17

Leading Practices: Dress Rehearsals for the Real Thing

It’s a funny thing, the more I practice the luckier I get.

——Arnold Palmer

With few exceptions the ability to learn how to do new things will only occur if one actually practices what’s being taught. That’s true whether the activity playing the violin, golfing, bike riding, or shooting free throws. To simply read a book, hear someone speak on one of these subjects, or do paper and pencil activities won’t do the trick. As Japan’s greatest ever baseball player, Sadaharu Oh, said, “Skill is improved by repetition. There’s no avoiding it.”¹ That learning principle underlies sayings such as “Practice makes perfect” and “You learn by doing.” The power of this principle is why swimming coaches get swimmers into the water and why football coaches don’t stop with chalk talks in the locker room. To successfully teach skills like these you need to build plenty of practice into the learning. Similarly, to help people develop skills like listening, cooperative problem solving, coaching, giving feedback, delivering impactful presentations, and selling, you need to provide opportunities for practice. In the first century BC, Publilius Syrus noted that, “practice is the best of all instructors.”²

Everything in dynamic training builds up to a practice or flows from it. The involvement activities, presentations, and demonstrations showing how to do what you are teaching are all preface. As noted in previous chapters, Components are the basic building blocks of dynamic training and the components of each skill development module are taught in the following sequence:

Involve Tell How Show How Practice Feedback Apply Evaluate

The first three components in this sequence, Involve, Tell How, and Show How, prepare the way for success in the fourth component, Practice. The sixth component, Apply, focuses on the transfer of learning—how to make good use of what was just practiced. The final component, Evaluate, enables the participant to judge how well (or how poorly) she mastered the skill being taught. Thus, Practice is the primary component of a skill-building module; every other component either builds up to it or flows from it.

Distinguishing Between Practices and Activities

Strange as it may seem, some people who are reasonably knowledgeable about training don’t differentiate between activities and practices. Tim, a training director who was savvy about the distinction, considered purchasing a training program and asked the person who recommended the program if skill practices were part of the course. The person responded, “Sure, more than 30 percent of the class time is spent in practices.” When studying the material, however, Tim realized that there were no skill practices in the workshop—the 30 percent of the so-called practice time was devoted to activities that generated interest in or knowledge about the topic but otherwise made no contribution to acquiring the skill. But the person recommending the course wasn’t being deceptive; he just thought that practices and activities were the same thing. It’s a fairly common misunderstanding, so we’ll take a moment to look at the similarities and the differences between activities and practices. Then we’ll describe a three-step process for leading practices effectively.

Similarities Between Practices and Activities

When led effectively, practices and activities have several characteristics in common:

• They have a specific purpose.

• They typically divide the whole group into subgroups.

• They have definite steps to be followed.

• They generate information for discussion.

• They employ debriefing to enhance learning.

When people who have not experienced skill training participate in a workshop where the actionable aspects of the class have the above characteristics, they assume they are in a skill development workshop. They may be in a skill development work-shop—but they may be in a workshop with activities but no practices. The difference in the potential for learning is enormous. Despite some similarities, there’s a major functional difference between activities and practices as well as some less weighty distinctions.

Differences between Practices and Activities

Activities are used to accomplish a variety of purposes within the workshop; by contrast, practices help participants develop a skill or other ability for use in their daily environment.

Many activities are primarily stimulants that can put more oomph into a low-energy period of a training event. Some activities are designed to increase participants’ motivation for learning what’s about to be taught. Others are designed to increase the understanding of a concept, or to provide an energizer when needed.

In stark contrast to practices, activities do not develop specific skills or abilities for use in daily situations. They don’t contribute directly to improving daily performance. There are other distinctions between practices and activities. Leading a skill practice normally requires giving more complex directions and providing for feedback in practices. Also, leading a practice usually requires considerably more time than leading an activity.

Dynamic workshop leaders use activities very selectively and very purposefully to advance the objectives of the workshop. Practices, by contrast, are the workhorses of every dynamic workshop. The following factors are involved in learning a new ability:

1. Cognitively understanding the new way of doing things

2. Breaking the current accustomed way

3. Developing the new ability or way of doing things

Three Characteristics of Successful Practices

For learning somewhat demanding abilities, there needs to be

• a sufficient amount of practice,

• deliberate practice, and

• a supportive learning environment.

