The Four Quadrant of Training Practices

The Four Quadrant of Training Practices

The more people get exposed to multimedia and entertaining content, the less interested they are becoming in hardcore and heavy material.

And that is a very dangerous syndrome when it comes to learning and development.

Mastery of a skill requires depth, hard work, “boring” information by popular standards, and many other requirements that go in the opposite direction of the online ecosystem.

Sadly, L&D providers are excelling in keeping their audiences entertained so that they can keep them satisfied in their biased way, which immutably compromises the quality and depth of the material to the service of the entertaining style. They do so to ensure that their business continues to grow and thrive, putting at risk the real development in its fundamental structure.

This does not mean that training has to always be tedious — not at all!

It is fundamental for professionals to “Pause & Zoom-Out” to make sure they are seeing the big picture; thereby choosing the right approach, tools and style to the convenient context.

This can be simplified in the Four Quadrant of Training Practices

The way to go for developing hardcore skills, especially for candidates looking to level up, as well as for top performers under pressure	Best for long sessions where there is enough time, the topics are convenient, and the audience is coherent and aligned.
The way to go for beginners who will be working under pressure and need to abide by complex rules or matrix	Best to motivate the team and be used as a continuous learning approach as well as culture boosters

What is extremely important in this matrix is the “Zoom-Out” and the criteria to choose among the approaches.

Most trainers want to keep their groups happy and their customers satisfied, that is why they go with the light entertaining approach for the wrong topics. Unfortunately, many decision makers are not aware about the dangers they are enduring, and the bad trends they are leveraging in the market.

Participants will start expecting that this is the norm and will demonize the heavyweight approaches, which will put their real development plans at risk, and therefore their actual performance.

There is no doubt that trainers need to be entertaining enough to engage the participants in every session, they need to use fun and energizing tools, they need to be relatable and approachable.

However, this should never lead them to confuse their fundamental role with becoming mere entertainers. When they have to choose, they should always put the development journey of the group and its real performance above all other considerations, while still using the four approaches to secure a blend of a pleasant and engaging journey, full of learning and development and that can translate into real results — the real objective they were hired to achieve.