How Managers Impact Learning Transfer

In this episode, Jason Davis is joined by Fergal Connolly, host of the Learning Transfer Radio Podcast, as they discuss learning transfer and why managers must understand their impact on the learning process.

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Full episode transcript:

Jason Davis  0:09  
Welcome to Lead Smarter Not Harder. Your stop for how to stand out as a leader. I'm your host, Jason Davis. And I'm really excited about this episode as it's been in the works for quite some time and we finally got our schedules to line up. In this episode, I'm joined by Fergal Connelly, host of the Learning Transfer Radio podcast as we talk about, you guessed it, learning transfer. If you're not familiar learning transfer is the ability to successfully apply what was learned in training to a job. In this conversation, Fergal does a great job of walking us through why learning transfer is important, where managers struggle when it comes to learning transfer. And he gives three suggestions for managers to better support learning transfer with their teams. Please remember to rate and review the show as it helps us to reach a wider audience. I greatly appreciate the support. And with that, let's go

Alright, well Joining me today is Fergal Connolly who is currently a learning consultant in the technology industry. However, Fergal earned his Bachelor of Science and Applied Psychology from Dún Laoghaire Institute of Art Design and Technology, then went on to earn his Master's in Education and Training Management from Dublin City University. Fergal is also the host of Learning Transfer Radio, radio, a podcast 100% focused on learning transfer, and turning learning into improved performance. Fergal, thanks for joining the show. And welcome.

Fergal Connolly  1:37  
Jason, thank you so much for having me. And thank you for that intro.

Jason Davis  1:41  
Absolutely. So you sound like the right person for us to talk to you on this topic. So tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do.

Fergal Connolly  1:50  
Sure thing, so I've got about 10 years' experience in l&d. I've worked across the spectrum of different roles. I've worked in training, delivery, training, facilitation, learning design, and I'm currently in learning consultancy. I like you mentioned, I've got a master's in education also a bachelor's degree in psychology. And my area is the topic of learning transfer. So really understanding what truly influences people to take what's learned in a training environment and turn that into improve performance, because that's what every l&d initiative is designed to do. But as we're going to get into this podcast, you know, we're not that super-effective at doing that. So that's my area of expertise, I created the Learn transfer radio podcast, I also wrote several articles on this topic, as well. I've spoken at a few events this year on this topic. And also, I'm delighted to join this podcast, again to speak about this topic, and why don't do these things. And it's basically to spread awareness of learning transfer. It's not a topic that you can easily go into Google and buy books on and that kind of thing. It's still not a topic that I feel is representative enough in the world of l&d. So, I'm here to kind of signal losing this as much as I possibly can. And trying to thank you, for having me here to discuss this, and how managers can play a role in learning transfer.

Jason Davis  3:19  
I appreciated how you brought up spreading awareness around learning, transfer, and kind of ensuring that that transfer is taking place. I think we all know and understand training, learning is important. You know, we must learn new jobs, new skills, things like that. But then really understanding and evaluating the transfer or what is taking place from, you know, facilitator or content to individual and is that being captured? I think that's for me, and in my experience is somewhat of an afterthought. You know, when you're when you get into a design conversation, business leaders, stakeholders come to you with a problem. And it's like, hey, use this training to fix this problem and not necessarily so much concerned about, well, six months later, did we fix the problem? Do you see a similar kind of activity in this space in your work?

Fergal Connolly  4:13  
Absolutely. I think, you know, it's a massive issue in l&d and workplace in the workplace overall. We spend a lot of money on l&d activities, there's a massive amount of money like billions, billions of dollars are spent every year on trying to help people to improve today's l&d initiatives. But really, we're not that great at enabling learning transfer, and some of the research out there suggests that only 10 to 20% of all l&d activities lead to transfer. So that is a huge, huge issue. It's why I'm passionate about this topic. It's why I'm excited to be here to talk to you today.

Jason Davis  4:53  
Yeah, and that's and that's awesome. I didn't know that it was so low in the sense of that 10 to 30% of actually leading to 10 learning transfer and you know, so that looks like getting it in the other way. That's a lot of wasted time in a training event or a classroom or you know, spent in a course, right?

