As we enter 2025, a new year, the key takeaways from a webinar I gave recently come to mind. It was all about creating a springboard for implementation that I presented to a group of participants in my Be the Leader Nobody Wants to Leave cohort—a transformational 8-week session offering transformational skills for busy leaders.
The idea: in order to really reap the value of any training we participate in, we need to establish a springboard for action to ensure that our time, effort, and investment really pays off.
The Forgetting Curve
There’s a concept in training called the “forgetting curve”—it’s a measure of how much new information training participants lose within just a day of learning that information. And it’s a startling statistic—70%! A full 70% of the new information we learn is lost by the next day.
But it doesn’t have to be. Short nudges in the days and weeks following the training make all the difference in what and how much we retain. But these nudges won’t happen by chance. They must be planned for as part of the learning process.
There are steps we can all take to ensure that training sticks and that the new skills and insights we’ve gained can be put to good use.
Six Strategies to Make Learning Stick
Here are six strategies that can help you ensure that you retain more than 30% of any new information or knowledge you’ve acquired:
1) Reflect. Take time to think about what you’ve learned and how you might apply it in your work or personal life. What specific actions can you take to use that new information?
2) Set priorities to create an action plan. Research tells us that this simple step can increase our likelihood of achieving our goals by as much as 76%.
3) Team up with an accountability partner. Find someone to share your goals with and set up times to meet or connect regularly to discuss progress. Research shows that when we write down the goal and share it with someone else, we are much more likely to accomplish the goal. Your accountability partner is a great support.
4) Consider ongoing coaching. Working with an objective third party can provide you with guidance and feedback that is unbiased and nonjudgmental, setting you up for success.
5) Create a common language. Part of the power of being engaged in cohorts is that members of these cohorts share a common language—terminology around key concepts that resonate and tie back to key concepts learned.
6) Draw upon well-recognized and tested leadership essentials like modeling behaviors you’ve learned, using appropriate language, telling stories, upholding standards, and managing pushback—all things we cover in our Be The Leader Nobody Wants to Leave cohort.
As we enter 2025, think about these strategies and how you could apply them as a springboard for action this year. Whether you’ve just taken a class, attended a training session, participated in a webinar, or read a book or article, hold on to that new knowledge you’ve gained by following the six strategies presented here. What will your springboard for action look like? What will it help you achieve?
Happy New Year!
Tags: coaching and counseling, effective training, employee development, employee relations, forgetting curve, learning curve, making learning stick, transfer of training
