Productive Struggle for Sticky Learning: A Conversation with Lucy Hutchinson and Anna Shildrick

CommLab Podcast with Lucy Hutchinson and Anna Shildrick

Sherna Varayath 22:17
Hey there, welcome back to the eLearning Champion Podcast where we explore key strategies, trends, and triumphs shaping the world of learning and development. Dear listener, grab your coffee, because today we have an intriguing episode lined up for you. We'll be looking at how to make learning more meaningful and improve cognitive growth with expert speakers in the field, Lucy and Anna. Hello there, ladies.

Lucy Hutchinson 23:01
Hey, thanks for having us. Great to be here, Shanna.

Anna Shildrick 23:05
Nice to meet you. Thanks for having us.

Sherna Varayath 23:08
Lucy Hutchinson and Anna Shildrick are Co-founders at the AI Connective.
Both are educators with 30 years of experience, making learning meaningful across disciplines, age groups, and borders. Lucy is from the United States, living in Mexico, and Anna is from the UK, splitting her time between Mexico and Spain. Lucy and Anna, I'm really looking forward to the episode today.

Lucy Hutchinson 23:39
We are as well.

Anna Shildrick 23:39
Me too.

Sherna Varayath 23:42
Before we dive in, make sure you'll never miss an episode packed with valuable tips, inspiring stories and the latest industry buzz by following us. Now, to get started, what does meaningful learning look like in the workplace, and how does it differ from traditional corporate training?

Lucy Hutchinson 24:04
Great question. I would say that meaningful learning in the workplace really strays from that passive compliance of box checking or content delivery that we talk about in the classroom. Rather, it's about identity formation and transformation of mental models.

Yeah, I really think that. The learning journey becomes personally relevant because it connects the learner's own goals and even their identity. And in this evolving professional context, I would even go on to say maybe traditional corporate training would revolve around the skill acquisition policy adherent. It's very focused on almost boxed ideas versus transformative and transferable skills that go much, much deeper into our values and our purpose and application across disciplines, across who we are as human beings. Yeah, this is a great question, because I think it goes from the simple ask of did you check the box? to how has it changed? How you really think or decide and act in your role? How does that sound? Anna, what would you add?

Anna Shildrick 25:40
I would just add that it's a parallel to what happens in school. Which is why this is what we do as a profession. School tends to put things in boxes and checklists that are great for the administrators, great for people to say, oh, I did the module, I delivered the module, professional development has been done, but it doesn't actually provide that transformation we're looking for. And that transformation is where a human reflects and understands how they reflect, and then move into that space of ‘does this change me? Does this learning change the way that I think in my job or the way that I act or decide when it comes to my job? In schools, it's really difficult to do that because we're still driven by the system that has us taking standardized tests in the workplace. Where we're looking for innovation and creativity and transformation, this is the place where learning and development professionals can really hone in on, does what I'm delivering, actually deliver transformative change. I think that's what it means to become more meaningful.

Sherna Varayath 26:57
Wow. So, Anna, how can cognitive growth in adults be measured beyond a surface level metric like completion rates or satisfaction surveys?

Anna Shildrick 27:12
It's harder to measure growth if you're not doing completion rates or satisfaction surveys, but what you'll see is a shift in the quality of thinking. That is not easy to measure. But that's what we're looking for when we're really seeing a change. It's the quality of thinking has changed. It's not just about retaining knowledge or saying, Yes. I've learned about these three things. Schools don't do this, which is why in the workplace we often don't see it. But this is what we should be working towards. Completion rates and satisfaction scores are just like school standardized testing. It makes it really easy for the administration.

But it is not really capturing true learning. So what are we looking at? What we want to see when we see that this is really working. Humans become more capable of making their own meaning, of looking at novel, ambiguous ways of doing things, looking at complex situations, and thinking differently about it. It's really putting your finger on the nuances and on the depth of what we're understanding, not just the accuracy.

