By Siobhan Tebbs, Learning Experience Design Consultant
Average read time of 3-5 mins.
“Attention is vitality. It connects you with others. It makes you eager. Stay eager.” ― Susan Sontag
Have you ever attended a training session, online or in person, only to walk away with disdain for training in general and the feeling that you haven’t really learned anything?
You’ve raced to attend the training session, putting deadlines off and moving calls as you know the training topic is important – but somehow, you’ve left feeling drained, uninspired and definitely without useful learnings.
We’ve all been there.
For training to succeed, sustained attention is a must. Attention is the first element of AGES (Attention, Generation, Emotion and Spacing): a neuroscience-proven model that sets out the main criteria required for adults to learn successfully
The more attention we pay during an experience, the more likely we are to both recall the training and act upon what we’ve learned.
All elements in this model are equally important. Since attention is an area where we particularly see a lot of challenges coming up, we’ve focused this article on attention. Feel free to get in touch with us if you want to know more about how we approach the other elements in our training design.
So, why does our attention wander in so many of the training experiences we join? And what can we practically do to get and keep learners’ attention?
One: Attention requires a great Customer Experience (CX)
Our attention is first captured well before the training itself. Think of your colleagues as your customers. Would you expect your HCPs to show interest in a newly launched product brand because you emailed them once or twice?
Just like with your external customers, internal training should leverage a great Customer Experience. An experience that understands their needs and challenges. Listen to them and learn to make your training not only engaging but an experience that addresses their needs.
What pain points are they trying to solve?
How can the training help achieve objectives?
What are the internal/external challenges?
Co-creating with learners at this stage can be pertinent to unpicking the ‘real’ training needs and guiding how best to construct your training. Assisting colleagues to shape their own learning journey also gives them a stake in the training and therefore a vested interest from the outset.
Two: Attention requires an emotional connection
The ideal customer journey isn’t just an intuitive, joined-up experience: it also requires an emotional connection.
We pay far more attention when having a strong emotional response. Emotions coded as ‘positive’ lead to a broadening of attention and an increase of our ‘thought-action repertoire’ – that is, we’re more ready to change our behaviour and act. So, centring the emotional journey of learners often leads to better training outcomes.
Let’s look at two ways to cultivate ‘positive’ emotions and sustain participants’ attention.
‘Experience hygiene’
“A wealth of information creates a poverty of attention.” ― Herbert A. Simon
In the push to make training more ‘interactive’, fundamentals can be overlooked:
- Keep training lean and focused on the behaviour you want to change.
- Let learners know the intended outcome.
- Check for understanding before learners begin a task.
- Keep learning in small chunks, with regular breaks, changing up content formats.
- Start and finish on time.
This ‘experience hygiene’ applies just as much to self-led as to instructor-led training experiences. When our expectations are set and not met, or when we’re in cognitive overload, we end up disgruntled. Our neurons will not be reorganising their firing patterns!
‘Storify’
Any good presenter knows the value of telling stories for holding attention. We remember more, and are more likely to act on it, when we access it through story.
Throw learners into a scenario that simulates a challenge they have encountered, and their interest will be piqued. When we’re meaningfully challenged, our critical thinking capacities fire up. We feel motivated to find solutions. Crucially, we become open to expanding our range of possibilities.
In this mindset, mental models can shift.
Think about introducing a fictional colleague (character) who is struggling and urgently needs solutions. Devise interactions that ask your learners for their ideas about the way forward – this can be done using any combination of multiple-choice questions, whole-group discussion, or breakout room group work. It will create dramatic tension and spark intuition to resolve the problem: a surefire way to retain attention and help introduce improved mental models for action.
Three: Attention is social
We pay more attention when we feel connected to those around us.
Surprisingly, there is often reticence towards connecting learners without a facilitator present. The fear seems to be that learners will come to the wrong conclusions without constant guidance. This assumes that learning is about imitating the behaviour of an expert ‘other’ – but learning has moved on from pure behaviourism. To learn successfully we need to situate skills within a meaningful context, and to practise metacognition (reflecting on our own learning).
Interpersonal relationships facilitate all of this – as well as bringing up some of our strongest emotional responses. It might feel like a leap into the unknown compared with a lunch-and-learn webinar, but today’s training facilitators need to value what’s happening when they are not present as much as what’s happening when they are.
Connecting learners with each other can take many forms. The obvious one is putting learners into teams when in person or in breakout rooms when online to complete a task. But consider opportunities for connection that are based more on reflection, too. Pair up learners for 15 minutes to discuss and type into a form three things they’ll do differently after the training. Having a peer to reflect with helps us to feel less alone and to crystallise our thoughts. During an e-learning module, link off to forums or chat groups on the company social sharing platform, with an invitation to share one’s challenges on a specific topic.
Making learning social doesn’t have to be a huge endeavour: you can start small, even in a whole group setting. Consider a poll at the beginning of a workshop or an e-learning module about the learners’ experience with a topic. Once they have responded, reveal the percentages among their colleagues. When this happens, we feel linked with others right from the start. Our personal experience is situated in a meaningful context, which captures our attention, and an expansive mindset can arise.
‘Fun’
Ensuring that training is an enjoyable experience is paramount, and the emphasis on fun cannot be overstated.
As highlighted by feedback from Kanga clients, the element of enjoyment, whether through a lively competition, a captivating quiz, or even a scenario that involves a touch of dressing up, plays a pivotal role in the success of our training programs. It goes beyond just being an entertaining interlude; it acts as a catalyst, bringing participants together on a shared journey and fostering a sense of camaraderie within the learning group.
The neuroscience behind this is fascinating—laughter triggers a conducive environment for learning, and people tend to stay more engaged when they are having a good time.
Finally: are your learners ready for this?
Let’s be honest: like most heavily regulated corporate environments, internal pharma cultures have been slow to shift to a learner-centred approach. This is why any efforts you make within the training need to be made in concert with strategic shifts happening outside it. The cultivation of a learning culture is imperative, otherwise innovative new approaches can breed cynicism. Small steps are key: if your colleagues are not used to directing their own training journey, don’t suddenly expect them to act with autonomy here. Introduce some curious disruptions to the status quo to get their attention, then make sure it pays off when they show up.
In summary…
…think CX. Don’t forget the training experience.
…initiate an emotional connection with your learners.
…encourage social learning and peer-to-peer engagement.
What next?
Although there are some tips you can apply right now, training ultimately needs to be designed with an evidence-based process that centres the learner. Expert learning experience design can ensure your diverse group of learners are served with training that will get and keep their attention.
For the past decade, Kanga has been leading the charge in helping pharma shift to a learner-centred model for digital transformation. If this article resonates with you, why not get in touch and tell us about your current capability challenges and your upskilling and behaviour change requirements – we’d love to hear from you!
References
PRACTICAL DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION
Kanga Health is a global digital agency, providing end-to-end services to help health and pharma organisations with successful digital transformation.
From strategy to development, implementation and beyond, our experts guide pharma teams and customers every step of the way to deliver projects that are always value-driven, on time and excellence derived.
Our team is a rare breed of pharma and multi-channel experts, therefore acutely aware of the intricacies and challenges of the unpredictable healthcare industry.
Customer centricity is at the core of everything we do. Kanga involves patients, HCPs, carers, and others, using co-creation techniques to develop truly relevant content and solutions that work every time.
Helping our clients tap into a wealth of digital opportunities and play a leading role in the future of healthcare.