A Sufficient Amount of Practice

It’s crucial for learning to include a sufficient number of practices in the workshop design as well as sufficient time for each practice. In a successful skill practice, learners not only develop the skill but also gain sufficient confidence to use it in their work situations. To use Mel Silberman and Carol Auerbach’s analogy, “Skill mastery is like the process of breaking in new shoes. At first it feels unnatural but, with enough wear, the shoes begin to feel comfortable. Confidence grows even more when participants master practices of increasing difficulty. Eventually they feel that they truly own the skill.”³

In our admittedly limited survey of skill development training programs, we find that frequently there’s insufficient time allocated to practice what’s being taught.

Avoid the Erosion of Practice Time

Even when sufficient time is allotted to practices in a workshop design, some of the time that is allotted for practice often gets chipped away in the course of a workshop day. As you’ve probably experienced, innumerable things can happen that can cause a workshop to fall behind schedule. Practices typically occur after the Involve, Tell How, and Show How components of a workshop; if the trainer’s time management is not highly disciplined during those components, she could be running behind schedule before getting to the practice components, and long-winded participants may have eaten up valuable time. Trainers often gain the time back by shortening or even totally eliminating one or more practices. The probable consequence of cutting practice time is that participants will not develop sufficient competence at what’s being taught to implement it in their everyday life, in which case the training is pointless. So one of the trainer’s most important contributions to effective learning is to prevent the erosion of practice time.

Here’s a good rule of thumb for trainers:

No matter how pressed you are for time, don’t trim a practice and don’t even think of eliminating one.

To prevent the erosion of practice time, it is helpful to establish milestones—key places in the workshop where you will arrive by a certain time. Furthermore, decide in advance where and how you can make up lost time if you get behind schedule.

Look for Optional Way to Gain Back Lost Time

Rather than invade practice time, you can often regain time with the least negative effect by condensing what’s said and done in the Involve and Tell How components of the next module (assuming you are not currently teaching the last module of the course).

Deliberate Practices

Repetition is a critical aspect of practice. For some people, however, practice sessions are a matter of rote repetition—they go through the motions of a practice but their minds are not fully engaged in the process. However, unthinking repetition rarely fosters improvement. Biologist Carla Hannaford reports that “mere repetition of a behavior doesn’t determine whether you learn it. Neural connections can be altered and grown only if there is full attention, focused interest on what we do.”⁴

The kind of practice that promotes learning is deliberate practice. (Deliberate practice is mindful of what it is doing.) It’s highly focused. Your attention is completely concentrated on what you are doing.

A Supportive Learning Environment

Making mistakes and learning from them is an integral part of developing new competences or improving existing ones. Learning flourishes when participants feel they’re in an accepting environment and that errors made while learning are a natural part of the improvement process.

A Sequence of Three Types of Practice

The following sequence of three types of practice enables participants to develop proficiency in an ability that’s somewhat challenging to learn:

Wagon Wheel Role Play Real Play

Our colleagues have found this to be an especially effective sequence of practices for skills training. The last of the three practices is a dry run for applying what’s being learned to a real situation in each participant’s work or personal life and has proven to be a powerful stimulus to transfer of learning.

Wagon Wheel Practices

Of the three types of practice, wagon wheel practices require the lowest level of skill use, and for that reason it is used first in this hierarchy of easiest to most challenging of these three types of skill practice. It can be used to teach just one part of a somewhat complex ability or a simple version of a more complicated capability. Even though it’s a rather elementary practice, some people struggle in this practice. So, during wagon wheel practices, some trainers display a chart with the reassuring message:

If at first you don’t succeed you’re running about average.⁵

A wagon wheel practice provides instantaneous feedback at the group level. In this method of practice, participants are seated in a semicircle or full circle—hence the name “wagon wheel.” The trainer stands in the middle of the circle and gives the directions for the skill practice. Here’s how a wagon wheel practice might go when teaching people how to handle a defensive response. The trainer, giving no context, makes a defensive statement, for example:

“No one told me I was supposed to do that.”

