Learning and Development - The Profession of Transforming Lives

How I got into the profession of transforming lives (L&D) -

It all started with my first job after my post-graduation, I was tasked to lead a 12-member team and achieve the business goals (P&L). Until that moment I always thought training does not add any value and leadership is an inbuilt skill which cannot be thought. With my little exposure to organizing events in university days, I felt I could lead the team with my inbuilt leadership skills and achieve the business metrics. Weeks turned to months, months turned to a year, but I couldn't reach the target even for a single month, failed fabulously. Thanks to those fiascos which triggered me to do a self-introspection where I analyzed the causes and comprehended the huge gap in my erudition especially leadership skills. From that moment I started to read about leadership theories and explored the importance of learning.

In the subsequent year, I was fortunate enough to get an opportunity to lead a much larger team (30+) despite failing fabulously in the previous assignment. I handled the customer excellence team and the monetization team. When one of the team members was struggling to achieve the target, I went with him and thought him the power of consultative selling. Similarly, I took a brief session on the influence of empathy in customer satisfaction. All these seem to be very trivial, but such acts had a positive impact on their performance. Those instances made me realize the incredible impact of learning in achieving business goals. I tried and implemented various leadership theories like Situational Leadership, Inspirational Leadership, Six Thinking Hats etc. I devised and delivered various functional and behavioral skills programs based on various adult learning principles like Kolb’s, Gagne's Instruction, Bloom's Taxonomy, VARK, Learning Style Inventory etc. Everything I experimented with the team and it eventually worked out very well. And not to forget that until a few months earlier, I was loathing all these learning theories and in fact, I can vividly remember how I restricted my team from attending the generic communication skills learning session conducted by the HR team which I regret even today. That may sound like Hitlerism, but I was under immense pressure to achieve the business numbers. I started to focus more on learning needs, did the competency mapping, identified the skill gaps, devised programs and facilitated them as well. Which had a huge impact on business outcomes and later I was given an the complete responsibility of expanding the learning programs to the entire organization. That was the time I turned into a learning evangelist.

A doctor saves the life of a patient , a L&D professional saves the business and enables growth.

One thing I really relished during this voyage was the overwhelming response of the team, a sense of gratitude feeling which they expressed can’t match any monetary benefits. When I had to move out of the organization I could empathize with the team’s emotional outbursts, that was a phenomenal memory indeed. From then onward I moved completely into the profession of developing people which never enervates me despite various hindrances. It does come with challenges like any other profession. The primary challenge is getting the buy-in of the stakeholders right from the participants to the business leaders, secondly the business expectations in a short time span. Persuading them is a tough task but once if we can portray the impact and convince them then they will treat you like monarchs.

Ironically in the later part of my career, I explored various tools for helping teams which I tested on myself initially and contented with the results. Like my MBTI personality is ENFJ a synonym of trainer/coach. In the Belbin Team roles, my top role was ‘coordinator’ which is again a people developing talent. In DiSC, I got a High “I” again an influencing type to enhance people development, and Gallup top strengths were learner and developer which again implies the people development talent. I use my own example to get a nod from the stakeholders and such tools help in exploring self and teams. Especially in leadership training area, these tools play a significant role indeed.

In my opinion, learning workshops are quite similar to a movie, though the expectation from a movie is entertainment whereas a learning workshop is empowerment.

Today, being a full-fledged learning and development professional I use a variety of learning enablers such Participative facilitation, LEGO, Theater Andragogy, Design Thinking, Coaching, Gamification, Story Cubes etc to provide a fun-filled learning. In my opinion, learning workshops are quite similar to a movie, though the expectation from a movie is entertainment whereas a learning workshop is empowerment. For a movie to be successful it has to engage the audience throughout, similarly for a successful learning program participant’s engagement is vital. Even a few minutes of boredom or an activity which is not related to their learning need could spoil the session. For a 2 hour movie the team has to work over 2 years, similarly a 2 hour training intervention requires 20 days of preparation. I use various methods to sustain the engagement and even in self-paced e-learning programs, I ensure the high engagement prevails. I could cite an example here, I facilitated a customer service excellence program and one of the key skill was active listening. I asked the participants to rate their listening skill and most of them rated above 8 out of 10. To make them aware about their real skill level I made them take a listening test where eventually none crossed above 5 out of 10. With several practice sessions, some of them reached a good score after 3 months. Then we had a refresher session, where I devised a very simple game, like the members will form a circle and one person will say “front” back” “left” “right” and the entire team has to move accordingly, and a twist was they have to say the opposite and move as per the initial member’s wordings. For example, if a person says ‘front’, everyone will say ‘front’ but move back. Whoever misses will be the loser and comes out of the game. We had two winners and those two were the same winners of the listening test assessment as well. This is just one example how learning could be made in an entertaining way, it could be done from a simple communication skill to high-level leadership skills.

The reason I wrote this blog is to express my gratitude towards the participants who had undergone my interventions trusting on my words and gave their full commitments. Also, I think business leaders should try to explore more learning options which will eventually help to reach their desired goals. Certainly, I can empathize with the situation of business leaders as I had handled that hat before, where business goals are the key focus. If we have the patience to enable the learning culture I am sure the business goals will be reached much easier and faster. More than that, the employees will be much gratified and offer their 100% efforts. 

For a doctor it is saving lives, for an engineer, it is to create safe buildings or products, for an L&D professional it is developing people which will enhance their career forever.In a corporate scenario, an L&D consultant plays the role equaling to a doctor.

For a doctor, every patient requires a unique solution similarly every learner needs unique learning methodology. A doctor saves the life of a patient , a L&D professional saves the business and enables growth. Proud to be in such a prodigious profession of transforming lives.

Vishnu Vardhan, is a Gallup accredited strengths coach certified in Hogan Assessments, Belbin Team Roles, Situational Leadership II, Design Thinking, Franklin Covey's 7 Habits, CPTP, CLDM, CODIP, CPLP, and Instructional Designing. Addition to being an L&OD specialist he speaks and facilitates interventions on leadership, organizational culture and people development. He does theatrics based interventions as well.