Adult Learning - Part II

"Allow people to think instead of reacting"

 Couple of weeks back I facilitated a training program for group of young & energetic engineers. This time during one of the session we got ourselves in to an argument. For some time, the debate sounded more like a fish market :-) Surprisingly it did not end up to be a mean and biased attack on each other. At the end of all this, two things occurred to me. First, learning is a 2-way conversation and healthy conflicts though uncomfortable helped to learn better. Also enabled us to calibrate ourselves closer to reality and be practical and rational.

Second all the diverse thoughts were put up on the table after careful consideration. They were not just random thoughts based out of nothing. Per my experience training room always bring diverse minds together to think creatively. Building trust and openness turns learning to a learning experience.

 As a trainer I like to observe and actively listen. I also understood the fact that be open to give in order to receive. That makes learning fun. In one of the pod cast by Simon Sinek he spoke about mentor-ship and this is what he said..

 Mentor-ship is not something you ask somebody to do, like will you be my friend. When you find somebody you share values, belief, spend time, understand, open up and start trusting each other. True mentor-ship is not like one way street, it's not about one person only giving advice to other. Both people are showing up to give and both people are showing up to learn. So true and trust you will find this interesting.