Developing Training for Diverse Teams: A Conversation with Davon Miller

CommLab Podcast with Davon Miller

Sherna Varayath 1:27
Hey there, welcome back to the e-learning Champion pod, where we dive deep into strategies, trends and triumphs, shaping the world of digital learning. In today's episode, we're tackling a challenge many of us face, bridging the learning gap, how to engage a dynamic workforce, and trust me, you won't want to miss the actionable insights and expert perspectives we're about to unpack.
I'm thrilled to introduce our guest for this episode, Davon. Davon Miller is the founder of the Navod Group, curated to promote lifelong learning experiences and empower professional growth. Davon is a passionate and highly motivated talent development innovator and certified learning and development professional. With over 10 years of experience in the learning and development landscape, she has a proven track record of elevating organisations to new heights through strategic talent development initiatives. That's not all. Davon has successfully cultivated a culture of continuous growth across a wide range of industries dedicated to nurturing talent and driving organisational success with innovative learning strategies. With relentless commitment to excellence, she has consistently transformed employee development programmes into high impact engines of change. Welcome, Davon. It's a pleasure to have you speak for us today.

Davon Miller 3:01
Well, thanks for that wonderful introduction Sherna. I appreciate it. Glad to have you here in this conversation and excited to share some additional insight for you guys. So appreciate the invite.

Sherna Varayath 3:14
Looking forward to it. So before we head in, dear listeners, make sure you're a true eLearning champion by hitting that follow button wherever you're listening in from. Alright, let's get started. So, Davon, can you start by sharing an overview of your background and experience in developing learning content for diverse teams?

Davon Miller 3:39
Sure. Actually my experience began initially in the financial space. So I managed at that time brokerage operations teams, trust operations teams, and I was on a fast track to obtain my law degree and practice securities law. So during that process learning and development training fell in my lap, I found myself training investment brokers on margins, accounts, and securities, sales training, expectations and change management skills as well during that time. So at that moment I realized how my passion was for curating content and really encouraging employees to be successful. And so I at that moment pivoted my career directly towards learning and development and I actually transitioned to HR and education space, just to make sure, I focused on leadership skills and developing content for leadership environments, as well as transitioning over to the manufacturing and telecommunication space where I was able to further my learning and development skill set to develop content for employees within the Chicago location, China. And so in that space I actually focused more so on product management, on consumer sales, on leadership skills as well. And so further on, fast forward, I was able to transition over to the telecommunications space where I managed a learning and development training team and we really supported teams in Hawaii and the Philippines. And so I was able to get a broad perspective of how to design and develop content for diverse teams and diverse workforces. That experience really gave me a broad knowledge of that and sitting back, thinking about it now, I know we talk about developing training and how the what, why and how is important. The ‘how’ is absolutely important when you're looking at designing courses for diverse teams, that the why and the what is important as well, right? We absolutely need to help our leaders understand and be comfortable with engaging with their employees or managing change management, or a retail team absolutely needs to know how to sell effectively, so their products and services effectively with their customers or contacts in our agents need to absolutely know how to deal with objections, with their interactions with their customers over the phones. So the ‘what’ is absolutely important as well as the ‘why’. The why is certainly important. Also we have to make sure that those strategic goals are tied directly to that training content, and we need to help our employees understand why they're taking the course, right? How would that course benefit them in the long run and help them to be a little more productive? So the ‘what’ and the ‘why’ are absolutely important. The ‘how’ is certainly the most crucial when you're taking a look at building content for diverse teams, when we're looking at fluid differences. So I'd just share a little bit more about that and help you understand some of the techniques and things that I utilise throughout the process to really hold in on and engage our diverse teams across the board.

Sherna Varayath 7:23
Very interesting. Change management is my favourite topic. So you worked with teams across various employment levels, from entry level to C-Suite. So how do you tailor your training content to meet the needs of such a wide range of learners?

