Why Aren’t We Practicing at Work?

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Welcome to Lead with Learning.
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I'm Tess, and here we explore what happens when the science of learning meets the art of leadership.
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Let's get started.
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Let me ask you something.
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When your team is about to take on something new, what happens?
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Maybe you're rolling out a new process or launching a new system, changing the way your team communicates, or asking managers to have different kinds of conversations with their employees.
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You explain it, you provide resources, maybe you hold a training, you answer questions and you send follow-up emails, and then you expect them to do it.
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And if you're a good leader, and I suspect that you are, you probably do more than that.
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You check in, you make yourself available, you offer support, and you give feedback.
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You troubleshoot when things are not going according to plan.
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You might even have a really strong system for onboarding and coaching and professional learning.
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So this episode isn't about telling you that you're doing leadership wrong because you're not.
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In fact, if you're listening to this, you're probably already thinking about how to build capacity on your team.
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You're trying to create stronger systems and you're already giving people opportunities.
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You're already thinking beyond today's tasks and towards what your people will eventually be capable of doing independently.
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But there's a piece I think we often overlook, and that is one of the most obvious pieces of learning.
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Practice.
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Often we expect people to perform skills that they've never actually practiced, and then we're surprised when they're not good at them yet.
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So today I want to talk about why practice belongs in the workplace.
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Not the kind of practice that requires taking your team off the job for three days and not endless role-playing exercises that everyone dreads.
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I'm talking about small intentional opportunities to try something before the stakes are high.
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Because if we're serious about building capacity as leaders, we have to give people something more than information.
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We have to give them a chance to use it.
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Think about learning how to play an instrument.
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Because you can understand the notes and you can watch someone demonstrate a song.
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You could even memorize where you have to put your fingers.
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But that doesn't mean that you can sit down and play the song well.
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You have to actually do it.
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You play the wrong note, you slow down, you try that part again, and you practice it tomorrow.
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And eventually something that once required your full attention starts to become automatic.
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Knowing the notes isn't the same as being able to play the song.
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And that's exactly what happens at work.
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When we think about learning a new language or learning that new instrument or playing a sport, practice is understood as part of performance.
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But somehow at work, we often completely separate those two things.
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We think learning happens here, and then work happens over there.
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Training happens on Tuesday, and performance starts on Wednesday.
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And we're surprised when Wednesday is far from perfect.
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That is one of the fundamental challenges of learning transfer.
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Transfer is what happens when someone takes what they've learned and actually uses it in their work.
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And research on workplace learning has consistently shown that transfer is not automatic.
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It's influenced by the design of the learning and the learner, and critically the environment in which that person is expected to apply that learning.
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In other words, knowledge isn't doing, and explaining isn't practice.
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And I can already hear some of the barriers.
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That sounds great, but I don't have any time.
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And honestly, I completely understand that.
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Your team is busy and there are deadlines and customers and clients, projects, meetings, emails, problems that need to be solved immediately.
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And when something new needs to happen, the temptation is to say, we don't have time to practice this because we just need to get it done.
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But here's the question to consider: what is the cost of not practicing?
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Because sometimes we're not actually saving any time.
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Sometimes we're creating a bigger problem that takes more time.
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We're simply moving the learning curve into the moment when that work actually matters the most.
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So instead of practicing a new skill in a 10-minute meeting, someone has to practice it for the first time with an angry customer.
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Instead of rehearsing a different conversation with their manager, a new leader has that conversation with an employee who is already upset.
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Instead of trying the new process with a low-stakes example, your employee's first attempt is attached to a deadline.
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So maybe the choice isn't practice versus productivity.
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Maybe it's practice now versus struggle later.
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And practice is how you build capacity.
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This is where I want to connect to something that we've talked about on this podcast before.
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That's the idea of building capacity.
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If you want your team to become more capable, you can't simply just give them more responsibility because responsibility does not automatically create capability.
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Sometimes responsibility can create capability, but only when that person has opportunities to try, make decisions, get feedback, reflect, adjust, and try again.
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That's professional learning.
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The Center for Creative Leadership has recent findings on learning transfer, and it describes learning as something that happens across many phases: preparing, engaging, applying, and it emphasizes guided practice, real work challenges, coaching, reflection, and reinforcement as meaningful parts of the learning cycle.
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And I love that because it moves us away from the idea that development is something that we give people.
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In fact, I don't even like the term professional development.
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I'm much more a fan of professional learning because development gives this idea that we need to fix people, we need to develop them.
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There's something that's missing that needs developing.
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But when we shift to professional learning, we're assuming confidence, we're assuming background, we're assuming knowledge, and we're building from a place of positivity and growth.
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Instead, we design learning experiences that allow people to learn.
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And that's a very different leadership mindset.
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So let's make this practical.
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I don't want you walking away from this episode feeling like this is another thing to add to your calendar.
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Because you can think about this within the work that you're already doing.
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Ask yourself, where could I build in a small opportunity for someone to try before they have to do it for real?
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Let's look at a few examples.
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You could practice in a team meeting.
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Let's say you're rolling out a new process and you've explained the process and everyone understands it.
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I mean, they say they do.
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And you could just end the meeting there, or you could give it five minutes and let them practice.
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Give them a realistic scenario and say, all right, let's try it and let the team walk through what they would do.
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Then ask them what part felt easy or what was unclear?