Taking a 5 minute multiple choice quiz to say, you've done your PD, doesn't help us to see that. So we're really looking for metacognitive awareness. How are you reflecting on what you're learning here? How are you questioning your own assumptions around these things? How are you going to approach these challenges in a different way? That's where we're going to see teams working together, understanding the thinking process, diving into scenario-based or decision-making scenarios and we can see the evolution of our thinking. I think that's harder to measure, but it's much more exciting and much more effective.

Lucy Hutchinson 29:17
Anna, I agree with you that on the surface level, it's harder to go back and look at those results like you said. But it's much easier to feel. So love that you pointed that out.

Anna Shildrick 29:36
Definitely easier to field. It's palpable when a team is really meaningfully learning.

To put it down onto a grid is maybe harder, but that's what we have to learn how to do.

Lucy Hutchinson 29:49
Yeah. And I just want to add that it's across disciplines. It doesn't matter if we're in a school or in a workplace. You can feel the energy or the synergy when people want to be there and they're excited about what they're doing.

So it's more than just about teaching a specific block or Can I get the answer right? Because all of us know that we can obviously use AI to get the answer. And we see people doing this across industries. It's just, if you need an answer, here's one. But if you want me to care again, it goes back to the identity in the culture.

Sherna Varayath 30:28
Interesting. Lucy, you emphasized productive struggle as essential for learning. So how can organizations design learning experiences that challenge without overwhelming or stressing out employees?

Lucy Hutchinson 30:48
Oh, I love this question because Anna and I talk about productive struggle all the time. And it's funny because lots of times we, as humans, want to save the other person that we're working with from the struggle. But then we get into that space that's between boredom, because it's too easy, and burnout because it's too hard.

So productive struggle sits in that learning zone that we're super excited to be in.
I think we've all seen that when it's too difficult, we freeze, we're paralyzed, we're not interested in even knowing what the next step might be.

So in between that space is the productive struggle when you can nudge or guide and facilitate that growth with tools, time, and trust. I think that those are probably the key aspects of productive struggle, working with somebody that's going to help you get there. That builds resilience, insight and that transfer capacity that we're talking about earlier. I think that's huge. So when you're designing something for the people that you're working with to learn, you want to include enough ambiguity that prompts exploration so that the people you're working with are able to learn and grow and figure things out for themselves. We're not going to just throw anybody into the deep end and say, hey, figure it out. Instead accompany them and give them the opportunity to ask themselves, OK, how is this important for me and my work, and how might I get there?

Anna Shildrick 32:43
Sorry, can I jump in there as well?

Lucy Hutchinson 32:46
Please.

Anna Shildrick 32:47
This is something that we're working with right now in the K12 space, with teachers on productive struggle. Because what has traditionally been done is that the model of I do as teacher, we do as teacher and student, and then you do as student. But that absolutely goes against the whole process of grappling with the concept and owning your curiosity around it. It absolutely kills that off. So we're really talking about putting really difficult (and not too difficult) scenarios in front of people and allowing them to grapple with it before we come in with any type of solution or answer or framework. And that is where we get people really learning. That is where most learning takes place, when we're struggling to find what it means to us, and how can I construct my own meaning around that? So we think that doesn't exist in enough spaces in the L&D.

If I go back to those three things that we talked about, the tools, the time and the trust, we have to accompany productive struggle with the right tools, with enough time, and the trust to allow people to question, to fail, to get it wrong, and then think again. Because productive struggle can be intimidating if it's not accompanied by those three things.

Lucy Hutchinson 34:23
Oh, Anna would love for you to articulate too. I love these conversations. So there's the productive struggle and the unproductive struggle. I think that one of the things that is different for educators, no matter what space you're in, is that instead of looking at all the things that you want to cover, you're really reading the room. You're feeling the other person, so you know when it's productive versus unproductive. But you've got to be there with the learner, with the other person in front of you on the screen, to feel when it's become unproductive in that struggle.