Davon Miller 7:47
That's a good question, Sherna. Meeting the needs of all levels can be very challenging at times because you have different skill sets and competencies. So it's important to identify the competency levels or skill sets in the very beginning, even prior to the development stage. And so one of the things that I do is leverage pre assessments. Those could be formal surveys or actual focus groups to make sure I get to the bottom of and understand what those specific needs and those specific skill sets are so that I can accommodate each of those individuals throughout the training. I also have continued conversations with management and with learners. Those continued conversations unveil those identified learning gaps. We actually talked through key performance indicators that we want to look at, to measure success across the board, and also identify those strategic goals, which is crucial when we're looking at designing courses. Obviously we want to make sure those learning initiatives are actually meeting the needs of the organisation holistically, right. So those surveys and those continued conversations help me to understand what the perspective is, what the goal is across the board in terms of developing content.

Now ideally we have situations where I break out those specific levels and roles in different fashions to make sure that I tailor the course specifically towards that role. So we may have your beginner level, your intermediate level or your advanced levels. Ideally that's typically what's conducive for training and those spaces to tailor the courses. But there are situations where that's just not possible. I remember working some time ago with a consumer cell of a business. And they had some employee availability constraints and time constraints. They were allowed 4 hours per month for the training, the roles to continue, to complete training. So there were some constraints there, but in that case I have to be very adaptable, have to be very creative to be able to accommodate those learners. So in those situations I look at focusing on the core content as a group in a synchronous learning environment where we break off into different sessions to accommodate that with additional engaging role based eLearning or open discussion sessions right after that session there, so there's ways to be creative in those situations. But again I have to be very creative, very adaptable in those scenarios.

Now there are situations where having everyone, all with dissimilar skill levels in the same class is the only option depending upon the line of business and the structure of the business. So, in those cases, I make sure that I include engaging elements as much as possible. Your knowledge checks, your gamification activities, your open discussions, reference material so that agents and employees can reference that material after the training session. I know that's not an ideal situation, but I have found that there is some advantage to having different levels of learners in one class. It opens up the opportunity for open discussions around best practices and different perspectives and it does help the efficiency of training, of learning and engage in that enhancement in their activities and their development skills. So I found that it's been pretty beneficial when you have that mixture of levels in one session. Again, not always ideal, but there are some benefits to that.

Sherna Varayath 12:27
Right, yes. The different perspectives are really beneficial. Which strategies do you use to address the fluid differences within a dynamic workforce, such as you just mentioned different generations. There might be interests, and languages, even different time zones and geographic locations.

Davon Miller 12:50
That takes a little bit of a strategy there when you have those fluid differences involved. And I often refer to this as conscious content creation because you're actually being mindful around your audience, you're taking into account exactly who your audience is, what those characteristics are. And I usually consider the unknown and known fluid differences. Your known fluid differences are things such as geographic differences, geographic locations, differences in culture, and languages, time zones. Your unknown fluid differences are typically your generational differences, your different interests and learning styles, so it's important to keep those things in mind when you're designing content and this ties back to the what, why, and how. When you're really take into consideration those differences, how do we ensure that all learners are being fully engaged, right? You have a lot of things during the development stage. There's so many things as an instructional designer, so many elements go into our minds, right? What types of general generational differences we have in the class? Who will be in specific different geographical locations? Where are they located? What are their cultures and backgrounds do they have? Are there different time zones? So those things we have to consider when designing appropriate and engaging courses there. But when it comes to connecting and accommodating those known fluid differences, we have to be accessible. We have to make sure that our training is flexible, and we absolutely have to make sure the training is relatable. So in terms of it being accessible it for me, I typically make sure that the course is mobile friendly and accessible in all areas so that anyone in different locations can actually access that content. I offer micro learning modules to accommodate everyone's schedule, I also provide downloadable resources so that everyone has access to that information at any time. So it absolutely has to be accessible. The other thing too is that it has to be flexible. There has to be a flexibility there. And previously supporting teams in Hawaii and the Philippines are on a quite a different time schedule, right time zones. So Hawaii is 6 hours ahead of us and the Philippines is 12 hours ahead of us. There's quite a bit of difference in their time zones there. So I absolutely have to make sure that I allow for on-demand access

