Our Learning Framework
The Critical Need to Develop ‘Soft Skills’
An acknowledged shortage of business soft skills globally across enterprises has highlighted the need for skills development and behavior change training.
There is a growing sentiment that the skills of the future are not just technical – they’re behavioral. Socio-emotional skills are seen as a critical complement to core literacies (1), and McKinsey has highlighted interpersonal and communication skills as part of those needed to thrive in the future of work (2). Regarding priorities, a Wall Street Journal survey of over 900 executives revealed that over 90% of them felt that soft skills were equally or more important than technical skills (3). As we move into hybrid workforces, authentic communication and presence skills will be even more critical to the enterprise. The very term “soft skills” masks an important reality in comparison to their “hard skills” counterparts:
Hard Skills are soft (they change all the time, are constantly being obsoleted, and are relatively easy to learn), and Soft Skills are hard (they are difficult to build, critical, and take extreme effort to obtain).
(Bersin, 2019)
At Ariel, we believe our mission addresses this challenge head-on, focusing on this exact area of need and helping clients achieve true upskilling and behavior change to yield the resulting business impact. We have been providing best-in-class training and consulting targeted at developing leaders and their teams for approximately 30 years. Our unique approach focuses on using authentic communication training as a primary tenet to lead and grow relationships, and transcends across key areas of leadership presence, written communication, and developing trusted relationships.
Ariel’s Learning Framework
We consider the ideal learning journey to proceed through three phases, each with important overarching objectives, and our offerings and learning framework tenets.
Phase 1: Exploration & Discovery
Map Program Learning Objectives to Client Goals
The mapping of appropriate programming to client goals and learner segments occurs during initial pre-engagement design. Specific trainee groups are often targeted for specific learning programs, with specific learning objectives. This helps establish learner personas that detail, in general, their prior knowledge of the training domain based on experience.
Establish Relevancy for Learners
Initial content helps frame the learning journey for the learner, which establishes relevancy. Experiential and active learning are best enabled when a learner perceives the existence of a relationship between prior knowledge and new knowledge (5). Confronted with new information, the brain searches for past experiences to form connections – if connections are made, new learning is easier (6).
Phase 2: Immersion & Application
Performing Arts DNA
Our differentiated approach leverages the use of dramatic skills and techniques to enable and encourage authentic connections between people. By leveraging the performing arts, our facilitators can more quickly and effectively create an authentic practice environment that enables experiential and active learning. The performance background of our facilitators affords them creative avenues to get learners to step outside their usual comfort zone, guiding them into a “play zone” (learning zone) where they experience themselves and each other differently, in a safe space. They are versed in creating immersive experiences and trained to react in the moment to various communication styles, to model vulnerability, and to create a safe space for practice, failure, feedback, and improvement.
As one research article on the use of drama in healthcare education frames it: drama in education is not a staged artificial play, not a rehearsal for a way of being but a way of learning to be, and as such can be a valuable tool for the development of empathy and reflective practice (7).
This theatrical DNA provides significant staging for the learning experience, as explained by one of our founders and its former head of learning design:
In addition to many task-related competencies—including strategic planning, negotiation, crisis management, and media or community relations—leaders also need to be able to inspire, mobilize, and align individuals behind a goal. In other words, they need leadership presence: the ability to authentically connect with the thoughts and feelings of others in order to motivate and inspire them toward a desired outcome. Experiential learning through theater provides a valuable metaphor for developing leadership presence by allowing for an expansive experience of self and other (physical, emotional, rational, relational, and sometimes spiritual) and allows individuals to learn about themselves and their capacity to connect through interactive/introspective exercises actors have used to develop roles and characters. It also provides an opportunity for the application of that newfound awareness to the very real challenges they face day-to-day (8).
Examples of benefits include increasing self-awareness, understanding behaviors in context, examining the limits of one’s own potential, engaging in constructive self-analysis to improve confidence, nurturing reflective practice, and building empathy and situational awareness.
Our programs are experiential in nature; the workshops include activities and breakout sessions designed for hands-on, “learning by doing” experience and application of concepts in a safe, trusting environment. We build on David A. Kolb’s premise that learning is a process rather than an outcome (“learning as re-learning”), and experience is the source of learning and development (9).