Sherna Varayath 35:03
Many L&D programs rely on direct instruction, right? You just mentioned that you need to be able to see your learner in some way. So Lucy, why do you believe this should be a last resort? Or what should come first instead?

Lucy Hutchinson 35:25
So why would this be a last resort? It's because then it takes the human out of the equation, and especially with artificial intelligence in the conversation, it's just going to make it so that somebody can check a box, but not necessarily any deep learning happening. So yeah, that box can be checked, you can get into compliance. But we're seeing over and over again that compliance doesn't lead to change, to growth, to anything meaningful. It's just something that you can officially put up on the wall, perhaps like it's done, but nothing changes. And that's whenever we hear lots of times. Like, you know this, this meeting could have been an e-mail, right?

Because then you don't need the human. You don't need any interaction.
We're just checking the box and I jump in.

Anna Shildrick 36:17
Yeah. I was just going to add to what you just said. It's like if anybody just comes in and talks at you or talks to you with the staff, it's going to shut down your curiosity. And without curiosity, how do we buy into the learning?

So there is a place for direct instruction. It does exist. It should be there, but it should follow and not precede curiosity. So curiosity at the very beginning of everything not only allows us to buy into it, but also allows us to construct our own meaning around it. Because you may understand something entirely different to how I understand it. And then we need to celebrate those differences. But if you're just told, this is how it is, and that's the end of it, it's very difficult to own that learning. So if we're shutting down inquiry, we're also shutting down deep thinking. And in teams in the professional sphere, we need deep thinking because deep thinking is the driver of positive change. We don't want passive receivers of information. We want active constructors of knowledge, systems, processes, because that's how we promote change. And if we think about the world, the way it looks today, so much has changed about the world. And every day is changing so quickly. But our systems don't follow that quickly. They don't. Because we are generally told this is what it is, here's the box, check it to say that you've read this right.

That's what we would love to take away. So yes, direct instruction has a place. But a minimal place, and definitely after the process of curiosity.

Lucy Hutchinson 38:08
I just want to add to this. Just because I'm going to say ‘the dirty word’ in business and offices, which I don't know why, but the other aspect of this is ‘fun’. And I know that we don't normally look at this. Let me describe what I mean by fun. I think getting curious and creative and discovering something new is fun. And this is part of what makes us human, and it's driven out of us. We're told we have to be very serious, right? And we have to just get the things done and we have to look a certain way and act a certain way. I can't sound excited even, but we should be excited about what we're doing. Why not have fun discovering something new that can make our work better, make us more effective, make us enjoy our lives, even if it's just a little tiny, bit more?

Go for it.

Anna Shildrick 39:11
And even make the world a better place. If I think about fun which I love.
Lucy always talks about fun and reminds me about fun. Everyone wants to work at Google. Why does everybody want to work at Google?

One, it is working hard to make the world a better place. But people love working at Google. Google has the Design Sprint at the base of everything that they do. Come in. Throw your thoughts out there. Let's think about it. No, bad idea, think of another one. You know what? We can work on the idea. The design thinking process should be the base of all learning. I think they got that right.

It's, let's empathize with what exists around us. Let's ideate. Throw all your ideas in there. There's no failing. It's all good. And from there we can start to really learn about what's around us, and what tools we have? What do we have in our hands to make the solutions? And I don't think enough of us are doing that type of thinking.

Sherna Varayath 40:18
Wow, right. You mentioned AI earlier, Anna. How can AI be used to deepen rather than dilute the quality of professional learning?

Anna Shildrick 40:33
Very good question, because one of the greatest risks of AI is that it will allow us to not think. It will give us the answers, and it will take away our potential to develop greater thinking or cognitive abilities. So much of AI is just automating your tasks,
doing things quicker, writing things that you would never say. And if we look at the potential of AI, not just the risks of AI, it is enormously powerful for enriching learning if we use it to provoke thinking.

