The value of asking - my learning from working with people with disabilities

Rachel Burnham writes: A couple of weeks ago the #LDInsight twitterchat explored how we work with people with disabilities on learning.  Many of the participants identified that this was not something that they had experienced very often within their professional careers.   My experience is rather different and looking back I realise that I have fairly regularly worked with colleagues and clients with disabilities.   These have included people with visual and hearing impairments, people with mobility problems and people with dyslexia, which takes many forms.  Actually, the disability comes from the environment, a failure to adapt the learning programme and our attitudes, rather than the condition itself. 

I thought it might be useful to share two key learning points from my experience.  I make no claims to expertise and I am definitely still learning about how to more effectively make learning accessible to all.

My first learning point, came from very early in my time in training – it definitely was training then!   I think it was only about the third or fourth programme that I had been involved in delivering and I’ve never forgotten it. We were working with an external client on a two day programme.   To our surprise one of the participants in the programme was blind and we hadn’t known that until we turned up.  I remember feeling so embarrassed that we hadn’t known in advance and also feeling that we had been dropped in it by the client.   When we reflected afterwards, myself and my co-trainer, realised that actually we had never asked about whether any of the participants had any particular needs.  We had just assumed that they wouldn’t.

So we changed our practice and from then on always asked as part of the commissioning and identification of learning needs. 

I think it is worth building this kind of prompt into our processes and practices – so I ask this when I am talking with stakeholders or I might build it into an application form or discussion with individual learners.   I think this sits alongside asking about dietary requirements and in an ideal world shouldn’t really be any more difficult to ask and answer than that.  I know that not everyone wants to share this information – I think by including it in, we start to build an environment in which it is OK to be open and explicit about our individual needs.   

I know I am influenced in this by my personal experiences of disability – for example since I became diabetic, dietary requirements and specific needs go hand in hand.  As a child measles damaged my hearing, which in turn affected my schooling for a short while, until I was able to have some treatment.  I am comfortable with being open about this – but then I work for myself.  And I know that there are many disabilities that are perceived far more negatively than diabetes.

So my first piece of learning is  to ask the question.

My second piece of learning is that when it comes to making adaptations to enable an individual with a disability to participate in a learning experience, it is always worth speaking with that person and asking for their advice.  Don’t make assumptions or work from generalisations.   Many disabilities impact on people very differently.  In my experience, it is always worth talking to the individual directly - they are an expert on their needs and have usually discovered what works for them best.

I was once tasked with organising an induction/initial training programme for an individual joining one of our regional teams, in an office at some distance from where I was based.  Normally, their manager would have had this responsibility, but they had just moved onto to a new role outside of the organisation themselves.   The challenge was that we had severe budget restrictions at the time, so I had no money to travel in person to the location and this was so long ago that there was no online way of communicating in our organisation (hard to imagine now!) and so I needed to mostly work with her over the phone.  And she was deaf.  So, I contacted her before she formally started and asked her advice.  She was able to suggest the type of modified phone that would best suit her, where to order in from and how to get funding to do this!  I asked her what else would help her induction and she made a number of other practical suggestions including on office layout, as she used lip-reading and so it was important that she could easily see her work colleagues when they were speaking together.  I was so glad I asked her advice!!

So, my second piece of learning is to ask the individual concerned for their advice.   In fact, I find I increasingly ask the question of all the people I work with ‘What can I do to make this learning experience work better for you?’

Most L&D professionals I come into contact with are keen for learning to be accessible for all.  I suspect as a profession that we have not done as much as we could to make this a reality.  Time for a change.

Rachel Burnham

1/9/16

Burnham L & D Consultancy helps L&D professionals become even more effective.  I am particularly interested in blended learning, the uses of social media for learning, evaluation and anything that improves the impact of learning on performance. 

'Running, Roaring, Each Step Soaring'

Rachel Burnham writes: ‘Running, roaring, each step soaring’ comes from the wonderful lyrics to ‘Milestones’ – the tune is of course by trumpeter Miles Davis and the lyric is by Jim Britt.  

Like many people over the Christmas period, I have taken the opportunity to do some well-needed clearing out of cupboards and shelves – I’m rather embarrassed to admit that I have managed to fill 5 black sacks just from my wardrobe and chest of drawers alone!  As usual I listened to music whilst doing this and in the process heard this track again, reminding me of a blog that I had begun but never finished.  About 18 months ago, @sukhpabial set up a Carnival of Blogs on a theme relating to ‘steps’ or something on those lines  – and I planned to write a piece based on this lyric, but I got stuck, abandoned the idea and wrote something else instead.

