Harvard Law School Alum Robert Barnett on How to Train Your Team Effectively

Kris Safarova  00:45

Welcome to the Strategy Skills podcast. I’m your host, Kris Safarova, and our podcast sponsor today is StrategyTraining.com. If you want to strengthen your strategy skills, you can get the Overall Approach Used in Well-Managed Strategy Studies. It’s a free download we prepared for you, and you can get it at firmsconsulting.com/overallapproach. It is F-I-R-M-S consulting.com forward slash overallapproach. And we have another gift for you. It is McKinsey and BCG Winning Resume, which is a resume that got offers from both of those firms. And you can get it at firmsconsulting.com/resumepdf. And today we have with us Robert Barnett, who co-founded the modern classrooms project. Robert’s approach, now known as the modern classroom instructional model, has empowered more than 80,000 educators across all grade levels and content and in all 50 states and 180 plus countries worldwide, and evaluators from John Hopkins found overwhelming positive support for this model’s many benefits. And Robert also graduated cum laude from Princeton University and Harvard Law School, and speaks English, French and Spanish. Welcome Robert. So great to have you with us.

 

Robert Barnett  01:59

Thank you. It’s an honor to be here with you.

 

Kris Safarova  02:03

Such an incredible career so far. So maybe we can start with, how did your time at Harvard Law shaped your thinking on educational fairness and equity?

 

Robert Barnett  02:14

Yeah, that’s a great question. I think one thing that lawyers often say, which is true, is that law school prepares you to think like a lawyer, and that was certainly the case for me at Harvard Law School. I guess the question is, what does that really mean thinking like a lawyer? And for me, it means thinking in two kind of complimentary ways. One is thinking about really the details of a particular case, and the other is thinking about sort of on a larger scale, the systems and the rules and the policies that underlie the case. And when you’re a lawyer, you need to use those bigger concepts to make arguments in specific cases. Now that I’m in the education space, I really see this, because what I do is adult learning. I train teachers, and so if I’m working with a particular teacher or school or community, I need to understand that, that teachers needs, but I also need to think in a bigger scale of like, what makes for a good adult learning experience? How do we keep professionals engaged and challenged and learning new skills? And so I think being able to approach problems in those two ways, detail and with a high level, sort of conceptual view is probably what I what I gain and what I use from my time at Harvard Law School.

 

Kris Safarova  03:45

How can corporate leaders adapt your learning strategies to develop their teams? So I would love for our discussion to be around the insights, all the insights that you learned, some of the insights that you want to share with us today, and how corporate leaders listening to us right now, can adapt it so that they can have more high performance teams?

 

Robert Barnett  04:05

Great question. And I think this is something I think about all day long, even though I’m not in a corporate setting, I’m in the education world. But I think about training adults, training teachers, and I myself am fortunate to just have had amazing educational experiences. So I think about, how can I provide those to professionals working in schools and districts? I think that a lot of us, whether in our K-12 careers or in our professional careers, have probably had a lot of training or professional development. That is not great. There’s a lot of time spent sitting and listening and trying to pay attention, even though the topic is, you know, as interesting as the topic can be, if you’re sitting and just trying to listen, chances are you’re not learning that much. I saw this a lot when I was a teacher, because, you know, students are not as good as professionals. That sort of high. Getting their boredom and disengagement. So if you’re in a classroom, students will tell you and show you they’re disengaged. You have to figure out a better way to engage people, and usually standing and talking louder or saying something different is not the way to do that. If you want someone to learn something, you really have to keep them appropriately challenged. You have to give them something worth their time to do, and then you have to give them the individualized supports that they need. If you think that a particular training is going to be equally applicable to 1020, 100 people in your company, you know you’re probably wrong, because some people are already going to understand this. They don’t need, you know, the basics. They need an advanced training. Some people is maybe totally new, and they’re going to be overwhelmed. I think what, what I do in my work is try to figure out, how do we create learning experiences that meet every person’s needs, given that people’s needs are different, how do we create learning experiences where everyone’s going to be appropriately challenged, appropriately supported and engaged throughout the time that they have for learning?