So how do we use it to provoke thinking? This again goes back to everything we've said. Productive struggle, design thinking. We have to augment our cognition, so we have to use AI to challenge our assumptions, to notice the patterns, how the things that I input let me notice what I'm inputting and see the patterns that emerge I probably hadn't noticed myself and then challenge my patterns, challenge my assumptions, and then try to expand my mental models.

Lucy and I talk all the time about metacognition. AI has enormous power to give all of us the chance to be involved in metacognition. We don't do a lot of metacognition because it's not on our school curriculum, so we don't grow up understanding that we should be thinking about our thinking. AI gives us an opportunity to think about our thinking if we use it as a thinking partner. And that's what a lot of people are not doing. They're using it because they think, oh, AI is out there, let's just make sure that our staff are using AI, use AI to do your emails. That shouldn't be the first point. The first point is to use AI to ask better questions. Before I ask it to do anything for me, I need to ask better questions. I need to analyse the reasoning that I'm using, and I need to analyse how I justify what I say by using it as a cognitive mirror. I think that's one of the most important things. Lucy, do you want to kind of dive in on that?

Lucy Hutchinson 42:57
You know I do. So if we were talking about the fun of discovery and being creative and being curious, then AI becomes your partner just like, and I say we're not just doing it again to check some box that isn't important to me.

We can do that too, but that's another side of it. The exciting aspect comes in when I have something that I'm deeply passionate about. I have the space and trust from my immediate supervisor or where I work in order that they trust me to use some of my time to deep dive into what excites me about my work. How can I find answers that maybe nobody else has thought about? So when people talk about AI crushing critical thinking, I'm like, I think you're using it wrong, right? So instead, synthesizing my own ideas and asking what am I missing? Where are my assumptions in testing the AI back? Are you using everything that you know about me like where am I hitting the nail on the head? What am I missing? What are the principles? The mental models that haven't come up in my questions to you and then being metacognitive.

Anna Shildrick 44:20
I was going to say that sometimes when I've done professional development for adults in the professional world, it's very uncomfortable for them, this process of analysing my assumptions and realizing that I'm falling into this pattern. It can be uncomfortable for us to face those things, but that is where we grow. So, whenever I host any type of PD, it's what belief systems are you bringing into this before we even start? How do you know that? How are you going to challenge those things? Because if I walk away and say, OK, I gave you a five-day course on emotional intelligence. Then I've done a great job, right? I did all the organizing. I did the communicating. But how do I know that any of that was actually left with the audience? It's only by them engaging in this and saying. What am I doing here? How am I doing it? Why am I doing it? And how I'm going to do this going forward?

Yeah, so I think it's an uncomfortable process, but a deeply satisfying one at the end when you've gone through. We talk about the divergent thinking becoming a convergent thinking. Divergent thinking is fun. Convergent thinking can be uncomfortable if you have to change what your belief system was telling you beforehand.

Lucy Hutchinson 45:50
Can I just add that the science now shows too that where the deep learning happens is often in that uncomfortable space. We don't notice when we're learning. You might just look at Anna and I and just assume, oh, these are some pretty cool people. No, we're huge nerds that love to deep dive into these topics and look at it. But the way we learn as humans is often in that uncomfortable space. That's why they say get comfortable being uncomfortable. Push yourself.

Growth happens even in those moments where it doesn't feel like you're moving forward. But instead, the pathways of your mind are opening and expanding and changing, which allows for those new ideas, and a new way to be created inside of your mind. So that opens up endless possibilities. And that's another thing that we love talking about, the endless possibilities.

Why are we complacent? Why are we just sitting here when we have the world at our fingertips? It's just so exciting.

Sherna Varayath 46:58
Yes. Now, Lucy, you talk about fostering agency in learners. What does that mean in a corporate context? And why do you think it is vital for long term growth?

Lucy Hutchinson 47:14
So we've kind of been talking about agency all this time, about having the freedom to end the motivation to get into these ideas. What makes me curious? What makes me excited? Where can I get creative about what I want to learn and what I want to do?

