Holloway Editione1.0.0
Updated August 14, 2024Youβre reading an excerpt of Great Founders Write, by Ben Putano, writer, entrepreneur, and book publisher. Heβs the founder of Damn Gravity Media, a publishing house that inspires and educates tomorrowβs great founders. Purchase now for lifetime access to the book and on-demand video course.
The last step of any good learning program is reinforcement. Youβve worked hard to teach your audience something new; donβt waste that effort by failing to follow up.
β[Reinforcement] is becoming increasingly important in a world in which remote work is the new normal for most companies,β said Barry.
As a trainer, give your audience a chance to practice what theyβve just learned. Use case studies and role playing to reinforce new behaviors. If the lesson is more hands-on, such as fielding customer support phone calls, give trainees real-life reps and review with them afterward.
Your team also needs time to talk with you or the expert. Build in Q&A time, facilitated discussions, coaching and mentoring, and case studies where the expert and learners work through problems together. For additional help and support, encourage your audiences to give feedback to each other. Help them set up a βbuddy systemβ for peer-to-peer learning.
My favorite form of reinforcement isβyou guessed itβwriting. Have your trainees write an essay, or even a series of essays, teaching someone else the lessons they just learned and how to apply them to their work. Writing forces you to understand the material on a deeper level than conversation alone does. This exercise also creates a paper trail for your trainees to refer back to.
In the aftermath of WeContentβs blog post debacle, I took a hard look at the way I ran my business. It was clear I had set my team up for failure. Instead of training them on my editorial standards, I threw them into the ocean without a raft. The curse of knowledge bit me hard, and it almost cost me my business.
So when I hired a new freelance writer six months later, I made sure theyβd be ready. I wrote a detailed creative brief for each article to serve as their training material. Coincidentally, this document included all the same steps as Curious Lionβs training development approach:
Building blocksβMy clientβs mission, brand positioning, value proposition, and product descriptions; word count requirement; and links to relevant prior research and blog posts