The first person in the circle practices using the kind of listening response she has just learned—one that’s geared to lowering the person’s defensiveness. After a short debriefing, the trainer turns to the next person and gives another defensive statement:

“How can you expect me to meet a deadline when Joe’s team didn’t provide me with the data I needed to finish the project?”

This participant then tries out the kind of reply that the class learned would usually reduce the other person’s defensiveness. A quick debriefing follows, and the trainer moves to the next person and delivers a third totally different defensive statement. And so on around the circle.

There are several benefits to having a wagon wheel practice prior to doing a role play or a real play:

• It’s a very efficient and effective learning tool. Participants observe a lot of ways of doing the skill reasonably correctly and they witness a number of mistakes to avoid.

• There’s a good likelihood that participants will succeed since, rather than use the skill for a whole conversation, they only have to concentrate on using it once.

• Participants are usually highly motivated to succeed since everyone else in the group will be watching them when it’s their turn.

When a response is way off target, the trainer can do a brief coaching intervention. However, if the trainer senses that the participant may be nervous about being taught in front of the group, she might provide a very brief amount of coaching and move on without asking the participant to give it another try. If the trainer thinks the participant is very close to getting it and is generally self-confident, she might decide to have him attempt it again. When everyone has had a turn, the trainer leads a large group debriefing.

Role Plays

Usually designed for dyads or triads, role plays are practice situations that are written prior to the training. They create feasible situations that have been customized to reflect the participants’ work lives. Roles are written for each person in the practice group.

The advantage of using a role play prior to using a real play is that role plays are hypothetical situations, removed just enough from the actual life experience of the participant that they are more impersonal and less complex than real life.

Real Plays—Dress Rehearsals

In real play practices, participants come up with an actual situation that they face at work or in some other aspect of their life in which it would be appropriate to use the ability being taught. Nothing is written except a summary on an easel pad of the steps that the skill user is to employ.

In the practice group (usually a dyad or triad) the skill user succinctly describes the real play situation. For example, the skill user has a difficult employee with whom she wants to have a performance improvement discussion. To help her partner in the real play react similarly to the way her employee would, she describes his concerns about the employee’s performance. She also tells her partner how she thinks the employee is likely to react, which provides the real play partner with tips on how to respond during the practice.

Since real plays are the most demanding of these three types of practice, they’re usually scheduled after a wagon wheel practice and role play practice. Real play practices provide a dry run for using a newly acquired skill to handle a somewhat challenging situation back at work or in one’s personal life. So, real plays make an important contribution to transferring learning from the workshop to the workplace. And a successful real play can be very motivational for applying the skill being taught.

How to Set Up Role Plays and Real Plays

You generally have two options regarding the number of people in a role play or real play—dyads (twosomes) or triads (threesomes).

When you set up practices using dyads, have each twosome decide who will be the skill user and who will be the receiver of the skills in the first of two role plays. The skill receiver will respond to the skill user and after the practice will provide feedback to the skill user. Then the trainer asks the dyad partners to switch roles for the next practice.

Triads are set up like dyads with the addition of an observer who, along with the receiver of the skills, provides feedback to the skill user. Triads often generate more learning than dyads but require considerably more time.

The Observer’s Role

The observer in a triad practice typically has four functions to perform:

1. Observe

a. The skill user’s use of the ability being taught

b. How the skill receiver is impacted by the way the ability is being used.

2. Write down what you observe. It’s difficult to provide accurate feedback if written notes haven’t been made. Most well designed workshops provide observer’s feedback worksheets.

3. Direct the feedback. Triad members generally are asked to give feedback in the following order:

a. Skill user

b. Skill receiver

c. Observer

4. Serve as time keeper.

An observer’s feedback worksheet should indicate the timing of the practice and the feedback sessions.

As an example, the following positioning and practice chart for a listening skills practice helps participants quickly see how to position themselves for the practice as well as who is to do what in each round of the practice.

Figure 17-1. Positioning, roles, and timing chart for a listening skills practice.

