When a manager faces a challenge and becomes stuck, he or she may seek the services of a personal coach or refer to a self-coaching guide. Once this decision is made, the person begins to experience a different, more hopeful, world as his or her perceptions evolve in meeting the challenge.
As powerful and effective as professional coaching can be, it is only affordable to less than one percent of the workforce. That is why self-coaching insights, easily retrieved from a mobile smartphone, tablet, e-reader or laptop, grabs managers’ attention with compelling content to make them feel a sense of urgency to act on what they learned.
In psychology, the term “thin slicing” refers to the brain’s ability to draw surprisingly accurate conclusions from very limited information. Applied to leadership development, thin slicing is about isolating thin slices of learning and delivering powerful insights from a single bite-size concept. Instead of starting big, it starts small. A short, incomplete slice of learning can deliver a powerful “Aha” moment and create behavior change more effectively than a longer learning module or conversation that tries to cover too much:
1) Workplace performance coaching should be delivered in short bursts – just six to 10 minutes at a time. Today’s multi-tasking workforce has neither the time nor the attention span for traditional lengthy training formats.
2) People learn best when training and coaching is focused on a narrow concept where learning goals are clearly defined. When this knowledge is delivered in small packets, the brain can easily absorb, remember and apply what it learns.
3) Performance coaching and self-coaching are most powerful when grounded in verifiable research. When managers see performance coaching and self-coaching as credible, they’re more likely to translate their learning into on-the-job behavior.
“Traditional instructional design builds courses that are linear, logical and complete,” Rapid Learning Institute CEO Stephen Meyer said after the 2014 ASTD conference. “In my talk, I proposed a different approach. Instead of trying to cover everything, create e-learning modules that are short, focused on a single concept, and intentionally incomplete.”