Creative boss entertains fresh ways to learn

Dear Sharon:

Our director started using TV shows and movie clips in our weekly meetings to teach us communication skills. It is certainly refreshing, but do you think he may be wasting our time? -- W.


Dear W.:

Are you having fun yet?

If the answer is "Yes," then chances are you're learning more too.

Educators will tell you that by adapting the delivery style to the audience's preferences, more learning will occur than if you bore people to death.

In an effort to help younger employees take more interest in the company retirement fund, one company discovered that if it used the employees' preferred media, such as blogs and forums, their level of interest in the topic increased.

Likewise, your director is using popular culture artifacts, such as movies, to teach communication because the viewers can become engaged in the story. Then they will learn how to make connections from theory to practice by imagining the application of the model to a particular scenario. And most people enjoy the humour and drama of a good show.

Stories tap into our sense-making processes and enable us to practise our responses to situations that may arise in the future. The movie characters and plot provide the context and offer different identities quite easily. In the future when we encounter a similar situation, we are more prepared to respond appropriately.

Congratulate your director for stepping outside the proverbial box in an effort to both entertain and educate you. He's taking a risk, but I guess that's why he's a leader, after all.

Sharon Ryan teaches ethics for UCLA Extension.

Vancouver Flyers

