Today more than ever, corporate talent professionals are being challenged to adapt their leadership-training role. Moving from compliance training with scheduled periodic interventions and evaluations, the trend is to deliver the needed skills upgrading and development fast and when needed but also in a modality that inspires their leaders and managers to reinvent themselves, further hones and deepens their competencies, and positively contributes to the growth of their employees.
Hybrid or blended learning has the power to transform and improve the learning process and meet these new demands. This powerful holistic approach leverages virtual online tools with instructor-led training and makes the overall process more personal, experiential, accessible and innovative.
While many organizations may be familiar with the concept of hybrid/blended learning, not all understand the significant benefits of using this approach to strengthen and develop their leadership.
Combining both online learning with offline training allows you to get the best of both worlds.
Online learning (e.g., interactive videos, mobile learning, personalized learning paths, virtual or augmented reality simulations and gamification) provides inexpensive real-time feedback, allows players to deeply engage with ideas by incorporating interactivity, provides structured analysis of a player’s behaviour, permits different scenarios to be tested, and can be rolled out easily to many participants. Immersive e-learning tools help learners stay focused on their own performance, and incent authentic interactions, responses and decision-making that mirror real-world reactions to similar situations. Virtual interactions are more natural and less inhibiting with the competition and noise of classroom learning eliminated.
On the other hand, instructor-led training is important when changing behaviours is vital to achieving learning objectives, along with improving focus, increasing adaptability and improving face-to-face dialogue. In-person dynamic interaction helps learners open their minds to other perspectives and can help them retain and apply what they learn. Instructor-led training is seen as critical for complex and highly collaborative subjects where the content is also communicated through behaviour and body language (mannerisms, gestures, tone, language, and volume of voice) making the learning experience one that is not only seen and heard but also felt. And lastly, flexibility is an important feature as instructors can adapt content to the skill level and personality of the participants, as well as customize based on the outcome of online learnings to further deepen understanding.
Blending the best of online virtual tools and in-person, training delivers a much richer holistic training experience. It reinforces learning retention, saves organizations money, provides better business and performance metrics, breaks the monotony of traditional corporate training, and increases the engagement and motivation levels of the overall training experience.
And as a last thought, you might wish to explore or deepen your investment in this new training and development modality because chances are that your competitors are already taking advantage of the significant and often transformative benefits offered by tapping the strengths of both the virtual and physical learning worlds.
Leave a comment