Love being the centre of attention? Maybe Business Learning 2 is not for you….

Recently I was sitting in the back row of a very prestigious training and development conference, the kind of event where one would expect only the very best in people development processes.

With so much of our world moving away from one-directional communication to interactivity I was expecting the people development community to be at the forefront of this trend. In short I was expecting almost all of the presentations and workshops to be conforming to the ambitions of Business Learning 2.0 – a movement expressing the need for business learning to make the move the internet made from brochure ware to interactivity.

I guess it is to be expected in this era of social networks and user generated content all over the place that business learning would also become the same.

In many ways the words do indicate that, many presenters offering lip service to simulations, action learning and generally co-created learning experiences.  Even the imported & much hyped “engaging trainer” I was listening to, insisted that learning is best achieved when people sit in groups of four. Unfortunately the session was conducted in a traditional classroom style set-up. Was it so hard to ask the organisers to move the furniture around?

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On September 24 2009 Muammar Gaddafi addressed the United Nations General for 96 minutes

He rambled on, waving his arms and thrusting pieces of paper in the general direction of an audience too polite to leave despite being bored and mortified.  This was a moment of self-indulgence, a disrespect of the minds and dignity of the audience and a simple abuse of the podium.  Shocking? Sure. A relic of the past? Maybe not. Think back to your last corporate training or strategy presentation. Was it really that different from that hour and a half at the UN on the 24^th of September 2009? Think back to your session. Were you respected and included as an active participant? Did you have to think, engage and come to your own conclusions?  Were you truly there to help shape the moment, the learning, the end of the journey?  Was the room set up for conversation or for monologue? Were you really there to participate, or were you just there to fill the seats and get some guy in a suit the satisfaction of having “spoken to the people”?

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