How Learning Managers Can Use Mobile Learning For Better Leadership Training
Today’s learning managers need to be practical, but they also must be flexible. When it comes to leadership training and development, they’re required to stretch the edges of those training buckets wide enough to hold an increasing number of subjects. If you are in charge of talent and performance and you sense that your list of required leadership training topics is growing, you’re probably right.
Formal research in management performance confirms the importance of quality leadership training for business success. There is increasing evidence that the right training in areas such as diverse leadership, respectful management practices, and even emotional intelligence for leaders, can result in the exact outcomes talent managers seek such as attracting and retaining quality teams.
The good news is that, especially with the use of mobile learning, there are simple ways for performance learning specialists to design and deliver more streamlined and effective leadership training. With Practi's mobile learning functionality, you can apply the best practices of learning design and development for leadership, achieving practical training goals with the flexibility of mobile.
1. Use Mobile Learning To Get Real With Great Leadership Training Scenarios
Meaningful training sticks. To make leadership training more meaningful, make sure to include real scenarios that are specific to your company. Mobile learning is a great way to deliver story-based scenarios that unfold screen by screen and keep the learner engaged.
Here are some tips for interviewing team members to gather the most meaningful scenarios that will make your leadership training more relevant.
- When interviewing, remind people not to share any personal information, details, names or anything that could identify an individual or group of individuals. Your goal is to collect stories about leadership behavior but not to identify any one particular team members.
- Let people know that the stories, scenarios and examples they share do not have to be 100% real but can also be created as best example of leadership do’s and don’ts. However, real scenarios (without identifying details or names) are best as they are the most likely to provide training that will be meaningful.
- Don’t set limits to the story lengths. Encourage people to share as many scenarios as they can. Stories should have no length requirement and could be two sentences or two paragraphs. The beauty of rapid mobile training is that you can deliver a lot of content but in smaller, bite-sized pieces. More scenarios means more variability in your leadership training.
- Remind your interviewees that the point of receiving their stories is to get “real world” examples of leadership practices (both effective and ineffective) for more meaningful training at your company.
We often hear about the impact that case studies can have on learning. If you have done any case studies at your workplace, apply them in mobile scenario-based learning.
For example, a manufacturing company used Practi's mobile learning functionality for leadership training in their safety management team. They used existing real case studies from their company’s history to create bite sized scenario learning to deliver by mobile app. New safety managers used to app to learn their role specific responses to real scenarios that were likely to happen in their work flow.
To create the best content for mobile learning scenarios, make sure to do actual interviews with real team members to collect scenarios. Continue to update these scenarios so that your training content remains relevant. To use the full advantage of mobile learning, continue to be agile and get feedback on your training content. With Practi's mobile learning functionality, your content can quickly adapt to suit the newest stories that reflect the best leadership practices at your company.
2. Mobile Learning Means You Can Continuously Improve The Diversity Of Your Content
Practi's mobile learning functionality allow for instant updates across all devices. This means that you can repurpose content to suit diverse teams.
Cloud-hosted Learning Management Systems such as Practi allow for quick cloning of online training courses or learning assets which means that you can customize your online training course to better represent your target team. Learners feel more engaged when they “see themselves” in the content. One of the reasons that scenario-based training is so popular and effective is because it is highly relatable to learners.
Including more diversity in your leadership training is all about representation. Many Directors of Leadership Development use microlearning practices to develop rapid mobile learning courses with Practi Learning Management System. Some of the ways they can continuously improve diversity in their leadership training content is to:
- Think inclusively when choosing names for characters in leadership training scenarios. Short names such as Lee that are common to men and women from many cultures make it more likely that your learners will relate to the content.
- Be diverse in your image choices for your content. The right image in training content can help learners connect but it important that people with various abilities, backgrounds, and ages see themselves represented in all the roles within the training.
- Remember that diversity isn’t only cultural but includes training with stories of workers who, for instance, use sign language, or who are new and young, and all those who have traditionally been absent from the images and stories in past training.
3. Get Mobile Learning And Get Your Leadership Training Game On
Another great way to increase the impact of your mobile leadership training is to incorporate some form of gamification. If you are new to using games in training, you can start out by keeping it simple and using the three Ts of gamification:
- Task
Create a clear objective for the game. For example, challenge teams or individuals to complete a training game within next 48 hours and submit a survey - Teams
Groups work well for gamifying leadership training. Encourage the teams to name themselves in a fun, company-brand way. With Practi LMS, they can sign up with their team names so you can group their learning, or they could all sign up with one team account and accumulate points together for a full “team win”. - Trophies
It’s the win at the end that makes the game so make sure to plan rewards before launching the game. Rewards can be elaborate (tickets to special events) or simple (gift cards). Surprisingly small incentives can have a big impact on motivation for training which is exactly why game-based approaches are becoming so popular for leadership training.
More professionals are requesting leadership development at their workplace. The good news is that the rapid adoption of mobile learning makes leadership training more meaningful and accessible and all the more so if you incorporate real scenarios, diverse and inclusive content and some game approaches to your next leadership training project.