Experience is the Best Teacher

There’s no better teacher than experience. But let’s face it, you can talk about certain work situations all you want, but there is really only one way of knowing how someone would (or should) react to a situation. That way, is to actually put them in that experience.

Of course, these situations don’t happen on a daily basis thank goodness, so it’s hard to practice them in a real-life setting. You can do the next best thing, however, and that is scenario-based learning. Scenario-based learning allows you to expose employees to various potential workplace situations, while keeping them in a structured environment where you control the pace of interaction and even stop the ‘action’ to provide direction. Over the last few years, scenarios has been incorporated more often in business training curricula, and for good reason. Whether it is illustrated in a video, or in an eLearning scenario, this tactic offers several ‘side benefits’ in addition to literally demonstrating specific best practices to employees. For example, you can build employee confidence. Not only in the specific scenario, but in general, by providing them with the decision-making skills to use across a broad range of situations. Scenarios are also good for practicing listening skills. If you’re not hearing what the other person is saying, it’s difficult to respond appropriately. Scenario-based learning shows the employee what to look for and what to listen for when they are interacting with your clients. Finally, scenario-based learning helps people develop creative problem-solving skills and the ability to think on their feet. The opportunity isn’t always available to contact your manager to solve problems. If a problem gets to the managerial level to be solved, it usually means someone else hasn’t been able to solve it. With scenario-based learning, it’s all about involving as many senses as possible – not just reading, it’s not just listening, it’s total immersion in as real a situation as you watch the scenario unfold. There are some situations where you do not want the employee’s first exposure is with your client. Scenario based learning allows everyone to walk through the same situation at the same time, while leveraging the same policies and procedures for dealing for guidance to solve the problem. These tactics are effective with many situations from how to deal with a difficult customer to how information should be entered into a data base. There’s a place in training for scenarios, whether it is classroom, webinars or eLearning, This is where Accredentials comes in. You know your business, and we know ours. Together, we can develop scenario-based training that meets your needs.