Skip to main content

Myths that persist

Over the last few years, I have had the privilege of viewing learning and development from a ringside perspective as well as from the inside view. It is interesting to see how many myths persist in this space. This is just my perspective  - based on what I have learnt.

The myth of Left Brained and Right Brained people. This myth refuses to die - despite being proved by research. Like many myths, there is a certain element of truth - the brain is indeed divided across hemispheres The brain is far more interlinked - this much is very well known-- but to categorise a person as Left (artist - yay cool) or Right brained (accountant - hence boring) is just laziness.

The myth of multi-tasking. This was hight on the radar a few years ago - it still persists, but again, has been largely disproved. There is almost no such thing as multitasking - the changeovers during switching affect productivity - and all our devices make it worse. Read this piece for all collection of insights on it...

The myth of Learning Styles. This myth which states that people learn through various styles - visual,  auditory, kinesthetic - among others. This myth has been comprehensively broken down here...but we continue to have conversations about 'how are you going to tackle this learning style'. The fact is that we mostly, only learn by doing. There is no other way. Step out of your comfort zone, learn, do, repeat till it becomes a habit - everything else is a shortcut that goes nowhere.

In your experience, which other myths continue to persist?



Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The man who saved Pumpelsdrop

This was a story we had in college if I am not mistaken. Perhaps it was in school, but a delightful story it was. The story goes somewhat like this ( reproduced from here ), but the college version we had was slightly different from this.  I t was a dull, gloomy and a depressing morning in a town named Pumpelsdrop in northern England. The Great Depression had brought all the businesses to a standstill. The bored automobile dealer was spending time alone, as usual. But, this seems to be an unusual morning as an odd entity (customer) appeared on the horizon. A man in a bright suit walks up to the dealer and says, "I need to buy a Rolls Royce Phantom II. We have a business conference coming up and I need to impress my customers". Then proceeds to pay 10% of the deal with a single check for 2000 pounds. The rest he says will pay when he takes the delivery.   The auto dealer was stunned. He was delighted to hear that someone is holding a business conference of some kind and

The Mintzberg triangle

At a recent training, someone spoke about the Mintzberg triangle. I located it here . Image from that page reproduced here. The page linked above has a better explanation of diagram above, but what intrigued me was that the triangle exists for practically anything. The facilitator referred to this in the context of facilitation. Of how facilitation has science, craft and art to it. That is so true,  I thought. Worth a thought! Need to read of Mintzberg though...

Gamified Presentation Skills

Creating a tool or a game or an aid for presentation skills has been on my mind for a long time now. As someone who has developed, designed and delivered many versions of presentation skills and slide making skills, this has been a question in my mind. And I thought of something fairly obvious - a deck of cards (Yes, I am a huge fan of card and board games) to help people as they work on their presentation. But when I looked this up, there seemed to be a few products that serve this need. And so it went. There did not seem to be any new value addition that I could bring. And a few weeks ago, I attended a session where we had to evaluate a speaker and there was no feedback for the speaker. The insight for me was that many a time giving feedback is 'difficult' I suppose. The issue with feedback is - that most often the only way to do it at the 'Point of Presentation' is with paper - And many a time, people just cursorily fill out the sheets with any random number