Fergal Connolly  5:13  
Absolutely. It's when you think about all the time that you, as a manager, have spent attending training, or you've sent your team, to join a training to make them better at something, to think that only 10% of that time is well used. It's, you know, it, it that's, that's why we're, that's why we're here, that's why we're having this discussion, you know, we need really to improve on that metric. Because learning and training development can be so much more effective. And we can be that kind of strategic partner, with employees and with managers to develop employees so much more effectively. There's a lot of research out there on this topic, which I'm happy to dive into with you today, Jason. And there's been over 100 years. But what I think might be useful would be to maybe begin, let's level set on what exactly we're talking about here with learning transfer. So to give you the academic definition, learning transfer is the degree to which a trainee so whenever employees take what's learned in training, invention, intervention and apply that learning in an on the job setting, it's applying what you've learned, or it's turning learning into action so that it has the goal of all training. That's why I'm a learning consultant. That's where you've, you've met training facilitators in the past. That's why you've got l&d teams in your companies. It's all to help people to turn learning into action. That's why there are millions or millions and millions of pounds spent in this area, there are 1000s upon 1000s of different l&d professionals jumping out of bed today, to try and help people to be better at their jobs. You know, it's why people spend so much time on their self-development or personal development. And the personal development book industry is massive. That's when people who take LinkedIn learning courses already watch TED talks, and they listen to podcasts such as this one because they want to take knowledge contained in these resources and use them or apply them every day to make themselves better. But as I said, the research out there suggests that from an l&d perspective, only, you know, 10 to 20% lead to learning transfer. So as your listeners are managers going to manage your audience. Um, you know, that's not a good use of your employees time, as number one, l&d is taking people away from your job from their jobs to time that they could be spending focusing on being good at their job, we're taking them away to kind of give them this training on something that's not going to make them so much more effective. And then when they return to the roles, you know, they're unlikely to be any better at this, because learning transfer simply isn't happening, or occurring as much as we would want. So that's why I'm here. It is a massive issue in the field of talent development, but I think it is one that we can solve if we adapt our approaches.

Jason Davis  8:10  
I agree. And it you know, I love talking to you about this, because I can hear the energy, right, I can hear the passion kind of coming out of you from that. So on that a little bit. Why are you so passionate about learning transfer? You know, you spoke about that a little bit? Was there kind of like a certain event or anything like that, that said, that made you think, Oh, wow, we got to figure this out or help me understand that a little bit?

Fergal Connolly  8:34  
Sure. Um, so like I said, I'm in this area for about 10 years. And in each role I hold, I try to be the best that I possibly can be in that role. So when I was a trainee facilitator, I was reading about learning facilitation techniques that would help people to learn when I was a learning designer, I was exploring all these different design models and frameworks that we can use to more effectively design training materials. And it was only when I moved into the topic of learning consultancy, and I started doing some research on how I could be the best learning consultant for my company, as well. I kind of stumbled across this topic of learning transfer. And, and to me that was, it was an eye-opening moment, because I've been so long in this area, and I had to stumble across this like there was no one telling me this. There are no courses on this. You know, there's no there. There wasn't a podcast on this there is now and there isn't enough information and people talking about this, because like I said a couple of times already. This is the goal of every l&d intervention is to help people to turn their learning into action. And because I had to stumble across it on like now and more people need to know about this. We need to be focusing more energy on this. If you've got a role in l&d, you've got a part to play in helping people to transfer their learning. So yeah, that's why I'm passionate. This is a big problem, and there are not enough people talking about it. And, again, I'm just super excited to be here to talk to you today because monitors play a huge role in learning transfer.

Jason Davis  10:11  
Yeah, and I'm excited to get in and talk more about, you know, how the managers can make that impact. And I think, you know, really a lot from what I have seen, you know, when you talked about, you know, just, there's not a lot of people doing this, there's not a lot of content, not a lot of courses, not a lot of material on measuring learning. You know, I think that's a little bit even aware, it's that measurement piece of that learning transfer piece starts to take a little bit of a backseat, and doesn't get that attention that it would need, right, in terms of how effective is this? Sometimes, as I said, people are just trying to put out a fire, right, you know, something said, there's a big problem, we just need to put it out. We don't necessarily care, you know how well some, you know, that solution works until that solution doesn't work, right. And then they turn around, it's like, wow, that was the training's fault? Maybe? I don't know, right, because we didn't set up the right approaches to understanding that. You know, I think there's a lot to that. And, you know, I love the work that you're doing and bring forth and then kind of talking about the importance thereof doing that. So it's good stuff. So it kind of thinking about this space. What have you learned from being in this field that, you know, you want people to know, or what you think they should know about learning transfer?

