For all the buzz about micro-learning, there’s surprisingly little practical advice for leaders and managers. These practical, real-world examples of micro-learning will help you improve your employees’ skills on the job.
Micro-learning is just development activities that are broken into small pieces that can be woven into the day. The traditional model of training is something that happens outside of normal work activities: attending an all-day class, participating in a workshop, or going to a conference. These are examples of not micro-learning because they require deviating from the typical work schedule in order to fit them in.
Most people have the assumption that micro-learning requires short, on-demand, pre-produced online activities, and they think that micro-learning is difficult, expensive, or time-consuming to create. But, the reality is that the online format is just one version of micro-learning—and it’s the wrong model for a lot of development activities precisely because of the upfront demands.
So what can micro-learning look like in a practical sense? One of my favorite examples requires zero technology and no pre-production. It’s the roll call drill.
This example comes from a police department that I worked with. Every day, the officers met for a roll call meeting in which they reviewed their assignments for the day and heard updates on any issues from the previous shift. The police captain built into this daily meeting a five minute skill session. Each day, the officers would pair up and practice one verbal skill. On Monday, they might rehearse what they would say when they pulled someone over for a traffic stop, with the goal of framing the encounter as positively as possible to reduce aggressive behaviors. On Tuesday, the pairs could practice what they would say in a disorderly conduct situation in order to encourage the person to voluntarily leave the premise.
Depending on the skill, the captain could give the pairs specific language to use or a particular tone to achieve. Some days, the captain would have the officers experiment with their own phrasings for three minutes and then use the final two minutes to decide as a group what language had the best likelihood of a positive outcome.
By just inserting five minutes of daily practice into the regularly scheduled roll call meeting, the captain was able to accumulate over 20 hours of documentable training time over the course of the year. Each five minute session gave the officers one more tool in their verbal toolbox to help reduce conflict, and week by week the officers improved their performance.
The roll call drill is a great example of micro-learning. It fits into the regular workday without disruption, and it results in a concrete improvement to the participant’s skill after each session. It doesn’t require a production budget, and a leader can plan each session with a couple of minutes of think time.
If you are a leader, think about how you can implement roll call practice sessions into your work. Do you have a weekly team meeting? Do you have regular one-on-ones with your direct reports? What can your employees practice in five minutes that will make a concrete difference in their skills—no matter how small each individual improvement may be? By making roll call practices into a regular part of your workplace, you can both grow your employees and show that you value a culture of learning.