Award Winning Speech

Award Winning Speech

Sunday, August 8, 2010

Mental Chasm: The Need for Coaches

Necessity to learn is to fill in gaps. It is known by many names:
  1. Curiosity
  2. Interest
  3. Willing to Learn
  4. Not easy to understand
  5. Doing it for first time
  6. Have heard about it but now seeing it real
  7. Would love to play with it
  8.  What is next and so on...
In short, effective learning and good coaches seeks to bridge the current mental chasm and create new ones. It is not to tie more knots in existing mental chains.

In every single opportunity, learning manifests itself when you see them as discrete entities. Laying the entities as events on a timeline can get you to realize the meaning within the discrete entities. The earlier entities only help to identify the current failings and to quickly address the new chasm (current problem). Unfortunately, we reverse the equation and flip side to learning happens: We tie the entities into mental chain and perceive then as discrete in time.

"Time is and will always remain Analogous".

It happens all the time and we miss the learning potential. When you seek to provide a fresh solution, we often get rebuffed. "This is how we did in past. Conform to the practice" or similar messages gain credo.  ("I did this and this and this. Suggest you repeat the same").

Isn't it a simpleton thinking to state that the current game can be won with last successful plan? Rather, wouldn't it be prudent to look at current game as a discrete entity on a timeline, identify the earlier event (success) on the same timeline, quickly identify the new areas for learning, and immediately put them to practice to trump the opponents? This is what game coaches are expected to do:
  1. Observe the current game from sidelines,
  2. Seek answer to the chasm about what the opponents know about his team and plan,
  3. Change and apply a new tactic to surprise and over power the opponents.
The opponents, if they have their earlier understanding/learning in their mental chain, will fail to realize the change and hence the chasm does not get created for them to learn effectively. The result is missed chances, blown out mistakes, avoidance of the routes to success.

Have we, as e-Learning coaches given in to the mental chain errors of clients or resisted avoided creating new mental chasm in learners using the e-Learning program ?

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Learning Practice by Shrinivasan.G is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 India License All views expressed here are my own and does not reflect that of my employer or clients or any other sources.
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