Examples of active learning include role-playing, writing activities, problem-solving, cooperative learning, and peer teaching, and have heightened outcomes compared to “sage on the stage” forms of didactic lecture instruction (10).
Role Plays as Experiential Vehicles
Role plays serve an integral role in many of our programs, and are the primary vehicle for experiential learning. Role plays in business education have been found to reveal a critical applied learning advantage, leading to increased knowledge gain (up to 45% more than control groups) and knowledge retention, while also increasing learner engagement and motivation to continue learning via enjoyable learning experiences (11). And in relation to social interaction and communication, role plays are recognized to provide insights into how others act, react, and communicate in a social interaction (12).
This form of active learning also supports the andragogical process model for learning. Rather than follow a traditional pedagogical content model of instruction, which relies on content as the driver for designing and presenting instruction, the andragogical process model relies on a facilitator preparing a set of procedures that involves participants in creating the climate and learning experiences that result in the acquisition of learning and skills (6). Role plays in groups also allow learning through observation by those not directly participating in the activity. And whether participating or observing, role plays afford learners an understanding of tension and challenges, and the value of interpretation in context, that go beyond typical lectures/training (13).
Targeted Instruction and Coaching
Here at Ariel, our recommended program designs often include multiple opportunities for feedback targeted to the individual learner, taking into consideration their prior knowledge and experience level. Unlike “one size fits all” instruction in a lecture or online course, this tailored facilitator coaching and feedback affords the ability to alter the instructional and feedback design to the participant-learner. Learning is enhanced when learners are provided an optimal level of information and assignments/activities, falling in between “too easy” and “too challenging” (14). This kind of targeted and customized learning experience reduces the “cognitive load” on the learner, which optimizes learning (15).
Ultimately, this approach means learners more quickly achieve a level of expertise that allows them to adapt and apply robust conceptual mental models across a variety of circumstances (16).
Conceptual Frameworks
Many of our programs provide conceptual frameworks and models to assist learners in understanding dynamic processes and behaviors. These frameworks are designed to allow learners to better interpret and then apply concepts in practice. “People who learn to extract key ideas from new material and organize them into a mental model and connect that knowledge to prior knowledge show an advantage in learning complex mastery” (16).
Phase 3: Reflection & Reinforcement
Reflection as Practice” and “Retrieval as Learning”
The act of reflection calls on several cognitive functions that ultimately enhance learning and retention. “Retrieving knowledge and earlier training from memory, connecting these to new experiences, and visualizing and mentally rehearsing what you might do next time” is an example of the powerful array of conceptual activities triggered from reflective retrieval (16). The act of retrieving knowledge from memory makes it easier to call up in the future and makes learning more durable – it “sticks” far better than re-exposure to original source material.
Performance Measurement
Soft skills behavior change is hard to measure. But for clients committed to quantifying change, a learning journey solution can be designed with performance measurement in mind. In addition to our own, client assessment tools can be integrated where appropriate, affording opportunities to assess and test knowledge across all phases of the learning journey. Even lowstakes testing provides critical learning benefits. Feedback provided via formative assessments during learning experiences is a key element of mastery learning, allowing learners to assess progress and correct as needed.
Spaced Repetition
Many of the learning tenets listed above are maximized when they are repeated and spaced out over time. Ariel solutions are designed to take advantage of this, especially when programs can extend into the ‘Reflection & Reinforcement’ phase. Online modules, coaching, and mobile reflection and practice prompts can all be spaced out to capitalize on the cognitive benefits of reflection and retrieval, aiding in the implementation of practice and on-the-job application.
Conclusion
We often include this quote as part of workshop debriefs:
People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.
(Maya Angelou)
Our learning framework, conceptual models, and unique, performance-based experiential learning techniques allow learners to achieve behavior change through activities that allow them to trial behaviors in a safe environment. This approach empowers leaders, teams, and individuals to communicate clearly, professionally, and authentically, driving business results by helping them access the power of their personal presence for enhanced, authentic communication.
