Podcast: Interview with Carly Morgan

Each month we’ll bring you an interview with someone involved in brain friendly learning. Here is our first offering – an interview with Carly Morgan, People Director at Leaps and Bounds Training.

Carly describes how she discovered Brain Friendly Learning and how it informs her training design and delivery. It was fun for us to record over lunch, in a bar in London – the look of the waiter’s face when Paul set up his recording kit and sat in front of his laptop wearing  headphones is something that’ll stay with me for a while.

We hope you enjoy listening to it as much as we enjoyed the wine we drank whilst recording it.

If you want to read along, here’s the transcript:

Ally: Hi Carly. Lets start by asking – who are Leaps and Bounds and what do you do?

Carly: Leaps and Bounds are a training company. We run programmes all over the UK and I am the people director. I look after our team of deliverers and associates who go out and wow our clients as well as being involved in design.

Ally: There will be links on the website back to Leaps and Bounds if you want to know more about them.

So, lets’ talk about Brain Friendly Learning.

Over the years it’s had lots of different names:   suggestipedia, accelerated learning, brain friendly learning is the phrase of the moment, so what does brain friendly learning mean to you?

Carly: It might give you a bit of an insight into my journey of why I came into Brain Friendly Learning when I started out as a trainer.

Ally: Ok..

Carly: I was an internal trainer for a corporate organisation and I was delivering training like induction programmes, customer service programmes, team leader programmes, that kind of thing and traditionally the company that I worked for were doing very much presentation based workshops where people sat and listened.

They added a few comments as and when and they answered questions when they were asked questions but not what we would class as action based learning, brain friendly learning.

I then went on a train the trainer workshop with Leaps and Bounds  and was completely and utterly mesmerised, it was a beacon for me, that is what I want to do, that is the course I want to deliver and the reason for that was that it was so much fun but also so very different from what I’ve experienced before.

Things like, people working on activities and the trainer not talking at you and not telling you what you needed to learn, you finding out the answers for yourself. I think I was doing some of those things already but it was through instinct as opposed to real understanding.

I didn’t know why I would ask people to do a wordsearch but it just felt right, and then when I went on the workshop it made sense. I knew the science behind it. Then getting into working at Leaps and Bounds I got more and more into knowing what Brain Friendly Learning actually is.

For me it’s really simple. I think there are a lot of complicated theories around , like you need to make sure you tap into all the different multiple intelligences and all the different learning styles and there is a different model for all of those things, but for me it is something really simple.

It’s about doing what works and making sure you connect with every single individual. If you’re really clear about your outcomes, you know what it is you want to achieve, and you know what it is that you need your learners to achieve then you just do what works. That may be a group activity, it may be a teach-back, it may be something else, it may even be a presentation, but something very short, but whatever it is, you do it and you flex your approach to meet the needs of that outcome.

Ally: So within what you understand action learning, accelerated learning, Brain Friendly Learning to be, is there still a place for front led?

Carly: Yes I think so. There is a element to that, but I think I wouldn’t necessarily say the balance is on front led. I think the more that you can make it learner led the more effective perhaps it might be, as long as it is about the learners learning and not about the facilitator facilitating.

Ally: So the focus is on the learners rather than the expert from your perspective?

Carly: Yes absolutely.

Ally: So I’ve been making some notes and what I have written down are accelerated learning – fun, different, finding answers for yourself, really simple and it’s about connecting with every individual in the group. So knowing what you know now, about why it works as well as your intuitive experience about it just working when you didn’t know what it was that was working, in your role now, how does that influence your design and your delivery of training?

Carly: The trap I think a lot of trainers get into, and I know I certainly did and I still do now and I have to remind myself not to be in this trap, is that you go straight into process first when designing , so you’re thinking, what do I need  learners to be doing or what do I need the trainer to be doing for the course to be successful?

So you start with the process and I always used to fall into that trap. I think people can easily get into that mindset. What I have to challenge myself to do every single time is reconnect with what you are trying to achieve, and then what is the simplest , fastest, most impact filled emotional jerk you can do to get people to achieve that. Starting off with the purpose and the outcomes help  you then achieve that.