A Step-by-Step Process for Leading Role Plays and Real Plays

The steps for leading a skill practice are similar to those that we recommended for leading an activity. So this chapter will repeat some of what you learned in Chapter 5. We consider the repetition of these steps to be a plus since learning to effectively lead skill practices and activities is essential to successful training. And repetition provides a good assist to learning.

The major differences between leading activities and leading practices are in giving the directions and in providing targeted feedback in skill practices.

The following steps are used when leading either a role play or a real play:

1. Transition In
Very briefly bridge from what the group was doing to what they are about to do. For example:

You’ve heard a presentation on how to handle defensive responses and you’ve had a brief practice in which you gave one reflection to a defensive response. Now you’ll have an opportunity to do a longer, more challenging practice using a role play with a partner.

2. Purpose
Explain what people will get out of this practice. For example:

This practice is designed to increase your ability to keep your cool while handling argumentative or defensive responses that an individual might give when he’s receiving corrective feedback.

3. Preview
Give a succinct summary of what participants will be doing in the practice. For example:

You’ll be working in pairs for a total of twenty minutes during which you’d each get a chance to practice and receive feedback.

4. Directions
When engaging in a practice, participants usually need to know the following information in this order:

a. What they will be doing in the subgroups

b. The practice locations where they will do the practice

c. Who they will be doing it with

d. How they will do it

e. How much time they have

f. What materials (if any) they will use

g. The trainer’s role

    When the directions for a skill practice are lengthy or complex it’s advisable to post a prepared chart or distribute a handout with a summary of the instructions.

5. Observe/Guide
Let the group know that you’ll be walking around observing successes and difficulties and that you will not interrupt their work unless they absolutely need help.

6. Debriefing
Debriefing maximizes the learnings obtained from the practice. We recommend rereading Chapter 6 to help you heighten the learning that accrues from the practices you lead.

7. Conclude
This transition provides a summary of what was practiced and tells where we’re headed.

How to Give Directions for Role Plays and Real Plays

Here is an example of how to do step 4—giving directions when leading a skill practice using role plays or real plays (you present the same type of information when giving directions for either a role play or a real play).

Directions

(Ask a checking question and pause for possible responses.)

“The first round Skill Users please come up and take a Skill User Role, a Skill Receiver Role, and an Observer Work Sheet to distribute to your subgroup.”

(Pause)

“Everyone take a few minutes to read and think about your role.”

(Ask a checking question and pause for possible responses.)

“OK, go ahead and begin.”

Debrief in the large group for five minutes after each round.

Further Directions for Practices Using Real Plays

There are no written roles for real plays because the content of the real play comes from an actual life experience of the skill user. To set up a successful practice, it is important to provide the skill user with some guidance about the kinds of situations that would work well in this practice. When doing a real play, participants often think of the most difficult person, situation, or problem in their lives to use in this practice. But participants who are just beginning to learn these skills need to work with less challenging situations in order to be successful in their practice.

Here are some guidelines for selecting a real play situation that’s suitable for this type of practice:

• The situation should be of low to moderate difficulty.

• It should not involve anyone whom the skill user perceives as especially difficult to work with.

• It should be a current situation, not one from the past.

• It should not relate to a current or potential future interaction with a participant in this workshop.

Manage Feedback When Leading a Practice

After a role play or real play, feedback is given by the receiver of the skills and, when there is an observer, by the observer of the practice. Since a number of participants may not have well-developed feedback skills, it helps to provide some guidance before they jump into a feedback session. The main purpose of the guidance is to prevent an overload of criticism being dumped on someone who is just beginning to learn the skill she is practicing.

For this feedback you might ask the receiver of the skills to use objective, behavioral language to pinpoint:

• Two things the skill user did well

• One thing she could improve

If an observation checklist has been provided, feedback can be based on how the skill user did in relation to the items on the list.

Because giving specific feedback is so crucial to effective training, Chapter 18 provides more information on how to use this important tool during a workshop.

Practice Preparation Worksheets

In Appendix I you’ll find a Practice Worksheet to aid you in planning an effective practice session.