So agency and learning across the board refer to this capacity and confidence to choose, initiate, and direct one's own learning journey. If we think about that, that is so exciting.

I can't tell you the amount of times that we've spoken to somebody and said, OK, go ahead and get started on XYZ. We have all been conditioned often from our schools to passively receive direct instruction ABC, do this first, second, third. We don't want people to passively await instructions, but instead try something. Seek feedback. Ask questions. Pursue the knowledge. We can be asking of the people around us. We can be asking Artificial intelligence. But the idea that we're pursuing knowledge, that is aligned with what I'm doing professionally, but also with who I am as a human and what I'm interested in.

Anna Shildrick 48:45
Can I jump in there just quickly? Because you said two things that are important. The agency has the capacity, but also the confidence to do this. So if your company is not giving you this sense of trust, it's not providing a safe space for you to do that, you might have the capacity to do it, but you won't have the confidence to do this. And I read a lot about the shared leadership model, which is really old, but a lot of people haven't taken it on. Shared leadership is inviting your employees to chime in, to come in with ideas. That's what design thinking is about. The design sprints at Google is, anybody can come in with an idea. But it has to be constructed, that culture of confidence has to be created very, very clear and people are biting at the bit to give more, people are desperate to give their ideas and say, I think I have an idea, but we're taught not to do that.

Lucy Hutchinson 49:45
I totally agree. And then if it's in a situation where you're pointed out or somebody doesn't see your whole vision and it becomes almost like this thing where you're mocked if you try, and even if you fail, even if it doesn't work. You don't have that confidence. As Anna mentioned, it kind of kills that innovation. It kills that creativity, so we need to have the support. Sherna, has it ever happened that you have an idea? You're excited about it and you just get shut down immediately because that's happened to me.

Sherna Varayath 50:24
Yes, happens yes.

Lucy Hutchinson 50:26
And guess what? I didn't stick around. I look for a new place because I didn't feel like, oh, you know, when we say opportunities for growth, it's not just growing into a position that exists.

Anna and I worked with so many people that we said, OK, you don't fit into the pathways of growth that exist in your space. So you can design one, tell your leader, your boss, your manager, whoever it is. Look, this is the thing I want to do. This is how I see it moving forward. Time and time again, in my position, I've been offered an opportunity for growth or a higher position with more responsibility that didn't exist in that corporation or in that space prior.

So when you are motivated to do what you're doing and you have the agency and you have the support of your workplace, it opens up so many opportunities that using the first principal thinking you can design something for yourself that meets who you are.

Anna Shildrick

And I would also jump in that on a practical basis, what can companies do? They can start by creating flexible learning pathways and AI is the space to do this. If we have AI, how can we justify having a single learning pathway? So we can immediately start by flexible learning pathways, opportunities to co-design projects. We have this issue, we need to learn about something, Let's co-design it. And also rethink our performance review. It's like the School Report card. The School Report card says 8.5 in Maths or an A+ in it. No, we have to rethink our performance. Review what is it that we're valuing from you as you work with us in this organization and then thinking we're rewarding initiative. We're not rewarding compliance, but initiative. So rethinking the performance review entirely is a small step that we can start to open those doors for more meaningful learning.

Lucy Hutchinson 52:36
Anna I love it that you mentioned that. Because Anna knows specifically for me, many times in my reviews, they've had to change the answers because I don't fit into the box. But that in those positions they were able to recognize a value that you're bringing that is not on the form, I think that's huge. And so yeah, it's that's just one of those strategies that companies can use. But then, we have the ability to say that this is not just isolated in this context. You get to be free and creative now, and instead of you putting them into like 8:30 on Tuesday mornings, that's your creative time. Instead that just becomes part of the culture about who you are as a company and who we are as part of that culture.

Sherna Varayath 53:34
Right. Anna, what are some concrete strategies that L&D leaders can implement tomorrow to make learning stick and matter more?