Ally: So if I was in one of your workshops that you designed or are delivering, what would I see, hear or feel that might be different from a workshop when you started delivering in the more traditional classroom style?

Carly: From a design perspective or delivery?

Ally: Let’s start with design

Carly: An example of something that would have been when I first started with playing around with design using these techniques. There would be lots of different activities where people are working through stuff, but not necessarily any connections or linkages so people might be completing an activity and thinking they kind of get it but not sure where it fits in with the whole topic of what they are learning.

That was the starting point for me, and I still see that when I’m working with trainers now. Just this week I’ve been working with a trainer who has got some really great activities, but the overall connection of those activities isn’t quite as strong as it could be and that’s what I’ve been working with her on. Now what you would see and feel and hear in these types of workshops is lots of discussion, lots of people working together, lots of collaboration, lots of various activities going on, but it would all be linked together very securely with the main topic, so not only is the design focused on the outcome but it means every activity learners are going through, that’s also connected to the outcome.

Ally: So you told me about the design is there anything you would like to add from a delivery perspective?

Carly: Absolutely. From a delivery perspective, I’ve been delivering a lot of quick wins, 90 minute workshops recently and what I’ve found is the design can be great, it can be absolutely spot on, but if your delivery isn’t in line with being a Brain Friendly trainer or facilitator then the design isn’t as good as it can be if that makes sense.

So the way you facilitate it also contributes to the success of how it is written and how it is designed. One of the biggest principles that I believe in with facilitation is that you have a freedom within a framework, so the design is there but again if the facilitator isn’t completely in tune with the concept and the outcomes and the purpose for the workshop then you won’t 100% be able to deliver on what it is people are trying to achieve. A lot of time recently  I’ve got  my design, I’ve got my framework but actually I have a group of people who don’t necessarily fit with that design and I need to make a very quick decision on how I can adapt it and make quick enhancements to it so they can still get what they need to.

Ally: So do you flex the design to suit the facilitator or do you work with the facilitator to say “you need to flex more to reach more people more deeply”?

Carly: Flex the facilitator to meet the learners. As a facilitator it is your responsibility to meet the needs of all the learners and as people director at Leaps and Bounds it is my role to support the trainers and freelance associates to do that for the learners.

Ally: So you have an established framework that we would call the training design, which is designed in a way that encourages all the things you’ve said already, fun, finding out for yourself, connecting with every single individual, but then there is a massive responsibility on the facilitator to not just go through the motions but to make sure they are also, through the material, through the content, connecting with the individuals.

So to wrap it up, if there was one piece of advice you would give to someone who is making a transition from front led, classroom style training perhaps with lots of power points and it is about the expert at the front of the room delivering knowledge, to this more open, learner centred  brain friendly way of training what one piece of advice would you give.

Carly: Can I have two?

The first one is to make sure every bit of design is outcome focused, so whatever you do, whatever you create in the session is all about  “how do I help learners achieve what I need them to achieve by the end of this session or by  the end of this piece of learning”.

My second tip would be to play around with state management. As learners or as human beings, we can only really concentrate for up to about 20 minutes at a time, so if you apply that to learning, if you have people listening to you at the front of the room for about 20 minutes that is about as much as they can take before they drift off. So get people from doing something really active to doing something a bit more passive and reflective and switch it. Keep it going on a really quick fast pace and you will get people to engage better

Ally: So be outcome focussed and focus on the state of the learners. Keep switching from active to passive.

That’s brilliant. Thank you Carly.

Carly is passionate about learning and helping others shine. She found her home at Leaps and Bounds after several internal and consultancy positions within the call centre sector. She believes learning should be enjoyable, meaningful, inspirational and sticky – If learning doesn’t stick and motivate people to take action then to her it’s not learning!

I would love to be described as Passionate, Energetic & Inspirational… I would not love to be described as Boring, Uncaring & Useless. Although if my friends and family had just one word to describe me I’m sure they’d use ‘Chocoholic’!

Carly would love to hear your thoughts on the Leaps and Bounds Blog and meet up with you on LinkedIN

Paul and Ally are working on an exciting 6-part (online) course to help your learners fully engage with your training - sign up for the 'early bird' list for advanced notification and more info

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