Puppy Parallels – important reminders about training and development

As one of Dillon’s six core values, Continuous Development is frequently front of mind and very important to me. Over the past two months however, training and development have become an even greater focus of mine. In fact, it is something I now engage in every day. Well, to be clear, every morning, every day, and every night—as I attempt to train Coco, our four-month-old Golden Doodle puppy. There always seems to be something new to teach her.

I'm very much enjoying my time with Coco and we have made slow but steady progress with her training. Patience, understanding, and having reasonable expectations have each played an important role in our success to date.?

As I recently shared in a Monday Message to the Dillon team, I can’t help but notice some interesting parallels to learning and development in business. When we are helping people develop new skills or take on new roles, we also need to have reasonable expectations, show patience, and be understanding.

I believe there are three key, interrelated conditions critical for learning and development:

1. Time and space to concentrate/focus:?Pick your teaching moments

2. Physical and emotional health and safety:?Create a safe space for learning

3. Sense of belonging, connectedness and support:?Invest in the development of others - the best way to learn is to teach

?1.?Pick your teaching moments

Training can be challenging when Coco is excited and running around the backyard. The times during the day when she's settled and focused definitely create more effective teaching moments.

In business, it is important for us to be thoughtful when choosing the time and space to teach and provide feedback. For example: if a team is really scrambling to get a big proposal submitted on time, attempting to provide feedback and teaching during the last couple hours before submission about how they might have planned better would not likely result in much learning. That isn't the teaching moment. Nor would it be an hour after they find out that the proposal wasn't accepted because it was late. Instead, the best time to provide feedback and learning would probably a few days later, after they’ve had the opportunity to recover and reset.

2.?Create a safe space for learning

My wife and I were walking Coco one evening and working on getting her not to pull on the leash. We took a new route with a much busier intersection than Coco had ever experienced before and she got scared. She was shaking and we could tell that she just wanted out of there. It definitely wasn't the time to try and correct her leash pulling.

There are many examples of how this might come into play in a work setting. If someone is working at a height without a proper fall arrest system, you don't yell at them. Instead, you calmly ask them to come down for a chat. In the same way, you don’t tell someone that their career depends on the success of the new task they are in the middle of, or allude to other risks or penalties if they are unsuccessful in the task. While it is important to explain why work is important and meaningful, adding undo pressure is not conducive to learning, or to success.

3. Invest in the development of others - the best way to learn is to teach

It has been over 20 years since my last puppy, so I've been doing a lot of reading and watching a lot of YouTube videos to develop some puppy training techniques of my own. Techniques I hope to pass on to friends and family one day.

I'm a strong believer that if you want someone to truly understand something, ask them to explain it to someone else. I know that I’ve learned the most through teaching others. It is very rewarding when you observe the success of the people you have invested your time to develop. This also applies to my puppy training. I did a victory dance when Coco first started ringing the bell on the door to go out...those small victories are very rewarding.??

When others understand that you are truly interested in their success, learning and development goes to the next level. When they know they are supported, when you share both their successes and their failures, it creates that truly safe space in which to provide thoughtful and powerful teaching moments.

Sometimes we can lose sight of the fact that it takes time for everyone to develop, even leaders and managers.?A little patience, understanding and support can go a long way.

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Sean Hanlon is CEO of?Dillon Consulting, a proudly Canadian, employee-owned professional consulting firm specializing in planning, engineering, environmental science and management.?Dillon Consulting?partners with clients to provide committed, collaborative and inventive solutions to complex, multi-faceted projects.