Self-Awareness and Making Training Stick

Greetings!  In the May Sticky Note Dr. Barbara Carnes told you that I, Dr. Tammy Means, would take a role in authoring new content. In June we introduced our Training Transfer Technologies Poll (if you haven’t responded, please click on the link) and now we are excited to introduce the August Sticky Note on Self Awareness and Making Training Stick.  A lack of self-awareness inhibits learning transfer.  I recently conducted a workshop on Emotional Intelligence with a special focus on Self Awareness. Participants in the workshop focused on practical ways to become more self-aware…

And I also began to explore practical ways facilitators can encourage and increase self-awareness in participants (to increase learning transfer).  Participants who are self-aware are able to understand their own emotions and recognize feelings (angry, sad, scared, happy)—thus, helping manage emotions and feelings needed to improve and makes room for learning and application.  The goal is to create better self-knowledge, to make adjustments and improvements, and to accommodate for weaknesses.  This involves the facilitator taking on the coaching role to guide participants to have them come to their own understandings and knowledge about themselves.

Facilitators can support competencies of Self Awareness in these ways:

•  Self-Regard (being aware of, understanding and accepting ourselves).  Foster a culture of praise and constructive feedback to participants.  This encourages a coaching culture within the learning environment.
• Emotional Self-Awareness (being aware of and understanding our emotions). Allow participants to express their emotions in positive ways by using situational examples throughout trainings.  Facilitators can also use personality tests within trainings.
• Assertiveness (expressing our feelings and ourselves nondestructively).  Set a professional tone within the learning environment to demonstrate how participants are expected to express themselves.
• Independence (being self-reliant and free of emotional dependency on others).  Allow time in class for self-reflection.  This allows participants to evaluate themselves.
• Self-Actualization (setting and achieving goals to actualize our potential). Set aside time for participants to reflect on their learning and to set goals.  This encourages individuals to focus on their strengths and embrace weaknesses or failures.

Self Awareness is closely linked to Barbara’s previous Sticky Note on Mindfulness as well as the Training Transfer Process Model in Barbara’s book Making Learning Stick (available through Amazon) which includes a number of Learner Characteristics  research has shown support learning transfer.  While self-awareness is not specifically listed in the model, those listed that are closely linked to self-awareness are:  self-efficacy, openness to experience, and career planning.

Until next time…