Fergal Connolly  11:33  
Sure. Great question. And something you touched on. Your closing off the other question that my previous, your previous question in l&d, we've been, we've been approaching the problem of, of, you know, as you said, there's this fire, let's, let's put it there. Let's give people training this, take the box, you know, let's say people want a bit more content, and that'll help them to kind of change their behaviors. And we've been focusing just way too much on providing people content, and just not enough on generating and supporting the behaviors in the work environment that the business wants to see. So, for me and my colleagues in l&d, we want training versus participants to return to their roles and do something differently, and hopefully more effectively than they were doing it before. That's the goal of all l&d. So we can't simply start by helping people to learn, it's not enough just to learn something, we have to understand and support the employees to change the behavior in the work environment because that's where they turn that learning into action. And that sounds hard and formal, sounds a bit quite different to hell, you might be used to l&d doing things. But remember that people and employees are constantly changing their behavior. Change is constant in modern work environments. Employees are adapting to new pressures, new deadlines, requests, joint new teammates are joining. They've got new stakeholders, and the employees and their behaviors that helped the business to realize their goals under strategic initiatives of the business. So I believe that if we are to influence a learner or employee to change behavior, we have to shift how we approach learning support. And that's where the employee's manager complaint. Luckily, there is a great deal of academic research in this area. The research, the research on learning transfer suggests that there's so much outside of l&d professionals peer review, that truly influences learning transfer. So there are things such as monitoring support, the peer network, that the learner has, receiving encouragement and feedback on behavior from the manager, having the time and the space in their day, to practice what they learned under. So, so much more, there's been a massive amount of research in this area. But to kind of to sum up the research, it can be kind of broadly divided into three main areas of influence. And they are the characteristics of the learner. So what's the makeup of the learner like the design of the learning materials, and the learner's ecosystem? So the ecosystem would be the network of peers and managers and the culture in place in a work environment, and our focus on the learner's ecosystem because your listeners are managers. So when we're talking about the ecosystem, we're talking about the environment in which we perform every day. And the people in that environment have a huge effect on what we do every day. It's our work environment that is just bursting with subtle hints and behavioral cues and influences that shape how we interact with that environment. And not talking as much about the physical space, although that does have an influence as well. But moreover, the culture and the social norms of an employee's work environments so the tools they use the communication or the team working style, the manager, the manager's leadership, style, the expectations that are placed on employees. They're the unseen hierarchies and plays and the unspoken rules of all that kind of thing. They are influenced how we interact with a work environment. And there's a tremendous body of knowledge on this topic that suggests that the most important aspect of the learner equals learners ecosystem are the people in it. And chief among them is the manager. The manager is the biggest influence on how much employees attempt to transfer from training to their day-to-day roles. And that might seem obvious, but managers do serve a variety of different roles that support employee growth a times day, they need to be a guide, a mentor, a sounding board, some counsel, and even more. So if for me, you know, for me and my colleagues in l&d, if we were to ignore the way that managers help in employee development, it's, it's a one way street to training failure. And that's the chief reason why I feel like we're in that 10 to 20% of training is successful because we've kind of ignored that the learner's ecosystem and the manager primarily as being a key element of employee development. So the training environment, that's where the learning happens, that's the l&d side of the ownership puzzle. And an l&d has the primary power in that area, for the work environment, that's where the learning gets torn into action and performance, and this is the manager's domain, and they hold the most influence in this space. So training and learning are not enough effective managers are also required to promote learning transfer.

Jason Davis  16:42  
Exactly. And, you know, it reminds me of a, you know, your, your explanation there, and especially getting into that ecosystem reminded me of a situation I was in at my previous employer, where, to that extent, you know, we were changing up some evaluation methods, but part of that was trying to understand, you know, how's that ecosystem impacting, you know, the learning that's taking place here. So we were, you know, we were looking to ask some specific questions around manager involvement pre and post-training events. So pre and post going to the class pre and post going to the course, we just wanted to see, hey, did your manager talk to you about this beforehand? And did they do it after? You know, in so I will tell you the amount of pushback that we got from people and just other stakeholders that were kind of looking at this? You know, and even managers in some sense on, you know, just asking those questions, and kind of implying, I guess that was the way it was taken, right, is that it was implied that this is now part of the manager's job. And I'm certain I certainly wasn't in any position to give them that task as a job. Right. I just wanted to see how much are they doing it? Is it what has been your experience there? Like what have been some good ways that you have been able to see or observe or understand? All right here, here's about where we're at from a management involvement level.