Anna Shildrick 53:52
I already mentioned one of them, which would be rethinking the performance reviews starting at the end and then backward designing from there.

What is it that I want to celebrate in my employees? So thinking about the performance review, we'll celebrate initiative, the creative thinking. That is the first thing that I would go to, but also just adding reflection into the process. As you're working reflect self, reflect peer, reflect with my Manager on what is it that's going into this learning cycle? Am I checking boxes or am I actually thinking? And am I thinking about my thinking? So there has to be space for reflection.

Reflection is important because it's internalizing your learning. If I just go to my boss and say, Yes, I'm reflecting, am I actually reflecting? Not necessarily. Reflection is something that leads us to metacognition and it’s the meta learning makes it so powerful.

So, we have to think about if the learning is relevant. How is it relevant? Is it relevant to my organizational goals, my professional goals? Is it relevant to my personal goals? If there is an element of yes, this is relevant to my personal goals because now my being is involved in this, it's going to be more relevant. If I'm doing it because you told me, there's going to be very little personal relevance, so professionally relevant.
Yes, personally relevant, because I've been invested in this too. Maybe I haven't co designed it yet, but I have been invited to reflect on it, and I have been invited to bring my ideas into it. That's much more powerful than just retention. And I think that those things are just changing the mentality slightly.
Backward designing is easy, because what's the end product? I don't have the pathway yet. I don't quite know how I'm going to change everything I do as an L&D manager. But I know that the endpoint will be that I'm celebrating creativity and all of these human skills that are going to make our workplace better. And then from there, we can backward design.

Sherna Varayath 56:18
Right. Now, Lucy, how do cultural expectations and cognitive habits that develop in school impact adult learning and professional development?

Lucy Hutchinson 56:36
We humans are creatures of habit, right? We talk about this all the time, and we recognize it in ourselves all the time, muscle memory and all of these things are coming from habit.
So the residue of schooling lingers in all our spaces in adult learning, deference to authority, the fear of failure, even the checking the boxes, craving the right answer. There's none of the how might this look or how could it be. There's one right answer, you either have it or you don't. And if you don't?

Then you're failing. And you're an embarrassment for your team or whatever it is versus everything that we're talking about, with the agency and the creativity and the productive struggle where you're trying different things and seeing how it fits. So these cognitive habits, ingrained in us from years and years of education, can limit our ability as adults to engage with complexity, being in that uncomfortable, uncertain space, and being capable.

This is why using artificial intelligence can be so great, because then when we have that self-directed inquiry, we don't have to worry about the wrong answer. We don't have to worry about being exposed in front of our colleagues or our bosses because we are in that place where it's OK not to know. Nobody's laughing at us. Nobody's seeing us. That fear of failure disappears. Another big part of it is that we are unconsciously expecting the trainer to come in and mirroring our experiences from the past. So there's somebody up in the front talking at you and giving you information. You are just the passive receiver versus an active participant in this space. Obviously this doesn't hold up in dynamic workspaces. We need that space to do all of this, to disrupt, I would call it conditioning. Organizations have to break that up. We have to help adults unlearn. We talk about this a lot. When we're finished with some of the PD, it’s, OK, what are you taking with you, and what are you going to work to unlearn? And, that's huge.

Anna Shildrick 59:16
Lucy and I were both administrators as well. So we would watch teachers and see how teachers would see students. They don't understand. They've got nothing to give. They're lazy.

No, no, they just haven't had a chance to shine. The exact same thing has happened. Loads of the PD that I've given in the business world, people have sat there quietly and thought I have a lot to say, but nobody knows it. So I get my performance review the end of the day. It's a poor performance because I didn't shine. It's like the fish can't climb a tree, right? The same thing. So we've got to understand how many people are not thriving and how they could be thriving? There are so many more people who could be thriving in all these environments, and we're just not allowing them to do it.