for any participant to take the course at any time. So that's really important there. And the last piece here in is in terms of being relatable. It's important, particularly for when you have different cultures and backgrounds attending and completing the course, it's important to study their culture. I know that seems like a large feat because, gosh, how can I know everything about this culture prior to training? You don't have to know every last thing about the culture, right? It can mean those very small things that you're honing in on. I can give an example around training our employees in Hawaii and they have a really strong culture in what they call the Aloha spirit which is really grounded upon emphasis on kindness and compassion and mutual respect. And so I had to anchor that in the team building training sessions, sales training and leadership training and particularly customer experience trainings there to make sure that we incorporate the foundations of Aloha spirit in the training, so they could really relate to those concepts. So small things like that can be incorporated. Another example. Hawaii and the Philippines are very big on food and culinary aspects there. So just recognising or mentioning Hulk or Sisig or Balut which is a pretty common delicacy in Hawaii and the Philippines. They can absolutely relate to that, and it just creates a light, relatable moment in certain circumstances here. So again, just making sure that the content is relatable for all those that are participating just makes the training a lot more conducive.

And so that's really on the side of looking at the known fluid differences. But there's also your unknown fluid differences. These are things that may not be readily available to us or a little difficult to unveil or obtain. These are those generational differences, those differences in interest and learning styles, and so one of the things that I try to incorporate in training is collaborative learning experiences where we have role play activities, we have gamifications or leader boards and quizzes, so making sure that the course is engaging in that aspect really touches on their learning styles. Because sometimes you don't know what their learning styles are, but it's important to go into the development stage with the mindset that you will have a wide range of learning styles in the class, you will have a wide range of different interests, right? And so taking those things into account, you're pretty successful at making sure you incorporate those elements in training.

The other thing which is really important is making sure that flexible learning paths are offered. So again, I mentioned microlearning opportunities or self-paced modules are really important in that space. And also the blended learning opportunity. So offering different avenues for agents and employees to participate and complete the training, whether it's an in-class session, an eLearning module or breaking off into a mentorship discussion or open forums for those particular participants is really helpful to make sure those training sessions are very engaging. So one last thing I wanted to mention is around making sure that you incorporate generational engagement and so that actually meets the needs of the numerous generations that may be attending or completing that course. As we all know that our Gen Zs and millennials are pretty tech savvy and feedback-driven, so want to make sure I include gamification elements and microlearning elements into those sessions. Our baby boomers are pretty familiar with structured content and clear instructions. So including those elements as well. In terms of our Gen Xers, they're pretty independent and self-reliant learners, so definitely want to make sure we integrate self-paced learning opportunities and practical application activities in that case. So again really making sure that we connect with all learners. Looking at our unknown fluid differences is important. So just keeping those things in mind here will make that course a lot more fluid and reach all the learners in that class there.

Sherna Varayath 21:01
OK, really interesting set of strategies. How do you incorporate diverse perspectives into your training content, considering such varying skill sets and backgrounds?

Davon Miller 21:35
That's a great question, Sherna and I actually refer back to that conscious content creation. And it's something that I actually reach out to our subject matter experts or incorporate subject matter experts into the session. They're very valuable from the very start of the development stage to the very end of the reinforcement stage of training. They offer different perspectives and different best practises into the course, and it validates that course to a certain extent for learners because they know that they have an expert in the class. As instructors, as facilitators, as designers, we absolutely need to be pretty much an expert ourselves. We're learning the process, we're learning this particular content of the training course to actually be able to relay that out to our employees. But at the same time such subject matter experts are involved typically in the day-to-day and so they understand exactly what specific scenarios to bring to the table, to make sure they unveil those best practises with those participants.