But now I can’t get these lyrics and this tune out of my head and so I simply have to write about them.  Here’s a link to Mark Murphy singing ‘Milestones’ - why not have a listen?

I like the urgency suggested by the lyric, the emphasis on grasping the time right now, the call to action ‘Pick up your speed, it’s what you need, you can’t stay in bed!’ and the personal challenge ‘Hear that voice now, it’s your choice now’.  All of which feel right for the start of a New Year and for a profession that is under challenge and has so much to shape up to face. 

• Are we too focused on learning and insufficiently focused on impacting on performance in the workplace?
• Too many of us are still delivering only using face to face training methods and often that not done well with too much emphasis on presentation of information.
• Insufficiently agile to meet the challenges of how people actually learn at work.
• Do we have the skills, particularly the digital skills we need for the future?
• And much more!

Miles Davis is well-known for his continual ability, throughout his long career as a jazz musician, to keep refreshing and reinventing his music, changing direction and sound.  

Jazz has taken many forms since the early 20^th century and writers have commented how each fresh expression of jazz seems to have come from a revisiting and appreciation of the blues, reinterpreting this in new contexts and for each new age. So tradition can be a source of strength and innovation.  In jazz, I think there are only two constants – some element of improvisation and being polyrhythmic – everything else is up for grabs.

In L&D we need to choose what to hold on to and what to let go.  What to consciously adopt and what to consciously adapt.  What is at the core of our profession and what needs reinventing.  There is plenty of advice around to guide this thinking, but in the end each L&Der has to make their own choice and take their own action.

The singer, Mark Murphy, is one of my all-time favourite singers.  I’d love to say that I first heard him sing in a jazz club in New York on Fifty-Second Street, or in Chicago or New Orleans or even at Ronnie Scott’s in London, but the truth is that I first heard him sing in a small Friday night once a month jazz club in a basement of a pub in Stockport.   From the moment I heard him sing I was hooked on jazz.  Life changing moments can take place in the day to day of life in Stockport, Barnsley, Dundee, Tottenham, Swansea or Burnham-on-Sea.

So, whether your L&D life is based in Stockport or some other place – in the words of the song ‘Hear that voice now, it’s your choice now.’ And start working out what your L&D practice needs to be for the future – what to hold on to and what to do differently.

Rachel Burnham

3/1/16

Burnham L & D Consultancy helps L&D professionals become even more effective.  I am particularly interested in blended learning, the uses of social media for learning, evaluation and anything that improves the impact of learning on performance.

Follow me on Twitter @BurnhamLandD

Sea-Change at CIPD L&D Show 2014?

Sea-Change at CIPD L&D Show 2014?

Rachel Burnham writes:  Reading the multiple blogs and Tweets arising from last week’s CIPD L&D Show is a bit like suddenly developing the compound eyes of an insect, in which the world is seen through many lens all at once, each with a slightly differing view.  At least, that’s what my experience has been of this year’s show.

Each person attending has their own take on the event, in part because we all participated in a different mix of sessions, spoke with different people, engaged with a variety of stall-holders in the exhibition, read different tweets and also brought with us our own experiences & particular biases.  We each have our own tale to tell.

And telling them we have been.  There have been blogs which reported and reflected upon sessions within the main conference – here’s Ian Pettigrew’s live blog on ‘Creating a New Generation of Trustworthy Leaders’ from the first day of the conference http://kfcoa.ch/PQe91s ; Phil Wilcox’s blog on a session on MOOCs https://e3ctc.wordpress.com/2014/04/30/i-like-to-mooc-it-mooc-it/   and from the 2^nd day Phil Wilcox’s blog on the enthusiastically received session about Google http://e3ctc.wordpress.com/2014/05/01/letting-go-of-control/ Blogs and Tweets aplenty about the shorter free sessions in the exhibition hall.  And blogs which have reflected on how we can improve future shows to better enable learning and model effective learning practice to meet diverse needs – from Helen Amery http://wp.me/p45I4E-8O .