Lucy Hutchinson 1:00:15
Love that, Anna. I think we often talk about how what students need is what the teacher needs and it's what the adult needs, it's what the worker needs. All these are just fundamental human needs. The more that we talk about artificial intelligence, the more we're talking about human intelligence and what it is that we as humans need to have the space, to grow. And that's exactly right. I think all of us have sat in sessions with pretty incredible ideas in our minds, but we don't know that there's a space for our ideas, we’re not invited into the conversation.

And so this is what I think really comes back to. When you talk about the cultural expectations that we've learned from school, we have learned to be a good student. You have to sit quietly. The desks don't move. Obviously that's changing, right? We want to explore, we want to get excited, we want to try something new. Because this is where growth happens across the board. This is how we set ourselves apart. We can still do what we know works, but we can invite in innovation to see what else might make it even better.

Sherna Varayath 1:01:38
OK. So Anna, what is the biggest myth you see in learning design? And how does your approach turn it on its head?

Anna Shildrick 1:01:55
I think I've seen this everywhere, the belief that simplicity equals efficiency, where you reduce all the friction, the complexity, the confusion, the discomfort. You reduce it down to something easy and doable to check the box. And that to me is not efficiency. Efficiency is creating a team that is bubbling with enthusiasm, bubbling with creative thinking, great communicators safe in their space to think and redesign their mental models. Because that's how we grow as a society, when we have companies, organization, systems, processes that are constantly looking, how can we do this differently? But we simplify everything and think about efficiency. But efficiency can actually be stifling our growth.

I think that true learning or understanding or growth isn't efficiency, or the absence of confusion or complexity. It’s actually the result of working through it, that is true efficiency, that is true growth, and that is something that is messy and it can be scary for people. I'll go back to think about your performance review, going to celebrate those with initiative, that will help us to backward design. Yes, we want messy. Yes, we want authentic problems to think about. Yes, we want to flounder and wonder and get it wrong and then get it right again and then perhaps we can talk about frameworks and theories, right? Because then we've done all the work. So I think that's the biggest myth that I've seen again and again.

Lucy Hutchinson 1:03:58
Let me just add to that because my mind just goes in so many different directions. We have these conversations because I find it thrilling. But then so we like, OK, we've worked with so many people that are like, OK, but I don't get it. I don't know what's happening in the beginning in that productive struggle aspect that we keep coming back to. It's not that we don't want clarity, but we want the other person that we're working with to discover the clarity for themselves. Because just being told something takes away all the meaning, or at least the majority of the meaning. So I think about this all the time. That the truth often lies in the contradictions, I'm going to get that tattooed on my forehead. It's one of my favorite things to remind myself because I'm like, I hear somebody say something and I reject it. But then I'm like, OK. When might that be true for me? When could that be true?

And then I hear even the exact opposite thing. And I'm like, how can these two mutually exclusive ideas exist simultaneously inside of my own mind? And they do, because the truth is in those nuances, it can depend on the situation. There's not just a cookie cutter, and I think that the most exciting thing about the time and place where we exist right now is that it does come down to each individual. Things can be personalized. And learning in the workplace and even our job role, OK, so here's my job description, but that doesn't have to be a cookie cutter. Create some space. So the myth that I have to stay in my lane, I think that's another one. We're limiting ourselves and one another if that's all we do. It doesn't mean that I'm going to try to take over your job and start guiding all of these podcasts, right? But it does mean that I can empathize with you and understand your position and what you're going for, so that it gets better for all of us.

Sherna Varayath 1:05:59
Yes, absolutely. Now Lucy, to continue, what does it take to build a learning culture that values thought over compliance and curiosity over completion?

Lucy Hutchinson 1:06:21
I think that one of the things that we're talking about, is creating a space for that, like you being intentional and you taking a risk, right? How can you derisk the situation? Take a little bit of the risk away. Try something new. Don't be afraid to make a little bit of space for something new. And find a way to reward the process of learning, of the process of getting, and being curious, not just the output, so it can't just be final results, so normalize not knowing. And just celebrate that risk taking. Celebrate the process of trying and even the words that we use. We all know words that can encourage us to continue, like how might that look, or what might that happen with that versus like that doesn't fit. You can just shut somebody down quickly and easily. So creating a culture where people are willing to try something, that you make a space for that, and it's living. It's alive.