Fergal Connolly  18:11  
Great question. And I'm glad that you've looked into this as well because there are not many managers out there that are interested in this topic and would take such steps. So from my experience, there is a fascinating tool out there called the learning transfer system inventory. And you kind of touched on, on what it tries to capture. So how much? How much of the influence is supporting learning transfer? Sorry, excuse me, how much of the ecosystem is supporting learning transfer? And how much is a barrier to learning transfer? And the talks about the manager ask questions about a manager also ask questions about the openness to change in your, your teams, in your team's culture, the messaging that you receive about learning is learning something that's valued in your organization, or is learning something that's, you know, kind of is promoted, but you know, it's not rewarded in any single way. So and it goes through? It's quite a long survey, I think it might be 52 different questions. But it captures everything relating to learning, transfer, and dive into each major influence on learning transfer. So from the learning design, the learning character, the learner's characteristics, and all these different things, showing you everything gives you an amazing snapshot of just how effective learning is in your organization. And to your point about the managers, how much are they supporting learning? If you're getting some negative responses in that area, you could, you're pretty much guaranteed that if you're a roller, the training intervention for that audience, it's probably not going to work. So you're probably gonna waste your time you might as well hold back that training. Don't roll it out, because learners don't have the support of a manager to turn it, into something that they can use every day. So save your time. Don't send those employees to their training because learning transfer is extremely unlikely to happen in that scenario because we know from the research that monitoring support is so so key to helping people to turn learning into improved performance.

Jason Davis  20:18  
It's such a great point. And you know, I appreciate the kind of taking a step back from where you're at in the learning design or even the delivery, right, you may be just right before delivery, finding out, Hey, we don't have leadership support for doing something like this, do we need to do something a little different? To kind of make that happen? You know, as I said, I've seen that certainly, nice bass sounds like you have as well. So, you know, maybe we can kind of segue into this, what do or where do managers commonly struggle when it comes to supporting learning or learning transfer for and with their employees?

Fergal Connolly  20:58  
Sure, I, I believe that. So managers may not be aware of the power and the influence that they hold in this space. And managers play a crucial role. Because they hold a unique position about learning transfer. They control resources that control job assignments, they set the performance expectations of teams and individuals, they're a key source of coaching and feedback, and reinforcement. So if they can use their kind of fundamental managerial competencies, they can apply that to improving learning transfer in their organization. So it's great that you've got such a wide audience of this podcast because you know, you know, you now know, if you're listening to this, and you're a manager, you now know that you have tremendous power and influence in this space. And so managers are more results-focused, that's fine. They'd rather their employees are tending to their per key day to day tasks and duties, rather than taking, you know, time away from the role to take on additional training, you know, totally understandable. But think about what message does that send to your employee about how you value their growth and development. So you might allow your employees to attend, attend training for what's the general feeling you're conveying to your employees about what's important to you. And Steve Jobs, I'm not sure if Steve Jobs, coined this phrase, but he knew that what interests my boss fascinates the heck out of me. And that's, that's why everyone was constantly observing his behavior and trying to understand the subtleties behind his of his behavior, they put them under a microscope. And that's what your employees do to you, if you're a manager, you know, they're looking to you to either explicitly or implicitly signal what's important and interesting to you. So you're under the Microsoft microscope, and the things that you do, and the things that you say, can have a drastic impact on how much employees grow and develop. So imagine this scenario. So you're a manager, and you're about to send one of your employees to a training course. And before you go, you say, I wish I didn't have to change the restraining order. We need someone from the team to attend just for compliance reasons. So can you go sit through it, so we can keep them happy? Okay, brilliant. If your manager says to you how much effort you want to put into paying attention during that training, let alone learning anything, you can forget about learning transfer. So your manager is told you that this is not important to me. And it should not be important to you whatsoever. So let's flip that slightly and tweak that messaging slightly. So you're a manager, and you're about to send your employee to a training course before you go, you say, I'm excited to hear about this course when you return. Let's sit down together, and you can tell me about it. And then we'll work out a plan to find some situations where you might be able to use what you learned. So two or three sentences send a completely different message. If you're able to send a copy of a message to your employees before they attend the training, they're going in with higher motivation, they're getting ready to learn, or getting ready to come back to you with something to report because you've asked him that you want to see something different afterward. So you've completely changed the paradigm for your employee. And the researcher says that they're gonna be more more more more motivated to attend, to learn, and to transfer based on that simple, simple communication that I just mentioned there. So the biggest barrier I feel is where managers struggle is time. So the main barrier there is real-time so you're always communicating with your employees. So try to build this measuring into how you communicate your already sending signals to your team about what's important to you. So maybe try to tweak the signals that you're sending a letter team now that development is important to you. Because if it's important to you, it's going to be important to them, too.