 

Kris Safarova  06:13

How would you categorize learners? So if you had to break them down into main categories and their most important needs based on category?

 

Robert Barnett  06:23

Yeah, I mean, I think that. I think it’s hard to classify just learners in general, because people are people, and people have, you know, diversity within themselves. I often think about as a very simple framework in any group of learners. If you’re trying to teach new content, you’re probably going to have some people who pick up the content very quickly or already know it and need to be challenged and pushed. You’re probably going to have people who either learn new things more slowly or have some gaps in what they previously understand. They need more support, and you’re probably going to have some learners who aren’t there at all right. People miss out on things all the time for various reasons, and so as an instructor, you need to think, how am I creating an experience that is challenging for advanced learners, supportive for learners who have gaps and accessible to learners who aren’t there at all. And I think it doesn’t take much to realize that if your approach is standing up at the whiteboard and giving a presentation, you’re probably not going to meet any of those learners needs. If you’re teaching to the middle your advanced students will be bored. Your students who are behind will be lost. Your students who aren’t there, or your learners who aren’t there are going to miss out altogether. So the approach that we use in our professional learning, and that we recommend that teachers use as well, is to break that down in the following way. First, instead of standing at the board, sort of delivering instruction, to digitize direct instruction, meaning create short, concise, focused instructional videos that convey the content that you want to get across. I’m not talking about a one hour webinar that people need to sit and watch, I’m talking about 510, minutes, a really concise video that gets the main points and engages the learners throughout. After learners encounter the content through the video, you need to give them something to do, and ideally something they do together. So if you’ve taught them something new, learners should find a partner and apply what they’ve learned that helps keep them engaged, right? And it makes means that they’re doing the thinking, not just sitting and listening. Finally, once you have that digital direct instruction, once learners have worked together to to apply the direct instruction, there needs to be some sort of demonstration of mastery before learners advance. Your whole goal in teaching people, whether they’re students or professionals in your company, is to make sure people understand things. And so you should test that you should see, does each learner understand the point of this profession. You know of this, this particular lesson, if yes, great, they can move on to the next thing. If not, they shouldn’t move on to the next thing, because knowledge builds on itself. It’s counterproductive to do advanced things if you don’t have fundamental skills. So what you need to do is give that learner who’s still struggling the chance to revise, the chance to reassess. Once that learner has mastered lesson one or objective one, they can move on to lesson two. That’s how you build understanding in a real, authentic way.

 

Kris Safarova  09:54

Thank you so much for sharing this. This is very helpful. So this immediately makes me think. Work, there are a lot of things that you cannot really explain in five to 10 minutes. So that means that you’re breaking down important lessons into micro lessons. So if the video is five to 10 minutes, how long should be that time when Lena is working with someone else?

 

Robert Barnett  10:16

Yeah, this, this all depends on age, of course. And when we’re training elementary school teachers, you know, we tell them, keep the video three to four minutes. When we work with university professors, we might say, Look, your students have a longer attention span. But there was a big study with adult learners in courses at MIT, and they said after about the six minute mark is when attention starts to wane. So even for adults, you want learning to be, you know, listening, sort of learning, as in a video, to be, you know, to be concise. I think sometimes, if you’re an expert in the field, you think, well, the best way for someone to acquire the knowledge I have is to sit and listen to me, and I want to explain it all, and that’s going to take me half an hour or an hour. That’s not the only way for people to acquire knowledge, right? The video that you give could be enough to sort of introduce things, but then you might have people read, you might have them role play. You might have them do a simulation or work out a problem together, that more active learning is often much more effective than sitting and learning. You know, I can’t tell you, in your sort of, in your setting, exactly how long you have, but I would say you want, you know, you want that lecture style instruction to come quickly. If it’s in a video. It’s really good because people who aren’t there can watch it. You have it forever. You never need to repeat yourself. And then get learners spending most of the time applying things together. You know, when we do professional development for for educators, they appreciate the opportunity to connect with one another and learn from one another, and that’s what makes the time that their employer has invested in professional development worthwhile. If educators are just sitting there, you know, listening, it could have been. It’s not usually a great use of their precious time or the investment to secure that time.