My highlight was the short session led by Andy Lancaster, the new L&D person for CIPD and Ruth Stuart, responsible for the L&D research agenda, also at CIPD.  Together they presented a whirl-wind tour of the new developments taking place at the CIPD, which are making good the noises made by Peter Cheese over the last year in relation to L&D.  At long last there are changes taking place in CIPD in how L&D is viewed.   Ruth Stuart reported on the new emphasis being place on research into L&D.   Already reports are available from CIPD on: the real experiences of middle managers; skills policy and of course the Annual Learning & Talent Development survey.  Future research includes more on neuroscience & learning; volunteering as an L&D method; the future of L&D and new insights into change management.   There will be opportunities for L&D practitioners to engage with this research agenda, so do take up these opportunities.

Other exciting initiatives which Andy Lancaster reported on included the new ‘Leaders in Learning’ network to bring together people engaged in L&D.  He is hoping to develop networks outside of London and this is likely to include Scotland, Manchester and the West Country.  The aim is for these networks to be about involvement, so that CIPD moves on from its traditional ‘broadcasting’ approach to a more ‘engaged with practitioners’ approach.  New partnership working with other organisations such as ‘Towards Maturity’ is planned and you may already have noticed that ‘People Management’ is including more L&D focused articles than previously.   

It feels like the door is unlocked and that there is a real opportunity for those in L&D to push against this.  I feel more hope and optimism about the L&D agenda with CIPD from this short session, than at any time in my career previously.   We mustn’t let this opportunity slip by.

Rachel Burnham

5^th May 2014

Burnham L & D Consultancy specialises in the development of L&D professionals, blended learning and evaluation

Follow me on Twitter @BurnhamLandD

You say 'attendee', I say 'participant'

You say ‘attendee’, I say ‘participant’

Rachel Burnham writes: I recently read an interesting article all about how you could make use of exciting new technology to make your L&D sessions more interactive.  It was full of examples of how this could be done.

What struck me the most though, was the way the author referred to the learners in these sessions.   The term used was ‘attendees’.   And that got me thinking about the language we use to refer to learners and what this says about our mindset as L&D practitioners.

There are lots of different terms that we can use to refer to learners: participants, delegates, audience and so on.   Each term comes with a slightly different connotation.  Each suggests a differing level of involvement and responsibility for what happens.   Each suggests a different relationship with the learning and with those organising the learning.  Each might even suggest different ideas of what success for this L&D activity looks like. 

You can put these terms onto a sliding scale.

Attendee        Audience        Participant        Collaborator/                                                                     Fellow Learner

Consider what each of these terms means to you.   With ‘attendee’ I’m immediately focused on physical presence, issues of attendance and crudely ‘bums on seats’.  There is no emphasis on the learner doing anything but turning up!  

With ‘audience’ it’s a little different – I’m immediately thinking about listening, being an appreciative or good audience and responding to the ‘lecturer’ or ‘presenter’ and their humour, stories and information.  I suspect that for many of us the picture includes an effective presentation, with ‘Powerpoint’ or lets be radical perhaps even ‘Prezi’.  The role of the learner is still fairly passive and based on receiving from someone who’s considered to be ‘an expert’ or at least an expert speaker.  And in this situation, the role of the L&D professional can sometimes feel more akin to being an entertainer, than a facilitator of learning.

Moving along, ‘participant’ feels a lot more comfortable to me.   This is probably the term I use most readily.  It brings to mind learners actively engaged in the learning process, discussing, sharing ideas, asking questions, moving around the room, doing lots of activities in many different formats.  And identifying their own learning from these activities.

I found it a lot more challenging to identify a term for the fourth point on this scale.  Two came to mind – ‘Collaborator’ and ‘Fellow Learner’ both of which pick up on the shared responsibility and ownership of the learning process and content.   At this end of the scale, it is harder to pick out who has the expertise and this may be much more fluid within a single L&D activity.   The learning here may be much more exploratory and open ended than with the previous points on the scale. As a facilitator of learning this feels both exciting and can also feel a little scary!

If we genuinely want to make our L&D sessions and in fact all our L&D activities, as effective as possible in terms of impacting on performance in the workplace, then we need to make them more interactive and learner-centred. So a good starting point is to change is the way we think and speak of learners.  This is our key technology, though perhaps not the easiest to change!

I thought I would share some of my thoughts around this subject with you.  They are very much first thoughts and I’d be very interested in your responses to these points.  Please do add your comments to this blog.

Rachel Burnham

1 August 2013

Burnham L & D Consultancy specialises in the development of L&D professionals, blended learning and evaluation

Follow me on Twitter @BurnhamLandD