Design for How People Build Skills

9 Phase 3: Supporting Performance

In which we recognize we can’t just push learners out of the nest and hope they fly.

Pushing Them Out of the Nest

All too often, the format for skills development in organizations is to send somebody to a workshop (let’s say a two-day in-person workshop on communication and management skills), push them out of the nest, and hope they go back to the workplace and fly.

Frequently, this means that after the learning phase, learners are left on their own to figure out practice and performance.

When talking about the practice phase, we discussed practice on the job, which is a transition that’s less abrupt ...