It's also important to include mentor-led discussions, where employees have the opportunity to meet with professionals. And so these sorts of mentors may attend the class, or they may actually have interactions prior to those in-class virtual or eLearning sessions to have further discussions around, solidifying that content and making sure that the content is reinforced. So it's also important to ensure that content is free from any biases or stereotypes, cultural biases, and so considering those differences, again, a lot of times there's those unknown differences, but at the same time, we absolutely want to make sure that there are no stereotypes and that in the class the worst thing we want to do is could ask some of the participants or possibly the participants and to really unfortunately that will actually discourage them from attending the class or completing the course itself. So the last thing in terms of those best practises is utilising AI analytics. I know AI is becoming more and more the platform in use nowadays which is very, very useful, but it really gives some great information in terms of understanding the preferences, particularly in different regions. Say for instance I submitted a local survey out to a group in Hawaii or the Philippines and they've taken a specific course, and I've received specific feedback from that specific region on how satisfied they were with that particular course, and specific things that we may need to change on that course. And so those are some of the results that we get back from those surveys to understand how do we need to update or adjust the training material to make sure the course is more efficient and beneficial for that specific region of employees that are taking that course. So very important in addressing those diverse perspectives.

Sherna Varayath 25:11
So you emphasise the importance of knowing your audience. Could you walk us through your process for how should we understand the needs, preferences, and pain points of our learners?

Davon Miller 25:30
I think to fully understand our learners, it's goes back to having continued communications with management and learners themselves. Having those open conversations initially with management, it is finding out exactly how we want to impact behaviour. What pain points or challenges are our agents or employees having or facing? And what specific KPIs do we want to identify to impact? So those conversations are very important in the very beginning of the development stage. It's also important to talk to speak with learners as well. I at times create focus groups to particularly understand some of their preferences or, and here's where we can actually unveil some of those unknown fluid differences. Not all the time, but there may be some cases where we can reveal some of those unknown fluid differences, where typically we wouldn't have observed those or receive those initially with conversations with management. In a lot of cases, our agents are pretty comfortable, and employees are pretty comfortable with having conversations with the training team, more open with having those conversations so some of that information is very beneficial and it helps during that development stage. So again it's important to identify those KPIs, identify pain points and have those continued conversations with management and learners across the board to be effective.

Sherna Varayath 27:16
You mentioned ensuring content is relevant and role specific. So could you give us an example of how you applied this principle in a real world training scenario?

Davon Miller 27:33
Right. So I can mention a number of those situations, but one that really sticks out in my mind is that situation where I supported a consumer sales for telecommunications company and I was responsible for rolling out a sales training programme that was based on the spin sales model particularly geared towards our SMB retail and contacts in our agents. So the spin sales model is really focused on consultative sales approaches, and it helps our agents and employees to really enhance their skills on having sales conversations with customers, and helps them to sharpen their ability to understand and solve customer problems. And it really helps them to sharpen their ability to sell the value of products and services as opposed to pushing the features and hard selling. That was a premise around the sales training, but for each of those lines of businesses, the premise was primarily the same. But because the roles were very different, I had to tweak the training programme to meet those needs across the board. So, for example, with the SMB team, they primarily interacted with customers in person directly with their small business managers or small business owners. These were the example of your small insurance companies or small tyre companies or your barber shops or your hair salons. So I had to specifically tailor those courses for that group primarily around their challenges, which was interacting with customers in terms of their concerns. Customers had concerns around security issues or bandwidth issues and so I had to include simulation activities that addressed those security issues and concerns that customers had in those small businesses. That approach allowed them to really enhance their ability to ask probing questions and their ability to identify appropriate products for customers across the board based on customers’ needs. So tailoring the course in that aspect really helped that group to be successful in the long run. When you looked at customer service agents, they had challenges with dealing with objections and selling products and understanding some of the value of products versus the features of the products. And so it was important for me to include interactive activities, role play activities and simulation elements there which would incorporate their ability to practically exercise how to handle objections. Based on this specific objection that they were faced with, how do they successfully interact or counteract that? And so I had specific scenarios around those objections and specific best practises, for example, where they had to match in the eLearning courses, they were matching those objections to those appropriate counteractions, right. So those specific examples again really helped them to perform specific activities in that sense to make sure they were prepared for interacting with their customers in the long run.