 

Kris Safarova  12:19

What is a good demonstration of mastery, especially, let’s say at university level, because I think university level will be more applicable to our listeners.

 

Robert Barnett  12:28

Yeah, of course. I mean, I think a good demonstration of mastery is is thinking about, and teachers have to do this all the time. Teachers think about at the end of the lesson, what does the person act? What does the student actually need to be able to do? That’s, you know, that’s the most important part of of a lesson, really, is having a clear goal that the participant can achieve by the end. Sometimes I’ve gone to corporate trainings and it feels like the idea is, well, I want to spend an hour talking to my team about such and such topic. You know, that’s about as effective as it sounds. The presenter, the educator, the leader, should have a clear objective as to, what will people walk away knowing how to do, and then some way of measuring that. And this could be, you know, this could be anything we if you have a new piece of software that you’re using, you know, here’s a good example. You have a new piece of software that you want people to use. If you bring them into a room and have them sit for an hour watching a demonstration of the software being used, there’s no guarantee whatsoever that the people you know, that your employees, will actually know how to use this software if instead you said, here’s a three minute video that explains the software. Here’s the documentation for the software. And in order to complete this training, you need to perform X, Y and Z action with the software. Well, number one, people are going to pay much more attention, because they’re actually going to be held to account for being able to produce something. And number two, you’re going to know that they actually do it because they’ve done it right. I sometimes get on presentations about, you know, kind of systems in my organization, and I could be sitting there, and I could be looking at you, and I could even be listening, no guarantee that I can actually do it. If you make me do the thing you want me to be able to do, I’m going to learn it.

 

Kris Safarova  14:33

I wonder, how do you address the root causes of disengagement and learning?

 

Robert Barnett  14:40

Great, great question. I was a teacher, so I dealt with a lot of people who were disengaged. I think the reason that people are disengaged is not because they’re bad people or that they don’t want to learn, but that they don’t feel appropriately challenged. So if I find something too easy. So if I’m sitting through a lesson I already understand. Not going to engage if I struggle to understand the topic of discussion because I’m lacking some prerequisite skills or background context, I’m not going to engage if I missed yesterday’s session, but I’m here today, and there was no way for me to really catch up on what I missed, I’m not going to engage. And so if I don’t see that, see the relevance of what I’m learning to my to my work, day to day, I’m not going to engage. And so I think the reason that we often see disengagement is because we are giving sort of one size fits all training or learning experiences, and we fail to see that for some for some learners, this is too hard. For some learners, this is too easy. For some learners, they’re missing things. You know, for some learners, this isn’t really applicable to their their day to day work. And so I always think the best engagement strategy, it’s not telling jokes or having fancier PowerPoints. It’s thinking about, what do your learners really need? How are you going to deliver that, and how are you going to engage them in their own learning? Give them something active to do, instead of just sitting and listening there and listening to you. I think if you give them something appropriately challenging to do, your employees will rise to the occasion, and they will want to learn. Everyone wants to learn, improve, do better, succeed.

 

Kris Safarova  16:33

Do you feel there are still areas about learning? Especially, let’s say if we focus on university level, because it will be more applicable to our listeners, which we do not understand.

