Features

Published January 2008

The Power of Pull

Charlie Gillette

You can push corporate training attendees toward knowledge, but that doesn’t mean they’ll learn. When I started college many years ago, one of the things that surprised me was that the professors didn’t take class attendance. Wow, I thought, the teacher doesn’t care if I’m here, so I don’t have to go. I can sleep in if I want. College is going to be fun!

Needless to say, my excitement over this newfound freedom was short lived, and I was soon attending biology and calculus every day. Why? Because I was terrified of failing.

Fear is a tremendously effective motivator for a 19-year-old, and I didn’t fail. But while the fear of failing pushed me toward a passing grade, it was not the most effective way to learn.

Much has changed since my college days, but some things haven’t. One is that humans don’t like to be pushed in any form. As the field of learning evolves, we’re gaining more insight into the optimal ways humans absorb information, and pushing it at them isn’t one of them.

When Push Comes to Shove
In college, fear pushed me to pass biology. In the corporate world, fear comes to work daily, too. Salespeople might be fearful of not hitting quota because they are unfamiliar with a new product line and can’t sell it effectively. New employees might be fearful of not performing and losing their jobs because they’re having difficulty mastering the corporate body of knowledge they need to do it properly.

Push methods of learning can’t meet the needs of employees, and if you can’t meet their needs, you can’t train them. Push implies that an employee isn’t doing the job right. Push meets the needs of the organization requiring it, not the needs of the person acquiring it. Push supplies information that is standardized, not specialized, for what needs to be learned. Push — whether with reminders or mandates — takes away the employee’s feeling of empowerment.

When you’re pushed, you feel fear and you resist. When you resist, you don’t learn, you shut down.

The Power of Pull
Imagine walking by a bakery and encountering the tantalizing smell of your favorite cookie being baked. It would be almost impossible to resist going in and partaking. Learning can, and should, present the same attraction for learners. Ideally, it should be irresistible.

While fear pushed me to pass freshman biology and calculus, I didn’t pass by very much, and I enjoyed them very little. When I look back at the classes where I did well, each somehow pulled me toward success, demonstrated how helpful it would ultimately be for me or empowered me in some way. That kind of motivation is always more effective than being pushed by fear.

Pull learning helps employees unconsciously acquire a secondary skill by teaching them flexibility and helping them to proactively respond to the ever-changing landscape of the modern marketplace. Instead of the force mentality of push, the rewards of learning become an ever-stronger pull. There are highly effective methods that can help learning become a pull experience, including effective delivery of the right content and ensuring that the needs of the learners are taken into account on multiple levels. Here are some innovative ideas on how to pull employees into corporate training.

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Sips of Knowledge at E. & J. Gallo Winery

Charlie Gillette

E. & J. Gallo Winery had the classic sales education problem � ensuring its employees were knowledgeable about its products.

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