, you know, finding personal motivation and people finding it personally, very, um, good, but what's that like for the organization, how does it relate to the organization? How do they react to this?
Speaker 2:So one of the interesting things is that the data that you can create using something like a chat bot or conversational intelligence tool is data that is, is very hard to come by. In many cases. Now, obviously we have data privacy, we have confidentiality rules. We have, you know, the, the protection of data and different clients like to use different parts of the data of the chat bot experience. But the interesting thing that the data will really drive insights into how people can use the learning, the outcomes that are coming from learning, what we need to do to improve our learning interventions. So you've actually got a whole heap of visibility that you wouldn't usually have. So not only are you driving behavioral change to drive outcomes, and, you know, we have goal uplift and we can, we can kind of map the behavioral changes that happens, but you can also have, um, advanced data analytics that are taking parts, parts of a conversation that really maybe give you insights. So if we're, we're asking people, um, you know, who are you going to use to support you with this goal? Will our people being supported by their managers? Are they being supported by peers? Are they choosing to do it on their own? The amount of information that can actually be gathered in anonymous and, uh, aggregated way can be quite huge for organizations. So I think that partly driven by the impact and the behavioral change, but also partly driven by the insights that the data can give them. And that was quite a revolution, a relevant revelation to me, stellar. And in fact, it was Tricia out of Chicago that kind of woke me up to that. Um, when I, when I was working with Trish and showing her what, um, we were doing with coach M, she was so excited for the data potential, and of course I'm just completely driven by impact and behavioral change. So, um, it was great to partner with Trish on the data analytics part of coach em
Speaker 1:On plastic. And we have interviewed, uh, Trish and she, uh, you know, she's an amazing expert in terms of understanding the data, but making it kind of interesting for people who perhaps are less inclined to be speaking interesting, accessible to people who may not have an immediate reaction, um, that is positive to data that has written them, uh, driven another question from Vienna, because lots and lots of people talk about, um, you know, managers being the key support, but from what data you've got, is, is that the case? Is it managers who are the people people turn to, or are they turning to other sources?
Speaker 2:That's an interesting question. Cellar, and I don't know, definitively whether I would have enough data to be able to kind of say, say with that piece at the moment. Um, it's, it's, um, it's a mix actually. It's not that people are naturally Chet. Not that we're seeing that people are naturally turning to their, so their manager for support on these things. Um, but I would perhaps say there's more in-depth analysis to be done around that. I think interestingly there's ways that we can actually loop the manager kind of into the conversation. But one of the really big drivers that I find is that when we get an individual holding themselves accountable to themselves, it's far more influential than if they're held to their manager or by their manager. So it's the leaders that really have the ability to help people with this kind of self, the accountability for themselves that are even more powerful. And I think when we look at, um, self-regulated learning and the sort of, um, educational psychology coming through that we can start to see how people really need to internalize learning for themselves to be able to move forward with it. So I've always sort of said that, that, that strategy of thinking the learner, the manager is the key to learning transfer. I think that's more of a hope than a realization and, and organizations that often rely on that strategy. I don't see them getting great, great results. In most cases,
Speaker 1:I, for many years been concerned about that strategy because, you know, it's been a kind of a, a quoted thing for ever since I got into L and D 20 years ago, you know, managers are the people that make the biggest difference and that hasn't changed. So either, you know, either it's not actually true or managers just aren't necessarily by they're able to do it competent to do it, willing to do it. I don't know if there's probably a million different reasons why managers may not always be doing that kind of support they're opposed to, and I completely agree with you under that, you know, getting learners to be self motive, having Trinzic motivation to want to learn and to transfer that learning into action at work is it's just a vital and vital area that we, you know, I think more people should be shouting about.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And, and all good to get the managers involved and have managers support, which is fantastic. But I think it's, we need to work on both sides, both sides of it.
Speaker 1:I agree. I, I quite often talk about having, um, uh, sort of a learner revolution. I want learners to be, um, standing up and kind of saying that this learning isn't working for me or this method of learning, isn't working with men, if they are well-informed, they can then say, look, I know it's going to work much better if I have a coaching call, or if I just have a, you know, some people, they like to put things into practice before they do the theory. Some people like theory, then they like to pretend to practice, but getting people to understand that own approach, to learning with a good theoretical understanding of learning, backing it up. I just think that would, you know, it would just create a great evolution if people were standing up in the middle of either really boring e-learning thing or long latches that they're, that they're getting hypnotized, they're sitting there falling asleep. If they just stood up and said, look, this isn't working I'm off. I think that could be a real change for L and D.
Speaker 2:Um, and so it almost sort of circles us back to the beginning piece of really helping educate people. What is learning and how powerful can it be so that people really get excited about the benefit that learning can give them and bring them, rather than just almost that short, short hire kind of, you know, watching the video, being engaged and enlightened versus actually when you start to really shift things, what it can give you.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And I think that would also guess the way from that kind, you know, events driven training where people think, well, I've been on a course, so somehow I must know it now. And as you say, be willing to apply it. So I'm just really looking at this conversation ever. I could, uh, I could go on for hours, but we usually kind of limit our conversation to about 30, 40 minutes. So, um, I'd like to ask you finally about where you see the future of learning going.
Speaker 2:So it's a, it's a big question. I do think we will be focusing a lot less on content and more on behavioral change. And I don't think that's just a personal wish. I think it's actually a requirement of the world requirement of the way that we're, we're moving now, um, with content being so freely available and, um, so easy to access the advantage will go to the organizations and the people that can really shift behaviors. And, you know, as we're saying, not just consume. So I think the future of learning has to be thinking about outcomes, behavior, change, how we support people in that space. Now, you know, that is the way that I've kind of been looking at the world and driving towards that. But I really do see that shift starting to happen.
Speaker 1:I think, uh, as, as that happens, hopefully that will empower more people. It will make people more, uh, capable of learning because, you know, we were very aware that, you know, new skills are going to be required all the time. The pace of change is accelerating, you know, just unbelievably quickly. And I think, you know, COVID has shown us some really great things about how people can adapt when, when they're kind of forced to people that are actually quite good at it. Um, but I think that whole idea of, as you say, getting it away from content and making about real behavior change habit change is, is vital.
Speaker 2:Um, as we layer in technology that makes it a very exciting proposition.
Speaker 1:And I think you were leading the forefront there. You're, you're creating some really inspiring and exciting stuff that I advise everybody to go and investigate the work that Emma's doing as well as read. I think you've written two books, Amber, is that right? I have written two books. Yes.
Speaker 2:Are turning learning into action. Uh, is the title of my first book, which is all about our methodology of behavioral change. And the second is making change work, which is about behavior change in the context of, of change projects. And that was co-written with Jack and Patty Phillips out of the U S so that's a co-written book.
Speaker 1:So I re really recommend those books. And I have been delighted to have another conversation with you again, I always love learning from you. Um, thank you so much for being on our stellar labs podcast, and I really look forward to another conversation.
Speaker 2:Wonderful. Thank you so much, Stella. Lovely to talk.
Speaker 3:Thank you for listening.
Speaker 1:Thanks to today's podcast. Please share it with your friends and colleagues and visit our website steadily labs.edu, to learn more about what we do and how we do it tune into the next episode.