Anna Shildrick 1:07:37
We have to be really clear that it's the leadership that needs to do this. It's courageous leadership, sitting down as a leadership team and saying this is a changing culture that we want to initiate. I don't think that as employees you can start going in and saying I've got a great idea. It will not be a good idea unless that has been created by a really courageous leadership team who have said I'm going to share my learning journey. I as a leader, I'm going to share with you what I don't know. I as a leader, I'm going to tell you where I failed, and I'm going to share that with you to demonstrate what this new culture can look like. I think that is the very crux of the matter here, a leader who is brave enough, courageous enough to go in and do that themselves and really model what that looks like to start the change in the culture. Building systems or processes, events, mistake of the month or just thinking differently about things, that mistake. We learn so much from that mistake, right? And starting with you as a leader, I think that that has to be the very first step. Otherwise, it can be very, very challenging to ask people to step up and do that, if it's not modelled.

Lucy Hutchinson 1:09:12
I love that you talked about those rituals and creating something even like who's going to make the first mistake or get the first ‘No’ for a sales call because we keep coming back to how hard that job is to get no’s to get the slap, the door shut in your face, right? Who's going to get the first ten? Knows like race to the top. You win today, right? Gamifying it again, bringing in that fun. But I just want to say. I do agree with you, Anna, that the leadership it comes from leadership. But if you're in a position, if you are working in a place and you are ready to look for a change because you are being stifled, or you don't feel that you have that space, what's the harm in going to your superior and saying, hey, I want to try this. And if they say no, what are you going to lose, right? You're already thinking about leaving, so it doesn't stop you in the track, but I just. It's funny that we that Anna that you talked about. These rituals and you were referring to this because I've just been deep diving more and more into this idea of how meaningful it is. But you've got to show up with intention. Again, going back to what Anna said about reflecting, you've got to know really, why did it work? What didn't work? What are you subconsciously or unconsciously telling your team? What’s the face that you're making? Maybe you're thinking about something that's happening at home, so you've got to show up with intention. You've got to be present in the moment with the other, and really listen and be aware.

Sherna Varayath 1:10:43
Wow, that's quite some insights to back for today. And this brings us to the end of today's episode. Thank you so much for sharing your thoughts with us, Lucy and Anna. It was a great time listening to you and your insights.

Anna Shildrick 1:10:59
Thanks so much for having us.

Lucy Hutchinson 1:11:01
Yeah. It's so great to have these conversations. I think as you probably noticed, we could talk about this and work in this space all day long. It's exciting, it's powerful and it comes down just one more time to not just being isolated for the workspace. It comes down to who we are as people and where we want to be and how we want to live our lives. And when something touch.

that we, we've seen it time and time again. It's not limited to. But it crosses boundaries. We've had people come back and say, you know, I'm using these skills or I'm doing this now at home with my kids or with my spouse and it's just. Really, when you think about this, the possibilities are endless. And it's just beyond exciting.

Sherna Varayath 1:11:46
Yes, it's beyond exciting. It's wholesome and it, I believe, contributes to overall growth and development and that's something we're all looking for.

Anna Shildrick 1:11:59
Agreed. Thanks so much again.

Sherna Varayath 1:12:04
Thank you. I hope our listeners are walking away with fresh ideas and actionable steps to make their learning more meaningful while driving cognitive growth. Remember, becoming an eLearning champion is a journey of continuous learning and sharing that you must commit to. If you found value in today's conversation, please do share this episode. Let's spread the knowledge. Follow us on your favorite social media platforms. Share your thoughts on today's topic or what you'd like to hear next. Thank you so much for tuning in to the eLearning Champion podcast. Just keep it away and keep inspiring and keep learning.