Childhood experiences are often characterised by magical notions: Santa Claus, the tooth fairy and various other such ideas across a wide variety of cultures. To what extent we accept such fanciful ideas as true varies considerably, but it is commonly the case that, as we move through childhood, we rely less and less on magical ideas and adopt a more 'rational' approach.
During childhood magical thinking manifests itself in a number of ways: children can sometimes believe that if they want something enough, it will happen. Similarly, it is well documented that children who experience a major loss (such as the death of a parent) can sometimes feel responsible for what has happened: 'Daddy died because I was naughty'.
The textbooks generally tell us that children grow out of this 'magical thinking', that they leave it behind. However, my experience tells me that it is not as clear cut as some people seem to think. I have come to this conclusion based on my work in training and development over many years. In this work I have seen many examples of magical thinking amongst adults, in the sense that so many course participants seem to assume that being part of a training course will make them better at their jobs, 'as if by magic'.
So many people attend courses and work really hard during the day (or days). They concentrate hard; engage in discussions and other activities and make the effort to understand. However, when it comes to connecting their work on the course to their day-to-day work, this can become a problem. Many people appear to believe that, having gone through the process of the course, they are now better equipped to do their job - as if they can do this without:
• identifying specific behaviours they will endeavour to change Learning is a complex set of issues and not simply a matter of behaviour change, but development clearly involves some degree of behaviour change for the most part.
• establishing how particular concepts or understandings can be brought to bear Training courses can be fertile grounds for introducing, discussing and developing important ideas to inform practice. But simply being exposed to those ideas is unlikely to make much difference, unless we can link them to actual practices (and not just in an abstract way, as in a case study exercise, but in relation to their actual work tasks).Understanding a concept and being able to apply it in practice are two different things.
• identifying other steps that need to be taken to put the learning into practice Do any obstacles need to be removed? Are there any working practices or other aspects of working life that stand in the way of putting the learning into practice? What can be done about them?
I have discussed these issues many times with course participants towards the end of the course, and the reaction has been the same every time - a recognition that magical thinking is the norm (that is, thinking that performance improvement will happen by magic rather than by a process of transfer of learning), that so often in the past, they have returned to work after a very good course, but have not been able to transfer the learning. I have found these discussions to be a useful way of encouraging participants to avoid the magical thinking trap.
However, it is not simply the responsibility of individual participants to make the transfer of learning. Supervisors have an important role to play by encouraging and supporting such learning transfer. And, of course, senior managers have a responsibility to nurture a culture that values and supports learning and does not adopt the attitude that basically says to someone returning from a course: 'Right, you've had your little break, now get back to work'.
We will never get 100 per cent learning transfer (expecting that would be magical thinking too!), but there is no doubt considerable scope for improving the current percentage.
Dr Neil Thompson is an independent author, educator and adviser. For more information about Neil and his work, visit http://www.neilthompson.info/ This article first appeared in the THE human solutions BULLETIN. For details of this and other free resources, visit http://tinyurl.com/freeresourcesfromneil
