Have you ever wondered why folks who get trained don’t retain the new knowledge over time? According to Harvard studies, there’s a 90% failure-to-retain in instructor-led classrooms. Surely students want to learn, trainers are dedicated professionals, and the content is important. But the problem goes beyond the students, the motivation, the trainer, or the material being trained.

While trainers assume their content will be heard per their intended meaning, learners may be hearing something different; they might have no way to accurately translate it or retain it. Learning is a brain change issue.

Current training models, while certainly dedicated to imparting knowledge in creative, constructive, and tested ways, may not develop the necessary neural circuitry for Learners to fully comprehend, retain, or retrieve the new information.

WE CAN ONLY ‘HEAR’ WHAT WE’VE HEARD BEFORE

The primary problem is how brains ‘hear’. Due to the nature of how brains handle incoming words (puffs of air that face distortions and deletions before being translated into meaning by neural circuits), an instructor’s content may be mistranslated, misunderstood, or misappropriated. Certainly there is no way to retain it as intended unless the learner has precise circuitry that matches the instructor’s content.

Let me say this another way: because incoming content/words (Initially meaningless sound vibrations.) face so much distortion and deletion during the brain’s automatic, habituated, physiological, neurological, electrochemical, biological listening process, and because incoming content can only be translated by existing/historic circuitry, we basically only ‘hear’ what we’ve heard before.

For those interested in learning how brains ‘listen’, my book WHAT? explains it all (with lots of funny stories and learning exercises) and offers workarounds.

Sample

Our brains are the culprit: they construct the way we make sense of the world – without our agreement or knowledge. Unfortunately, we don’t question what shows up as our ‘reality’, but our viewpoints, interpretations and assumptions, what we believe, what we think we hear and even what we’re curious about, are unconsciously biased by our history. Indeed, our ability to accurately act on and understand incoming information is unwittingly restricted and misconstrued.

WE EACH INVENT OUR OWN REALITY

Neuroscientist David Eagleman explains how we invent our own reality in The Brain:

“Each of us has our own narrative and we have no reason not to believe it. Our brains are built on electrochemical signals that we interpret as our lives and experience… there’s no single version of reality. Each brain carries its own truth via billions of signals triggering chemical pulses and trillions of connections between neurons.” [pg 73-74]

In an NPR interview neuroscientist Stephen Macknik says:

“Most of the world is very real. You’ve just never lived there. You’ve lived a perception of that world in your mind that’s been filtered by a bunch of salt water sacks, proteins and electrochemical signals that can’t possibly be making an accurate determination of what’s actually going on. The brain actually receives very, very little accurate information.”

For the 10% of students who have been involved with similar training, or who already have circuits for similar ideas, accepting and understanding new content is easy as there’s an existing translation point.

For those who don’t have existing circuits, the brain chooses a ‘similar-enough’ circuit that, while historic, may not be similar enough, causing misunderstanding and failure to learn what’s being offered – or worse, the assumption that what’s ‘heard’ is what was intended. Following a lecture, professors who study with me ask their students what they heard, and each student hears something different.

LEARNING FACILITATION

It’s possible to design programs that help students generate new circuits specifically for the new knowledge before offering content. This ensures the information will be accurately heard and retained.

As an original thinker who’s been inventing systemic brain change models for decades, I’ve developed a Learning Facilitation™ model that first trains the brain before presenting the core content.

I presented my Learning Facilitation™ model at the Learning Ideas Conference in June 2024. Here is a link to the full one-hour presentation. Enjoy.

If you have questions, or want to learn the process, please get in touch: sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com

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Sharon-Drew Morgen is a breakthrough innovator and original thinker, having developed new paradigms in sales (inventor Buying Facilitation®, listening/communication (What? Did you really say what I think I heard?), change management (The How of Change™), coaching, and leadership. She is the author of several books, including her new book HOW? Generating new neural circuits for learning, behavior change and decision making, the NYTimes Business Bestseller Selling with Integrity and Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell). Sharon-Drew coaches and consults with companies seeking out of the box remedies for congruent, servant-leader-based change in leadership, healthcare, and sales. Her award-winning blog carries original articles with new thinking, weekly. www.sharon-drew.com She can be reached at sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com.