Sherna Varayath 31:44
OK, so Davon, how do you leverage blended learning approaches to engage learners and promote knowledge retention?

Davon Miller 32:00
So that's really important there, Sherna. Just blended learning opportunities again, allows us to really focus on engaging all learners and having multiple delivering modalities of training content is important. I remember rolling out a systems product training where I actually offered in-class training sessions, virtual sessions, as well as supplemental eLearning courses, online weekly knowledge management updates, which our agents or employees who are able to access content directly on the knowledge management tool to be up to speed with updates on products and services. We also initiated e-mail flashes along with that for a specific alerts that went out on a daily basis. So offering those multiple delivery methods is truly important to make sure our employees are really up to speed with updates and we're actually combating or counteracting the forgetting curve. Studies have shown that we forget about 50% of content within an hour of reviewing new concepts and new information. And within 24 hours, we tend to forget about 70% of that information. So we have to find a way of counteracting that forgetting curve in that sense. So consistently introducing information in different ways can actually decline that and reactivate that muscle memory for those that are participating in the session. So that approach of multiple modalities of delivery helps our employees to remember and retain the information along the way.

Sherna Varayath 34:07
Right. What types of engaging and interactive content have you found to be the most effective in training programmes?

Davon Miller 34:21
I think in essence, all of our components, all elements are important. But I think the most impactful for me has been the involvement of role play activities and subject matter experts’ initiations there. Role play activities again allow participants that opportunity to really apply their new concepts in the real world environment. It's giving them that active learning environment where they're practising, they're reading, they're watching, engaging in decision making at the time while they're learning that process or concepts. And so it's also giving them that same space to make mistakes and get feedback. And that's what we want in the training environment. It's an opportunity to make mistakes, receive feedback, and be efficient by the time they complete the course to be able to be sufficient in the real world. It also boosts engagement. Really giving them those interactive activities breaks up that monotony a bit. I know there are some monotonous content you're looking at IT or other content that sort of can be a little monotonous. This breaks up that monotony and gives them other activities and involvement that they participate in just to make sure the training is actually satisfactory, and they're satisfied in training. And lastly it really gives them an opportunity for immediate reflection and feedback.

That's important to complete the course and follow through with that specific process and make some mistakes at the very end of that training session. It's not so conducive, right? Granted there are some employees that continue training, and they do make mistakes, right? Human error sometimes is involved there, but it's important to reduce that number of errors that they make after the completion of the course and so incorporating those role play activities and engaging activities will reduce the number of errors that participants will make after completion. So those are very, very important in terms of role-playing. The other element here that I feel that's really impactful is our subject matter expert participation. As I mentioned earlier, their participation is very crucial from the start of training development to the very end. It's really in terms of making sure they're involved in the training session themselves. I particularly invite them to attend the training if it is an in-class training session or virtual session. If I'm creating an eLearning development course, I will often video record their expertise and include that recording in the eLearning course. So again it's crucial to have that expertise and it really validates that material, and it helps learners to feel more connected to the material because they feel you know what, this individual is a part of this specific team. And I know that they are in the day-to-day and I know they are pretty experienced in terms of dealing with specific scenarios. So it validates their expertise, and it validates the importance of the training itself. So it's very crucial to have those subject matter experts in training sessions.

Sherna Varayath 38:30
Right, absolutely. So Davon, how do you ensure accessibility and inclusivity in your training programmes, particularly for learners with disabilities or language barriers?