 

Robert Barnett  16:45

Yes, of course. I mean, I think the human brain and how people learn, we’re, we’re learning new things about all that all the time. And the science is always, is always developing there. So, of course, there are many things we don’t understand. I think at the same time, those of us who are in sort of educational roles, we have a lot of experience ourselves as learners, either in formal settings, school settings, professional settings, informal settings. And we probably understand the characteristics of experiences that help us really learn and the characteristics of experiences that don’t in that in the university setting. You know, if you think about like big the classes that you took, that you really learned from I doubt that many of the big sort of lecture classes are the ones that made impressions on you. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe you had amazing professors who could just talk for hours, and you you learned a ton. So that exists, but most of the time when I speak to professionals about, you know, where did you really learn? What were the characteristics of learning experiences that stuck with you? They talk about relationships with educators. They talk about being asked to do challenging things, being supported in doing those things and then succeeding. These are not the sort of things that happen when you’re sitting and watching a PowerPoint. These are the sorts of things that happen when you’re giving given something appropriately challenging to do, when you have an expert in the room with you who is sort of serving as your guide, your support, your tutor, your coach, your mentor, and when you emerge with something that you can be proud of, when you demonstrate your mastery in a in a comprehensive way, it feels really good. And so I think while we’re still learning about how the brain works, we have a lot of learned experience and plenty of research that supports the kind of learning that is really effective, and that tends to be, you know, learning that is self paced, that’s mastery based, that is based on doing meaningful things with expert support.

 

Kris Safarova  19:08

Beyond using videos, are there any other tools that you recommend your teachers to use to maximize the experience?

 

Robert Barnett  19:20

Yes, absolutely. So I think the the components of a really effective learning experience, I think, are, as I’ve mentioned, some digital form of direct instruction, some task that people can do, usually together to apply what they’ve learned, some demonstration of mastery. And you know this is, this is more complex than just standing and delivering a presentation. So you also need some way to kind of organize all of this. And so when we work with educators, we talk about having some kind of learning management system where there is a clear path. Towards learning, and it’s clear what people should do to advance their learning. You know, I’m not talking here about an online course platform that’s full of these long sort of sit and get courses. I’m talking about a platform where there are still tasks that can be done, you know, in a human way, in person, but there’s a clear sort of path of, here’s what you do first, here’s what you do next, here’s what you do after that. Here’s where the resources are. In some way, it’s like, it’s like a map to what learners need to do, and it’s organized in a logical and clear way so that learners aren’t confused about what’s this for, or what do I do? You know, even adult learners can be easily confused if you give them, you know, a folder of 10 resources and you don’t know where to start, like that’s that’s hard to do. So you need good learning activities, and you also need a good way to organize those things. Can be a learning management system can be as simple as a well organized document, but we’re always training educators to think about not just the content, but the way things are organized, so that they are logical, intuitive and easy to follow. And there are any number of platforms that you can use to accomplish the same thing.

 

Kris Safarova  21:18

Are there specific platforms that you could mention recommend that you guys prefer to use?

 

Robert Barnett  21:24

Sure. You know, for our online courses, we use a learning management system called Moodle. It’s a very popular sort of online courseware across the world. We also use a platform called Thinkific, which we we offer free courses in our sort of approach to instruction. And if you’re listening to the podcast and you’re hearing something interesting in what I’m saying, you know you can, you can test this out for yourself. You don’t have to take my word for it at our website, which is learn dot modern classrooms.org. There is a free course in this approach to instruction that you can take, and the course itself models this approach to instruction, short videos, you know, engaging content. And there are people who have taken the course who work in professional settings and have applied this to their work in professional settings. A friend of mine is a statistician, and he was taking on a mentoring role working with some data scientists on machine learning projects. He said, You know, I recognize that my my data scientists come to me with a varying degree of expertise and varying backgrounds. I don’t want to talk at them. I’m going to create short videos. I’m going to give them practice activities. I’m going to create sort of a set of mastery checks for them to demonstrate their understanding. He did that, and it’s working well. So you can come to our free course. You can, you know, you can see the approach in action. You can you’ll see a lot that’s aimed at teachers. And you may not be a teacher, but if you are looking with sort of a more high level lens, you’ll see an approach to instruction that does work and has worked for professionals in all sorts of fields.

 

Kris Safarova  23:15

And just to double check, first one was Moodle. Is it M-O-O-D-L-E? So imagine someone listening to us right now. They are part of a large organization, and the way learning is taking place in the organization. Yes, they do have some courses where someone comes and teaches for a week, but most of the learning is happening on this huge platform with a lot of courses, and the courses are really alone, and so it’s difficult for people to stay engaged for a long time. What would be your recommendation, how to start implementing your approach given all the resources they already developed?

