3 things to ask yourself about self-paced learning

Generally when you’re working in a corporate, your onboarding will involve some e-Learning. You'll usually be automatically registered for it because it's often related to workplace process or policy (such as Work Health and Safety) or compliance (such as in a Financial Services company it might be Anti-Money Laundering, Fraud and Corruption so they can show everyone got trained.  The e-Learning might include some information, definitions, scenarios, and perhaps a 10-question quiz or 3-question multiple choice. A few savvy ones have some interactivity, and you usually have to do it in all one sitting or you lose your progress. And you might have to do one or all of the modules again each quarter or year. How you get people to complete e-Learning is the “stick” - the threat of punishment or reprimand or being benched if you haven’t completed the training, as usually managers get the report and prompts to ensure their staff complete it by the deadline.

Self-paced training for transformation and change can be a completely different kettle of fish and you could and should change your approach. No matter what the training - you need to make it desirable, you need to make people want to do it, and you need to motivate on the positive (the “carrot” of knowledge, skill and personal transformation) rather than the negative “stick”.

So here’s 3 questions you can ask yourself when you’re developing self-paced training for your next transformation or change:

• Question 1: How can I make it desirable to start?
• Question 2: How can I make it feel achievable to continue?
• Question 3: How can I encourage completion?

I considered all three of these questions when I designed and built my Leading Successful Change program, because the 6 weeks of course modules are self-paced and can be done from anywhere in the world, at any time. So let me share some examples of how I leveraged each question above to make completing LSC an enjoyable experience for students:

Question 1: How can I make it desirable to start?

Whenever I talk about LSC or launch it, I make sure my messaging is very inspiring and that it would be exciting to be part of it. LSC is a filtering process - those who register already have a level of internal motivation to learn the life-changing content and it’s their choice to join. Here’s where so much Change Management is lacking - they just don’t bring a marketing campaign to the change with buzz and hype and a consistent brand and message and teaser videos and testimonial success stories and more. So maybe for your self-paced learning, you run an exclusive pilot and gather these marketing assets and use those to help launch to the rest of the team or organisation.

Question 2: How can I make it feel achievable to continue?

With Leading Successful Change, the modules are dripped each week so you can focus on one module at a time rather than feeling like you’ve got to do all of it in one sitting like with e-Learning. Then, I’ve broken each of the 6 weekly modules into 5 topics and each topic has video lessons that are on average 3-10 minutes long. In Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP), we call this “chunking” and it’s an amazing way to pace people through a big or long transformation that might otherwise have felt overwhelming. Learning bites also help with knowledge retention rather than trying to cram a week’s worth of learning in one sitting. You get an email to let you know a new module is released and a map with an overview of the module so you know what topics you’ll be stepping through and the tools you’ll learn and practice. And there’s a community that helps to remind you that you have support at any time and can share and ask questions along the way. And finally - I’ve kept it short. It’s just 6 weeks, not 8 weeks or 10 weeks or 12 weeks or heaven forbid 4 years. If we want to keep momentum going we need to be able to complete and start using the tools and getting success with them as soon as possible. 6 weeks is doable - it’s just a little longer than a month with a clear start and finish so it doesn’t stay as an open loop in people’s psychology.

Question 3: How can I encourage completion?

Having a Marketing background, I’ve known the power of gamification on our psychology for donkeys’ years. Like any game with a score and levels, or even the gold stars we got at school - we love gamification even when there's no financial value attached to it. We like the recognition, we like the reward, the levelling up, the increased challenge, and it keeps us coming back for more - just like any customer rewards or loyalty program. In LSC, your progress is ticked and tracked across both desktop and mobile app, so you can switch seamlessly between devices. It lets you know how many lessons are completed and how many are left to go so you feel like you’re making progress and some of my students find it super effective to figure out what percentage of the way they are through haha (which I do myself when swimming laps!). And I’ve totally used this in my Change work - for one consulting client we created personalised checklists of training activities they’d need to complete based on their role and individual tasks, so they had something to print off and tick off. Monitoring progress, rewarding behaviour, incentivising, giving people levels up or points is so powerful when it comes from Marketing, there’s no reason not to bring into Change. Then there’s the free monthly Coaching Calls which, while not strictly self-paced, do offer that little boost of encouragement and energy and camaraderie from me and the other LSC members to keep motivation strong and a little accountability in the wings.

Psychology doesn’t change

Any and all of these ideas and tactics can totally be used in your Change work and we need to - because unlike LSC, often the training that’s assigned for a change isn’t necessarily what a team member opted in of their own free will for. But the good news is: people's psychology doesn't change. You can use the same techniques and concepts in a lot of different ways. And that's what Change is all about. It's transforming people from the inside out. And when you internally motivate people to shift and transform, you end up with better commitment, follow-through and completion rates.

Want to experience these self-paced learning inspirations, triggers and motivators yourself? Come join Leading Successful Change and let me help you find a life of flexibility, freedom, financial abundance and fulfillment by building the confidence to lead change end-to-end. 

The EOFY Payment Plan Special for my LSC Program will be ending 28 June 2024, so if you’ve been thinking about making the move to Change or stepping up in your change career, take advantage of this special opportunity to join LSC before the end of financial year. 

CLICK HERE to join Leading Successful Change with the EOFY Payment Plan Special. 

Lata xx