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What makes this feel harder in real life than just when we were talking about it?
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And suddenly you've learned something.
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Maybe the process you thought was clear isn't actually clear.
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Maybe there's an exception that people didn't consider, or maybe your team understands the steps, but doesn't quite know when to use them.
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Now you've uncovered that before implementation.
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That is not a waste of meeting time.
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That's feedback on your rollout.
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Another place is to practice during a one-on-one.
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Let's say you're helping someone learn how to get better at delegation.
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You could tell them you need to delegate more, which would not particularly be helpful.
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Or you could say, think of something you need to delegate this week.
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Let's practice how you're going to frame that conversation.
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Because now you're using practice.
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You might play the employee, they can practice the conversation, you can give some feedback, and they could try it again.
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It could take six minutes.
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And now they're not walking into that next conversation completely cold.
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They've tried the words, they've heard themselves say it, they've had a chance to adjust.
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That practice is important.
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And let me say something else.
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When I say practice, I know some of you are immediately thinking, oh God, not role play.
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And I understand because roleplay can be really, really uncomfortable, but it can also be incredibly useful, especially for your brain.
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Practice is actually much bigger than role play because practice can be walking through a decision or analyzing a real scenario, drafting an email and getting feedback before sending it, solving a hypothetical problem, or working through a real one together.
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Even retrieving something from memory instead of simply rereading that information can be a form of practice.
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Recent research examining retrieval practice with complex concepts found that retrieving information, both improved retention and aspects of transfer compared with simply restudying that material.
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So if your training consists of here's some information to read, you can try adding on.
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Now, without looking at the resource, tell me how you can use it.
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That small change makes the learner do something with the knowledge.
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And that is the point.
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Here's one of my favorite ways to make this manageable.
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It's a three-minute practice because you don't need an hour.
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You don't even need 15 minutes.
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Take something your team is currently learning and ask them to spend three minutes using it.
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For example, here's a scenario.
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How would you do it?
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Or take this process and apply it to a new situation.
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Or what's the decision that you would make and why?
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It's three minutes.
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Then you can discuss it and ask, what did you notice?
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What was difficult?
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What questions came up?
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That's it.
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And here's the beautiful thing: three minutes of practice repeated regularly can be more useful than one giant practice event that happens once.
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Because you're building a culture where trying is normal.
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And here's another strategy that I would highly encourage you to steal.
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I'd call it the before you need it rule.
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Whenever you're introducing a new responsibility, consider what will people need to be able to do before this actually goes live.
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Then create a small practice opportunity.
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Let's say you're changing your performance review process.
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Before the review season begins, don't just explain the new expectations.
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People are going to hear it and they're going to forget.
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Have managers practice writing a piece of feedback.
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Give them an example employee situation and ask, what would you say?
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And then discuss those ideas.
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Or if you're implementing a new customer service expectation, before customers experience the new standard, give employees three customer scenarios and let them practice.
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Don't wait until the real first deadline is here.
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Give employees sample tasks and let them navigate.
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Let them get stuck and ask questions because that's exactly when you want them to get stuck before it really matters.
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And there's one more important piece.
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If we want practice to actually prepare people for real work, we can't always practice the easy stuff.
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We can start simple and then add complexity.
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This is particularly important because real workplace situations rarely look like the examples in a training session.
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People need a variety of examples to be able to support transfer into new situations.
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So don't give your team one scenario, give them two or three and change the conditions.
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Add a complication, remove some information, and then ask what changes, or would your approach still work?
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Or what would you do differently?
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Because now you're preparing people for reality, because real work is messy.
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If you don't remember anything else from this episode, remember these four words.
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Try, reflect, adjust, and try again.
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Because that's the practice cycle.
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Trying gives people an opportunity to use the skill.
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Reflecting asks them what happened.
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Adjusting helps them identify what they would change.
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And trying again gives them another opportunity.
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And that is learning.
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Because more explicit explanation isn't always the answer.
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Sometimes the learner doesn't need more information.
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They just need another opportunity to use the information that they already have.
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Look at the outline for your next team meeting.
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What are we currently talking about that people could practice?
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Look at your next one-on-one and think, what skill is this person trying to develop that we could rehearse for just a few minutes together?
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Or look at your next rollout and think, what should people practice and understand before this rollout becomes real?
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And that's it.
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You don't need a new learning platform or a new initiative or a three-day workshop.
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You just need to notice the opportunities because your workday is full of them.
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We spend a lot of time at work asking: did they complete the training?
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Did they read the information?
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Did we explain the new process?
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But maybe there's a better question, and that's did they get a chance to practice?
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Because knowing what to do and being able to do it are two different things.
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And if we're serious about building capacity, not just getting through today's work, we have to make room in the middle for something messy.
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The trying, that awkward first attempt, the mistake, and give feedback and let there be time for adjustment.
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Because the second attempt is probably just a little bit better.
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It's not a waste of time, it's learning.
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And as leaders, we have an incredible opportunity to design more of it in the workplace.
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So next time you're about to hand someone a new responsibility or roll out a new initiative, don't just ask, have I explained this well enough?
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Consider, have I given them a chance to practice before I need them to perform?
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Because if we want capable teams, we can't just give people more responsibility.
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We have to give them opportunities to build the capacity to carry it.
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Thanks for listening to Lead with Learning.
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I hope you're walking away with something you can put into practice.
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Until next time, let learning change the way you lead.