 

Robert Barnett  23:51

Yeah, great question. So online courses are efficient, and if they’re well designed, can be effective ways of delivering instruction, I just recommended that you go to an online course. But I don’t think that online courses are ultimately the best form of learning. You know, the approach that we developed here and we trained teachers in was developed in physical classrooms with teachers and students interacting closely every day. And I think that ultimately is, I would imagine that your and your listeners experiences would support this. That’s the most engaging way to learn is in rooms with other people. So if you work at an organization and you have you know, 10 colleagues who all have to do the same online course, I think there’s an opportunity there to bring people together, to say, let’s work through this together. But instead of all just, you know, sitting in our at our own desks, you know, sitting through this online course, like, let’s work on some of these pieces together. Let’s try to do some. The mastery demonstrations together. I really would encourage people listening to to accept the limitations of this virtual learning and think about, how can we bring people together to learn together? And if you think about your own sort of educational experiences, I think you’ll you’ll probably recognize that when you can be on screen for a little bit, get the bare minimum information you need, work together to solve a problem and then demonstrate your ability to solve that problem. It’s probably a better use of your time than just sitting passively and listening.

 

Kris Safarova  25:37

I think the big issue that people are facing is lack of time once you are outside of university environment, school environment, you have so little time, so your learning is happening while you’re doing laundry and while you’re on the treadmill. So here you have to be even more efficient. How would you adjust your advice given a lack of time issue?

 

Robert Barnett  25:58

Yeah. I mean, I think that this is, I think this is ultimately an issue of quality over quantity. And you know, if you really want your employees to or team members to learn something, then you can have them, you know, go through a lot of online courses, in their in their free time. I think if that’s your approach, you’re probably seeing uneven results from it. If there’s something that’s really important to learn, then it’s, I think it’s incumbent on on you to set aside the time to do that, and also to realize that one hour where people are really focused on doing something together. And, you know, producing an output that shows understanding is probably going to be more productive than even two three hours of, you know, sort of listening to something in the car on the way home. I think when things are important, we need to, we need to invest in them from a from a learning perspective. And I think this is incumbent on, on leaders who are listening to this podcast. You know, if you’re if you’re an employee, you may have less control, but we often, you know, we often speak with the leaders of school districts, and they say, Well, you know, our teachers, they’re not getting what we want them to teach. And we say, are you really setting aside the time for these teachers to learn in a focused way, and are you creating engaging learning experiences for those teachers? And if the answer to those things is, know that you’re not going to see a lot of learning. If there’s, if there’s one thing you take from this, it’s, it’s that learning is hard and you really need to to commit to it if you want to see results. If you don’t want to see you know if, if you’re not going to commit to it, it’s going to be hard to see results.

 

Kris Safarova  27:59

So let’s imagine a situation where someone is listening to us right now, there is a relatively senior leader, and they feel that what is happening with learning and development is just very ineffective and inefficient within the team, and they want to do something different. After listening to this podcast, they’re thinking, okay, you know what? I saw this really good course on our learning platform. I’m going to get my entire team to go through it this month, and then we will have some kind of practice and some kind of demonstration of mastery. What would you recommend, let’s say the course has one and a half hours overall and has multiple lessons within it. How would you recommend to structure it and approximate duration for each activity?