Davon Miller 38:47
This is crucial also and this falls into the category of those unknown fluid differences. Because in a lot of cases, we don't know if there are any disabilities, particularly now we have many of our courses that are virtual, and we have eLearning courses that we initiate. But we have to take these things into account. So there's a number of things that can be incorporated in training and one in particular is making sure that all courses have audio and visual content. So if you've got learners that are visually impaired, they actually have visibility to the course themselves. So it's very, very important to make sure that all videos include closed captions, and we want to make sure we benefit those that are hearing here at all. So and including those closed captions and transcripts.

So those are really important. I often also consider time constraints, making sure that I extend the duration of the class for those that may not be able to complete the course as quickly as others. So I open that opportunity up for those that particularly have disabilities in that area. Again, this is something that management has actually reached out to me beforehand so that I can extend that course for those individuals. So being very flexible in that case to make sure we accommodate those with disabilities is really important. Fonts and colors, I pay close attention to that also. There are specific fonts and colours that we may want to be really selective in choosing in terms of making sure that those that have disabilities can actually view the course. I know there's specific colours that we should typically use. Your blue and orange combinations and your blue and red combinations and blue and brown combinations are those colours that we should actually take into account when developing eLearning content or any training content for those with colour blind disabilities. So that's really important also. But all in all it's again going back to those unknown fluid differences we have to connect to that and be open to those differences and making sure that we incorporate all aspects in the training to accommodate that.

Sherna Varayath 41:55
OK. So can you discuss the importance of leveraging data and encouraging feedback in training programmes and maybe add how you've implemented these strategies in your own work?

Davon Miller 42:09
I think this is very crucial. Collecting data should be one of the reasons why we have the training. It actually validates that training course. It encourages improvement. This is how we confirm that training was successful or not so successful. There may be situations where satisfaction scores are not so high and so we make those adjustments to the training to ensure that it's more efficient the next go round, so it really validates the training across the board here. My experience with data collection is that it's been really important for me to connect with the organisation’s data analysts or having access to a data reporting myself. I typically have access to Power BI or SAP business objects to make sure that I have access to that content or to that reporting to measure success, to build specific benchmarks, and understand how that training has actually impacted the organisation overall. I can share that for previous sales training programme that I rolled out, one of the KPIs that we looked at was overall a business core sales and value added sales.

And so that data became very, very important in terms of ensuring that sales programmes were effective in that sense. So overall data collecting is a very essential piece of completing the training process and it validates training. The ultimate goal here is to show how learning programmes impact organisations and continued capture data and feedback promotes training effectiveness. It promotes inclusivity. It promotes continuous improvement, right?

This information confirms that learning objectives are met, and it drives content improvement and personalization and encourages high performance, and ultimately, organisations grow. So this is really the icing on the cake here. It's one thing that really excites me when I go through the whole process of the development stage and rolling out the programme, and when we look to see what those KPIs look like and how the training has actually moved the needle in terms of performance, it's exciting to see that there's growth and development based on that training. So that’s what really keeps me going and moving here with training.

Sherna Varayath 45:10
Interesting, very interesting. We've covered so much ground today from fluid differences to conscious content creation and so many engagement strategies and even real world scenario examples from you. It's really interesting to hear. And this brings us to the end of this insightful episode of the eLearning Champion pod. I have to so much to take away from this episode. Davon, thank you so much.

Davon Miller 45:43
Thank you, Sherna. It's been a pleasure to be here again. Thanks for inviting me. And you enjoy the rest of the day.

Sherna Varayath 45:51
Yes, thank you so much. Have a lovely day ahead. I hope you're walking away with some fresh ideas and actionable steps to engage your learners. If you found value in today's conversation, please do share this episode with your fellow eLearning enthusiasts who could benefit from these episodes that spread the knowledge and empower more champions in our field. We always love to hear you. So whatever your thoughts are, what are your thoughts on today's topics? What challenges are you facing? Please do write to us on our available channels. We'd love to keep the conversation going. Thank you for tuning in to the eLearning champion pod. Thank you. Thank you so much, Davon.