Jason Davis  25:15  
Yeah, and, you know, you brought up a great point, I think, you know, when it comes to communication, you're always talking to your team, you're always, you know, working with your team. Something that I talk a lot about, mainly as a means of building trust, and building relationships with employees is explaining the why, you know, explain the why behind a decision, why behind something's taking place. So why behind you know, whenever you're talking to your employees, and you're communicating something to them, if you can tell them why that thing is happening, that helps them understand the purpose, it helps them understand how they can connect that back to alright, what am I contributing to this organization. And I think that you know, kind of, with your example, on, you know, between these two scenarios of, well, I just need you to kind of go through it, you know, we need to have somebody on the team to do it, versus, hey, let's talk about what the impact of this learning can make on our company or our organization or our team. And what that might mean to all of us, I think that might have a little bit of a driving edge anyway, or it might, you know, help the employees connect the dots and say, Okay, this is why I need to, you know, make sure I'm paying attention, make sure I'm grabbing this knowledge, and I'm going to apply it to the job, because it's going to make me better, it's going to make our company better, and it's going to make us you know, more successful at the end, I think that's a huge lever, to your point that is being missed.

Fergal Connolly  26:35  
Absolutely. And it's a simple tweak, you know, you don't need a sea change of approaches, and to, for someone to kind of pre rehash how they do things. These are simple tweaks that people can make to kind of change the aura that they're putting out there.

Jason Davis  26:54  
Yeah, and, you know, get away from that. Well, I don't know, it's just required, right? Well, it's required for some reason, what is that reason? You know, I mean, just go find that out. And to and back to your point, time is always an issue, time is always going to be an issue. You know, but I think your for managers and leaders, it's when they are being communicated to top-down, you know, it's a symbol of, okay, well help me understand this a little bit. So I can communicate it to my team. If you didn't get that in the messaging or anything like that, I think, from that manager's point of view, sometimes just asking you a question of, Okay, help me understand a little bit of how we're connecting this back to our overall purpose as an organization, you know, and so I can kind of use that as a lever with my team there. So no, I think that's an excellent point that you brought up there. All right. So you're kind of thinking about, you know, what managers can do in this space to help support learning, learning transfer, what are three things that that you feel like managers could start doing today, tomorrow after listening to this episode, to better support learning transfer in their organizations?