 

Robert Barnett  28:38

Yeah. I mean, I think, I think the most important thing with learning is give some give, give people something to aim towards that they believe is meaningful. So if I’m in this situation, and you know, I have have an hour and a half of content that I need people to sort of get through and understand, I’m going to try to think, well, at the end of the month, like, let’s have an activity, let’s have a get together where there’s going to be some sort of, like, challenge or activity, or, you know, competition always makes it fun, some, some kind of way that people are going to come together and really show what they’ve learned. Right? If I just say, sit through an hour and a half of coursework and send me the certificate of completion when you’re finished, people are going to, you know, have it playing while they’re doing laundry or something. They’re not going to take it really seriously. If you say, at the end of this month, we’re going to get together, and, you know, here’s the task that each person here is going to need to do to demonstrate mastery. And the way to prepare for it is with this hour and a half of content. I think people are going to approach it with a different level of commitment and of serious and of serious. Business. And so I think it, you know, it’s hard for me to say, well, how, how the employees on this team can find an hour and a half some people may prefer to listen to it in one big burst. Some people may like to listen 10 minutes at a time on the drive home. But if there is a culminating sort of demonstration of mastery. People will be motivated to do it. And that’s, I think, what I would encourage people to think about. How are you gonna, like, get people excited about doing this? How are you gonna bring them together? How are you gonna show them that they’re held to account for the understanding not just checking a box that people have made it through an hour and a half of online coursework?

 

Kris Safarova  30:45

And in your experience, what are some of the most exciting examples of demonstrating mastery that students really enjoy?

 

Robert Barnett  30:52

So I think that to achieve mastery of something to learn something new, is always valuable in itself, right? And when students are given or professionals are given a challenge, and it’s hard, and they work through it, and they do it, it’s always exciting, no matter what it is. You know, think about that new software example I gave. It may not seem like the most exciting thing in the world to produce a report in your new sort of data analytics system. But if you you know, if you give people a challenge, if you support them in doing it, and then they feel successful, and they feel celebrated in some way for doing that, then people always like doing that. I mean, that’s, that’s human nature. And so what exactly the demonstration of mastery will be, it’s, it’s hard for me to say, because I know the listeners here are in so many different fields, but I think an appropriately challenging task with appropriate support and recognition at the end. Recognition for an actual job well done is always meaningful, not recognition for you know, if, if people sit through an hour and a half of online coursework and you give them recognition, they don’t care about that, you know, they didn’t, they didn’t work hard for it, the recognition is not meaningful if you give them something that’s hard to do, you give them the support to do it, and they do it. They struggle. They learn along the way that is always meaningful to learners, whether they’re kindergarteners or you know, we work with teachers who have been teaching for 30 years when they create their first instructional video, even if it was hard for them to learn the software and find the time to do it, they’re they’re always happy. They’re always proud.

 

Kris Safarova  32:46

And at the university level, what is your favorite example that you can remember of demonstration mastery, where students really got excited about it, if you can recall? Yeah, sure.

 

Robert Barnett  32:56

I mean, I took, I took a computer science course, a very sort of introductory computer science course, and the and I’m giving this from my experience as a student, but I think that, you know, it sticks with me. And I think those people in leadership roles who are thinking about how to engage their employees would do well to think about what engaged you as a student, not I’m the expert, so let me just talk about what I’ve learned, but like, what, what engaged me? You know, I took a computer science course. And I think often computer science courses are very mastery based, because there you will be given a challenge. You need to write a program that does a certain thing and it works or it doesn’t and, you know, once you get it to work it, it’s very satisfying. So I remember a particular assignment. It was something about, and pardon me for the lack of precision in my language here, but you know, we got a file, and we had to sort of figure out how to interpret it as an image. And, you know how to, how to convert all those ones and zeros into an image file. And I tried so hard to do it, I wasn’t successful. Always something was wrong, and then I figured out how to do it, and all of a sudden I saw an image. Something became clear to me. That’s a great kind of learning experience. And I think, you know, I know nowadays, at least at at Princeton, my alma mater, computer science, has become the most popular major. I think there could be a lot of reasons for that, but one is perhaps that it’s hard. You have problems to solve, but when you solve the problem, you you know, you recognize your own mastery. It’s very satisfying. And yeah, that kind of learning, I think, is really powerful. You don’t learn how to write a program by sitting and listening to an experienced programmer. You got to write it yourself, and when it works, you know it.

 

Kris Safarova  34:56

And the same question, for example, of a practice session. Someone else, just to give our listeners some ideas.

