Liftology Ep 5: The Role of Reactivating in Learning

If you're in learning and development, and you're creating trainings for your top talent so they can acquire new skills and abilities, it would be wise to ask yourself, what kind of learning opportunities am I providing them with?

Think of the analogy of watering plants. Are you flooding your learners with information in a one-day training or a couple of half-day trainings and then just crossing your fingers that the learning sticks?

Or are you leveraging the principles of learning science so you can create a drip irrigation approach to learning? That might include something like a one-day training or a couple of half-day trainings initially, followed by providing your participants with a break or some rest before they revisit the learning through a series of interventions spaced out over a period of time to support the training’s key learning objectives.

The result would be an increase in the likelihood the learning sticks, new skills and abilities are acquired and performance improves.

As learning and development professionals, you have so much to offer your top talent. That said, if you're just creating one-off learning events, rather than designing full learning journeys, there may be a whole lot more you can be doing to create the conditions for better outcomes. When you design experiences to increase the potential that participant learning sticks over the long term, you are ensuring better outcomes for you and your team, the individual participants of your trainings, and your organization as a whole.