Fergal Connolly  28:03  
Sure, so three things you can do to better support transfer. So one thing, if you've got the time, is to understand what your employees are learning and interested in learning about. So studies have shown that the more a manager is trained to help support and coach the skills that our employees are learning, the more those skills will be used, and we will be sustained in the workplace. So there are researchers in Seoul, Korea, Bloodworth, whether names to give managers training on how to provide their direct reports with opportunities to learn to use the learning skills, that they just learned in training and to reinforce their attempts at any kind of application. So the researchers looked into how to direct reports or feelings after this. And they felt more supported, they had more positive perceptions of the workplace, they had higher self-efficacy, the exam they experienced higher rates of learning transfer. And they compared this to a group of learners whose monitors didn't go through the training. So they were had higher scores across the board. And there was just a 90-minute training for the managers based on what their employees were learning. And to help we just help them to identify opportunities for using what they learned. So a simple approach, but I know that's maybe something that every company won't offer. So if your company doesn't offer separate training for managers, the next thing you can do is to attend the same training as your employee. So just having that increased understanding of what your employee is learning can give you a greater insight into what support you can provide. And you can use your intimate knowledge of your employees to identify areas where they may need additional support. If that's too much time tried to get a not a readout from your LMS your learning management system, training, and understanding of what's next for your employees or poor, maybe some agendas So LMS agendas from, from the learning management system to try and get an understanding of what does this topic cover. So that you can kind of use your managerial experience to kind of add color and kind of add some day-to-day application to what your employees are learning. So that's one and that one's powerful. Number two would be, I'm sure every manager on this, who's listening to this is having one to one with their employees. So to schedule someone who wants to talk about during their development, your one-to-one time with your employees, is, for me, is the most important meeting in a manager's week. It's here that the monitor is building trust with their employees, they're discussing issues, and they're checking in on progress with their direct reports. So one of the ones are the perfect environment to signal to your employee that you're interested in their development, and you want to learn more about what they are learning. Also, let them know that you know, you're giving them the sense that you're open to supporting them through the learning transfer process. Also, a great opportunity to let your employees know that, you know, simply attending training isn't enough, you know, the skills and the knowledge, they need to be applied for the time away from their roles for the time and training to be a real impact. So, as I mentioned earlier on some simple kind of messaging changes that are put out there, let them know that you're excited to meet after training to discuss what was learned. And there is an element of timing here. If you as a manager can communicate this before your employee's next training session, it's guaranteed to raise those motivation levels for the learner how much they focus, because they know now that their manager is interested, and they're gonna want to hear more. So if you can tweak your one-to-ones to be more developer-focused, that's a winner. And the final thing I would recommend is when your employee complete a learning session and return to the work environment, they're often faced with a pile of work that they didn't attend to during the training. So we've got multiple chat pings, and they've got emails and whatever inbox that's kind of piling higher and higher because they were away from their role for some time. And it's here when the employee returns to the work environment, it's where the learning transfer chain breaks down and reshares research box soap.

So if employees can implement some of what they learned right after the training, they're much more likely to continue to use those skills and those behaviors. But if they're overwhelmed with emails and requests, there's absolutely no way they're going to be able to use those new skills. And the time spent in training, which is a valuable time to you as a manager has essentially been wasted. So if you as a manager can make sure your employees have an opportunity to use their learning, try to reduce their workload, you've got a better insight into workload into their workload and the l&d team, and you know, what their highest priority projects are, and what their deadlines are. So don't send them to training and don't allow them to attend training, if they're in these high-stress, busy periods because learning transfer isn't gonna happen. attending training in these times is just a waste of time. So if possible, minimize the workload, if your employees have to try any sort of, they have the bandwidth to try something out to implement some of the water, you just learned and try to turn the learning into action, not only will this increase the chances of learning transfer, that also, like I keep mentioning, it's going to send a clear message to your employees that self-development is important to you. And it should be important to them, too. So that's my three tips. So schedule some one-to-one time, if you can get involved in your employee's training do. And then finally, the workload is important. If people don't have the bandwidth or the time to apply their learning, learning transfer isn't going to happen. So try to reduce your employee's workload after training.

Jason Davis  34:08  
Yeah, like that, you know, and just to kind of recap those. So you know, obviously, from a manager's point of view, understanding what your employees are learning, you got through communication, you know, go to the training that they're going to, you know, a lot of times in some of the environments that I've worked in, that's pretty typical, as a manager, attends training with their team just to make sure that everybody's kind of on the same page, there is a way to kind of move that forward. I love the angle of getting into the learning management system trying to see what other information that you can get from your employees that where they may be doing things that are self-selective, right, you know, that you're not necessarily aware that they're working on because it's not taking time away from you as their manager. Maybe they're doing it outside of work right at home or something or just as an extracurricular but I think that's a great way to kind of stay on top of what people are learning and getting into it. your second point or your second way was about the development side of this, you know, letting them know you're there for support, you know, you're getting excited to meet after they go to the event or after they take the course, to talk about, hey, what do you learn? And then, you know, I think that's a good, good start to a conversation of okay, well, how do you plan to use that on the job now, you know, and in what ways might I be able to support that as your leader, which then gets into, you know, I might need some space, or some time or reduced workload, to implement these things. You know, sometimes, training is not development training is done by or training is done, because, you know, we've got a new process, and we need to execute something a little bit different way. And, you know, if I've been working a desk, you know, and doing the same things, the same ways for the last three years, and now you're changing a bit of that process, it's gonna slow me down a little bit, you know, to learn a new way to do and I liked that approach of the manager, being cognizant of that, and kind of backing off the workload, you know, as much as they can. It's easier said than done. And I think you would agree there. Absolutely. But I think it's, it's good to be cognizant about that, or to at least acknowledge that, hey, you know, what, if I can't back off the workload, we know that our process changed a little bit, we need to expect a little bit of a slowdown, you know, one step back before we take two or three steps forward. I think just being aware of that, right, so that you're not like standing over your employees saying, hey, well, why didn't you produce today as much as you did yesterday? You should know that you know, I mean, as the leader anyway, I think you should know that. So I enjoy it. I love those three, three ways that you've given there for managers to help support that learning transfer

Fergal Connolly  36:51  
Thanks, Jason.  Nice recap as well.