 

Robert Barnett  35:03

Yeah, sure, you know. I think that oftentimes, like, you know, and I’ll think about that, I’ll think about that university context. I mean some of the, some of the memories that I have of my time in it as a learner, like when you have a, you know, a problem set that is hard, and you sit down with a friend and you puzzle through it, right? Like that. You’re really engaged in doing that. You’re really trying to learn something, and you’re making connections at the same time. And I think, if I, you know, if I, if I tried to think, you know, did I get more out of sitting through two hours of like, a lecture, or two hours of working on a problem set? For me, that’s always, that’s always when I’m asked to do something challenging with other people, that’s when learning happens. Yeah, sure, I can. I can sit through, you know, a lecture, and afterwards, probably repeat back some of the things I learned, but it doesn’t make an impact on on who I am or how I do my job. I still have friends, you know, that I worked with on those problem sets, and some of the problems that I worked on, I can still remember, because, you know, that’s how learning happens,

 

Kris Safarova  36:29

Robert, and let’s imagine someone listened to us, applied it did exactly what we discussed. This example of finding this one month, everyone is using this one program and this demonstration of mastery at the end. How would you recommend that leader measure success of that initiative?

 

Robert Barnett  36:48

I think measuring success of something is so important and often. You know, at least in my experience in the corporate world, very difficult to do. You bring someone in to give a one day workshop, everyone ends up sitting, maybe at the end of the day, they fill out a survey. But there’s no like. There’s not necessarily any guarantee or measure that that this was worthwhile. I think when you start with a clear objective in mind and a demonstration of mastery, it’s much easier to measure success. You might say, you know, the goal is for everyone on this team to be able to generate a report using this new program by the end of the month. And it’s pretty clear whether that happened or not. When you have asked every person to do it, and they’ve either done it or not, some people have succeeded, great. Go on to the next thing. Maybe at the end of the month, some people, you know, they can’t do it, and that’s fine. They just need, they just need a little bit more support. But when you start with a really clear goal, and you force people to demonstrate whether they have met that goal, it’s much easier to measure, measure success and force people to demonstrate mastery. Is, you know, is a is a strong word. You could also just think about like you, you know, you support people towards reaching that mastery, because at the end of the day, that’s the goal. Identify a skill you want people to have and make sure they get there.

 

Kris Safarova  38:18

Robert, and what would be your recommendation in that situation we discussed earlier about a huge library within the large organization, but people are not using it. What would you recommend someone responsible for learning and development and managing that library do to either leverage that library or maybe replace it with your model somehow?

 

Robert Barnett  38:37

Yeah, I think it’s not usually the digital content. That’s the problem. It’s the expectations and the clarity of purpose with which that’s used. So, you know, I have, I have, I have masterclass. And masterclass is very interesting. There’s so many interesting classes on it, but usually I don’t really go on there and listen to it, because I’m a busy person. I have lots of things to do, and so it just sort of sits there. And to be honest, I don’t get my my value out of that. You know, if I had a team and I wanted everyone to take a particular master class, what I would need to do is, is have a clear reason why people should take this particular master class and then some expectation of performance after taking it that would motivate people do it. You know, we like having challenges and working towards those. People train for marathons, people train for triathlons, right? We need to focus on, you know, set goals and work towards them. And if you just say, here’s a bunch of content, use it that doesn’t seem likely to inspire people. If you say, here’s our focus, we’re going to all work to. The other on this one course, here’s why, and here’s what I expect you to do at the end. I think that’s going to be much more sort of productive given the way that people’s minds operate. Then here’s a bunch of classes. You know, take a couple of these, when you have a chance, really, you’re going to get out of your professional learning program. What you invest in it in terms of in terms of time?

 

Kris Safarova  40:23

Thank you, Robert. I want to wrap up with one or two questions that I love to ask when there’s time left. I will start with my most favorite question, most beloved question over the last few years, what were maybe two, three aha moments, realizations that really change the way you look at life or the way you look at business.

