Ruth Colvin Clark has a chapter in her book, " Evidence Based Training Methods ", called "Content Covered is not Content Learned".
She tells the story of Continental Flight 3407, which took off on February 12, 2009. During takeoff, the plane “stalled,” and the pilot didn’t know how to handle it. The plane crashed in Buffalo, NY, USA. 50 people died. When a plane “stalls,” it’s because the nose is pointing up too much, and it has therefore lost lift. The solution is to turn the nose down, thereby creating lift again.
The Accident Investigation Board investigated the pilot's training and concluded that "the content was covered but not practiced" in a flight simulator. What can be learned about learning from that?
One suggestion is that if you are to be able to perform a task in a pressured situation, it is not enough to have read about it. You must then have practiced performing it. This does not only apply to pilots, but to all possible contexts. For example, within sales and management there are a number of techniques that you can use, and which you know work, if the person using them can do it credibly.
And here lies the problem. There is a very big difference between learning in a course with colleagues that you should “ask for the order”, “compliment a customer”, or “have a difficult but necessary dialogue with a colleague”, and actually doing it in practice when you show up for your job again.
Something that can help in that situation is practicing through role-playing games, which can serve as a kind of simulation, although it is not a flight simulator.
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