Jason Davis  36:55  
All right, well, Fergal, I think you've provided a lot of great information for my audience today, for the managers that are listening. You know, I think given people some things to think about and, and to your point made at the very beginning of this conversation, learning transfer, learning measurement, things like that are commonly an afterthought. Maybe not an afterthought, but not something that people are so much concerned about until the thing didn't work. And then, you know, and, and that's even from, you know, like, sponsors point of view, you know, we're talking about managers and bringing learning into their purview, and how do they make an impact? You know, we used to have a lot of conversations around, like, learning doesn't stop at, you know, when people leave the classroom, it takes place when they get back and start doing the work. And, you know, the trainer is not the one that's out there with them doing the work. So I think that's a good way or good conversation, to make sure leaders and managers understand any way of how critical they are to, to make sure those things are learned and kind of stay with that person.

Fergal Connolly  38:06  
So for the task, yeah. you nail the Jason, I think there needs to be a more defined kind of glide path between what l&d does and what the manager does, we're both very, very influential in terms of employee development. We've had this kind of silent handoff from l&d to managers, like, l&d feels like they've done their part now we've probably created those slides, we invited everyone to the session, and now go forth and apply all these new things. And really, what we're saying is, you know, go back to your team and, you know, do your best, but there's a lot of times there's a disconnect between what's happening in the training event and what's happening in the work environment. So there needs to be a more concrete structure between l&d and, and the managers, you know, the biggest influence in the work environment, a better kind of connection between these two because we hold so much power when it comes to employee development. So I love what you said there, you know, employee learning doesn't answer because the training over I think that's a perfect way to sum this up.

Jason Davis  39:13  
Yeah. Perfect. All right. Well, I think that's a great way to start to close this thing out. So fertile, what final thoughts do you have? Are there any plugs that you want to get for your show or any speaking events you've got coming up?

Fergal Connolly  39:27  
Sure. Thanks so much for having me today. Jason, it was a great conversation. I think just having the opportunity to talk about learning transferable specifically I on managers have issues and is hugely helpful. So thank you for getting the word out there. I on this very, very important topic. And so where can people find out about me? I'm very active on LinkedIn. That's where you and I met Jason. I'm very active on LinkedIn. I post a lot on the topic of learning transfer. I also created a website to kind of collect different articles and resources On this topic, it's www dot Fergal connelly.com and also the podcast learning transfer radio. If you're ever interested in diving more into this topic, I've interviewed the best and brightest from across the world of learning transfer and put them all in one place on the podcast. So do check it out

Jason Davis  40:20  
Awesome and I will put some links in the show notes for both of those resources as well to point listeners towards and you know that way they've they've got a space to learn and hear more from Fergal so. Alright, man, well, hey, I appreciated the conversation today, I think we've brought a lot of good and helpful information, maybe new, new things to think about for managers in this space. And, you know, I think you're coming at it from a fresh perspective, but you know, one with the intent of, hey, we want everybody to get better. We want people to develop and want to make sure that we're not, you know, just wasting time learning, or going through learning events that you know, end up not being meaningful. So I appreciate the conversation today. For all, I thought this was great.

Fergal Connolly  41:07  
Fantastic. Thanks so much for having me, Jason. And yeah, you summed it up so nicely there. It's like the old saying, you know, it takes a village. To delegate development just purely today to the hands of managers or just purely in the hands of l&d would not be effective. It does take a village approach to help people to grow to develop to increase their performance, which is only going to improve the performance of the companies that we support.

Jason Davis  41:33  
100% 100% Alright, Fergal. Thank you very much for joining the show. Hope to have you back sometime.

Fergal Connolly  41:39  
Amazing. Thank you so much, Jason. Take care
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