 

Robert Barnett  40:45

Sure, that’s pretty easy for me, because at least in the last four years, I’ve become a parent twice. I have, I have two young sons who, you know, I’m in the field of learning and development, and so what better sort of perspective on learning and development than watching two human beings learn and develop and grow? I think one thing that is been really interesting to me is that when you have young, you know, young children, it’s obvious that they’re all not going to, you know, learn things in the same time frame, and it’s obvious that we need to support them towards really getting it so, learning how to walk. You know, it’s obvious. Some people learn in 10 months. Some people take 16 months. That’s okay, that’s natural, and we’re going to make sure that kids learn how to walk in schools where I do a lot of my work, that’s not the approach at all. We say, you know, you have one week to learn how to add fractions, and then next week we’re talking about multiplying fractions, and it’s just, it’s just counter to the way that learning works. I think we should have as many learning experiences as possible that are like the way that young children learn. You know, I see my older brother walking, so I want to walk, so I’m going to keep practicing it, and I’m going to get there in my own time. That’s, you know, that’s really, that’s, that’s, that’s the purest form of learning. And so watching that has shaped some of the ways that I think about my work. How do I create learning experiences that give people time and give people support, but acknowledge the fact that some people are going to learn this in 10 months and others are going to take 16.

 

Kris Safarova  42:36

And then another question I want to ask you very quickly: are there any specific, so to say, success habits that you really value in your life that allow you to be an effective leader?

 

Robert Barnett  42:49

That’s a good question. You know, I think to the extent that I’m successful in as successful as a teacher with students, or I’m successful with teachers, is really trying to put myself as much as possible in this in the shoes of those that I’m trying to reach. So, you know, I could deliver a great lesson on statistics, but if it’s it doesn’t matter if it seems great to me, and I think what I’m saying is great, I need to think about it from the perspective of that student who is advanced, is this a good use of their time, that student who has gaps in their math knowledge? Is this a good use of their time, the perspective of that student who’s absent, like, how are they going to learn? And so I think that oftentimes, as leaders, you know, we have confidence in our own perspectives and think that our decisions are the right ones or good ones, but actually trying to put myself, and sometimes I succeed in this, sometimes I don’t, but in the shoes of the learner, has always the more I can do that, I think the better the training experience I’ll be able to provide.

 

Kris Safarova  43:58

Robert, thank you so much for being here for everything you have shared. Where can our listeners learn more about you by your book? Anything you want to say?

 

Robert Barnett  44:06

Yeah, of course. So my organization is called the modern classrooms project. Modern classrooms.org and I have just written a book that talks about all of this, and it you know, the book is aimed at teachers. The book is about my sort of journey as a teacher, how I develop this approach and how teachers can use it. But as I said earlier, the principles that work for you know, students in K 12 or university, I think our principles that work in any setting. And so if you’re really interested in learning and development. The book is called meet every learner’s needs, redesigning instruction so all students can succeed. You can learn more at meet every learners needs.org. You can buy the book starting February 5, anywhere books are sold. And I just would encourage you to, you know, just to think about. Like, what do the people in your community really need from their learning experiences, and how can you provide that? And so I hope resources at modern classrooms.org, or in the book, will will help you provide what it is your learners need.

 

Kris Safarova  45:14

Robert, thank you again for being here and for everything you said, and congratulations on becoming a father.

 

Robert Barnett  45:22

Thank you. Thank you. And I hope I know this is I’m not, I’m not the typical guest on the podcast, but I hope that something I’ve shared today will help you do your job better. That’s really my goal in being here. So thank you.

 

Kris Safarova  45:32

Thank you, Robert. Our guest today, again, has been Robert Barnett. And our podcast sponsor today is strategytraining.com. If you want to strengthen your strategy skills. You can get the Overall Approach Used in Well-Managed Strategy Studies. It’s a free download, and you can get it at firmsconsulting.com/overallapproach. And you can also get McKinsey and BCG winning resume, which is a free download, and you can get it at firmsconsulting.com/resumepdf. Thank you everyone for tuning in, and I’m looking forward to connect with you all next time.