Larry Weidel argues classroom lectures are the worst way to train. He learned construction on job sites after formal study proved useless, and says real learning happens through doing. His fix: cut lecture time, add interaction, make it practical, use games.
If you're going to train people, don't you want them to learn? Of course you want them to learn. So what would be the worst training? The worst training would be where you spend the time, go through the motions, do everything you think that will make it happen, and then guess what happens? They don't learn. You basically now you're in worse shape than when you started because you wasted a lot of time. You actually think they've learned something, but they haven't learned a darn thing. So there you are. So you should know what works and what doesn't work in training. So let me introduce you to the worst trick training in the world. The worst, dumbest, most ineffective thing. Unfortunately, you have to do it. A good bit of the time is you have a person here, you got a blackboard and you've got a room full of people, or you got a class and you got people sitting and listening. And here it is, yak, yak, yak. And they're supposed to learn. You're transmitting, you're spending time. You've got them in there. This is academic training all over the world at all levels, yak, yak, conferences, workshops, yak, yak, yak. And it is the dumbest, worst way to train in the world. We used to say, what is this classroom training? Hey, if you want to make your life count, if you want to have a get things done, get away from this crap, this is, this is home base for the mediocre leader, company manager. The mediocre love this. We'll just get them in a room and yak at them and they'll learn. No, they won't. But you go through the motions. What you're doing, it gives you a chance to play. Training, it looks like training. You're going through the motions of training, but you're not training, you're playing at training. We used to say in Salem, we still do. One hour in the field is worth 20 hours in the classroom. In the classroom. So do you know what ROI is? Roi? Return on investment. When you invest in a stock, invest in a company you want, what interest rate am I getting? Well, it's the same thing on your time. You need to always look what is my, you know, if I want to go place, I want to compress time frames. I want to make my life count. I don't want to waste time on stupid time wasting activities that are incredibly low yield. This is the lowest yielding way of training. Why is that? It's because, let me ask you this, can you learn how to swim? In a classroom, can you learn how to play musical instrument in a classroom? You can't even learn a foreign language in a classroom because you got to get out and speak it. I went to Georgia Tech for five, four and a half years to learn building construction. And I swear I couldn't have built a dog house. But I got out and within a couple of months of being out in the job site, I knew how to blindfold all the different stages, all the different processes, every step of completely how to build a house from clearing the land to, you know, having 18 Wheeler pull up and people unload and move in, you know, delirious. Would you like their new house? I learned that out in the field on the job. That was after hours and hours of boring tedium. In a classroom, folks. On the job, training is the answer. I'm going to talk about that on another video. But let's just say this. If you have to do this, if I get to debate this with you, it's a lost cause. But look at yourself. What did you ever learn in a classroom? So if you've got to do, if you must, for one reason or another, you must do some. You've got to use classroom for some kind of training. You've got to. Here's what to do. Please do as little as possible because it ain't going to make much of a dent in their cranium. Not much is going to get through. And then what does get through is just going to be some kind of fact that basically they don't understand. They either don't understand, they don't know how to use it, and they won't remember it. Ask yourself, what did you get out of a classroom? Nothing. So if you've got to do the classroom things, here's take some of the curse. Like how can you take. Let's say, here we are in our classroom again. How can you take. Minimize the curse? Think outside of the box of how most people do. And so how can you minimize the curse? And how can you get the most impact out of this terrible way to train? Boy, I wish I could beat this with a club. We talk about it all the time, but people still insist on dominating in it. You know what that does? The more classes, let me just say it as clear as I can get. The more classroom training you have, the more mediocre you are as a leader because you're too dumb to recognize the obvious and to make the effort to teach the other way. So anyway, how can you take the curse off? Get involvement, get the Class up there. Get people to get the class involved. Have them teach, make them ask questions. Don't let them daydream looking like they're, you know, sleep with their eyes open out there daydreaming and pretending like they're just eating this stuff up. Ask them to think, you know. I studied calculus three years in high school, got straight A's because, you know, classroom training. I went to Georgia Tech, went through the exact same books for the whole year. I got straight A's in high school, went in there, but guess what? On the quizzes, they asked questions that made me have to actually understand calculus. I didn't understand calculus. I could spit back little words and definitions and this, that and the other. Get straight A's on that. But I didn't know what in the world calculus was. And I got like three Ds. I'm the same material. I got an A's on. See, that's the way you don't learn in a classroom. If you are in a classroom, you got to make it interactive, maximum interaction. People learn when they're talking. They don't learn when you're talking. If they talk, they learn if someone else in the class is talking. Others talk. They learn if others ask questions. If they have, you know, get the kids, make them explain, you know, force them to, you know, break up the pattern. Get some competition in there for learning, make it fun, you know, get a hundred pennies and give them pennies for answering questions. Get some competition going in there. Make it fun, make it come alive. That's what's so wrong with classroom training is the subject is dead. They don't know how it goes in their life and how. Explain to them how to use it when they learn it, how are they going to use it? Why is it important to them? Those are the things that you can do to take some of the curse off a classroom training. But it's much better if you can get them out of that classroom as fast as possible, because that's when they're going to learn. We'll talk about that on another video.
