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Esther Matthews is an instructional designer and Vice President of Communities of Practice for Greater Atlanta ATD. A lover of all things tech, she focuses on crafting holistic learning solutions and using Agile project management principles to drive continuous improvement. She’s known for looking at old problems in new ways, asking the right questions, and working collaboratively to lead large-scale solutions that drive organizations forward.

Esther Matthews

August 2022 - TD Magazine

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Talent development professionals help others. Ben Nemtin, star of The Buried Life, called attention to that in his keynote address closing out the Association for Talent Development’s Virtual Conference: Unleash Potential. And he noted that attendees could likely relate to his bucket list pursuits that entailed not only going after the big things he wanted to do before he died but also involved helping others.The Roots of The Buried LifeAs he began his session “Impossible to Possible,” Nemtin spoke about falling into depression after seemingly being on top of the world as he graduated high school in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. He had a spot on the national under-19s rugby team and a college scholarship.But that joy soon turned to anxiety, trouble sleeping, and then depression. He became a shut-in in his family’s home, not understanding why he was feeling the way he was. A summer in a new town, securing a job that brought him confidence, and talking with others about his feelings led Nemtin to start turning the corner. From there, he decided to only surround himself with people who inspired him. He found three individuals who fit that definition: Jonnie, Duncan, and Dave.Sketchnotes provided by See In ColorsWhat followed was their decision to make a film. The quartet were inspired by the Matthew Arnold poem The Buried Life, in which the poet described how we all too often leave our dreams and aspirations buried with day-to-day life getting in the way.To avoid dying without living their dreams, the young men created a bucket list—the stipulations being that they would act as if they had $10 million in the bank and that the goals had to be crazy big. They also knew they wouldn’t be able to accomplish their goals by themselves. They decided that every time they crossed off an item on their list, they would help a stranger do the same.The list that Ben and his friends crafted included such things as helping deliver a baby, having a beer with Prince Harry, and playing basketball with President Barack Obama. That last one required all the grit and persistence they could muster, including dealing with a number of rejections before it finally happened.“Doing what you love actually inspires others to do what they love,” said Nemtin. There’s a ripple effect. The same ripple effect occurs when you help others: They, in turn, have a propensity to help those around them.Your Resiliency Tool KitTo be able to help others, you need to take care of yourself, emphasized Nemtin. Here are some tips to do so, and these comprise what he calls his resiliency tool kit.Gratitude. Think of one thing each night before you go to bed and one thing in the morning when you get up that you are grateful for. They can be as minor as a meal with a loved one, a walk, or the sun being out.Exercise. You don’t have to go for 60 minutes, Nemtin pointed out. Five minutes of push-ups or a 15-minute walk will help you release negative emotions.Mindfulness. This can take the form of the Headspace or other app, a walk, meditation, or being cognizant to breathe deeply from your abdomen.Detox. This may mean staying off social media for 24 hours or avoiding the news for the same period. When you return, only use the tools that bring you joy—come back in control of how you spend your time.Connect. To ease anxiety and stress, talk with friends or a therapist, continued Nemtin.Purpose. This is what the bucket list is all about: doing the things that are most important to you and that bring you joy.Help others. You can’t feel bad when you’re helping others.Nature. If you’re unable to actually go outside for 15 minutes right now because of the pandemic, bring nature inside by getting a plant or two.Fulfilling Personal GoalsThough this belief is hopefully shifting, it’s long been the pervasive mindset that pursuing our personal dreams is selfish. Nemtin refuted that, noting that pursing our dreams is actually a service. Prioritizing your goals, he says, is beneficial to you, your friends and family, your career, and your organization. And if organizations and leaders create an environment that encourages people to go after what they want, those individuals are far more likely to stick around.Psychologist Tom Gilovich reported in his research “The Ideal Road Not Taken” that 76 percent of people identified on their death beds that their greatest regret was not fulfilling their ideal self. What leads people to stop short of that goal? Nemtin identified two reasons. One is that—unlike work goals and duties—our personal goals have no deadlines. The second is that we often lack the inspiration to move forward. To that, Nemtin suggested that we create our own inspiration through small steps and think of “dreams as projects.”Here are five steps he outlined to accomplish your personal goals:Write them down. Putting them down on paper makes them real.Share them. As Nemtim showed with his bucket list, you need others’ help. All too often, we don’t share our goals due to fear—either because we’re afraid of what others may think or because we fear falling short of accomplishing them.Persist. Sometimes we fail because we give up too quickly. Nemtin showcased his persistence in his and his friends’ efforts to play basketball with President Obama.Go for moonshots. Nemtin, smiling, noted that the level of competition for reachable goals is much higher than the competition for ambitious moonshot goals, which few people strive for.Give. Nemtin briefly recalled speaking at ATD TechKnowledge 2019, where he shared the stage with Tiago, a brain stem tumor sufferer who, through the Make a Wish Foundation, expressed his desire to go bobsledding. As a result of Nemtin and the conference attendees, Tiago realized his dream.Ripple effects happen not only from big things—for example, a smile causes a ripple, as does a compliment—Nemtin pointed out. And we don’t necessarily see those reactions happening, and that includes training and development results. But know that as talent development professionals, said Nemtin, you create a positive difference in others.Share your ATD Virtual Conference experience on social media. #ATDVirtualConference

Ripple Effect of Helping Others

Today’s economy is … challenging. On top of that, some organizations are still adapting to the changes caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, like distributed teams, remote meetings, and hybrid offices. The need for strong leaders is more significant than ever in light of those obstacles.Strong leadership skills are essential for managers to build and lead engaged, innovative teams prepared to handle today’s challenges. And the key to being a strong leader might be different from what you think. In an ELB Learning webinar, Kristie DeLoreto, SVP, Client Solutions, and Laura Doerr, VP, Operations at ELB Learning, demonstrated why empathy matters in leadership.Empathy in leadership is the ability to relate to and connect with people to inspire and empower their lives. However, it’s important for leaders to understand the difference between empathy and sympathy. “It’s a very gray line,” said DeLoreto. “I think you either kind of understand it, or you need to practice to get better at being more empathetic or knowing the difference between those two.”Lack of Empathy vs. EmpathyYou may have worked in environments where the first second somebody has performance problems at work, the automatic response is to say, “You’re out.”That is an example of a lack of empathy. Unfortunately, this can be fairly standard in our business world. Someone walks into your office and says, “Your numbers have been down for the third quarter in a row. You have to pick up your numbers. Otherwise, I can’t guarantee what the future will look like.”How inspired is that person going to be at work the next day? On the flip side, here’s the empathetic approach.Someone walks into your office and says, “Your numbers are down for the third quarter in a row. Are you okay? I’m worried about you. What’s going on?”We all have performance issues. Maybe someone’s kid is sick. Maybe they’re having problems in their marriage. We don’t know what’s going on in their lives, which will affect their performance at work. Empathy means being concerned about the human being, not just their output. Most people don’t want to be bad performers; they want to do a good job. Leaders must remember this.Exercising empathy can help leaders build teams, hire employees, and work with clients.Building teams. According to a 2022 Gallup report, employee engagement has dropped over the last several years to 32 percent, and 17 percent of employees are actively disengaged. Recognizing and respecting your employees’ emotions—even the negative ones—is a powerful way to connect with them. Empathy lays the groundwork for mature leadership and connecting with your workers as people.Hiring employees. Empathy is also important in the hiring process. It gives insight into another person’s motivations and helps you judge whether a candidate is right for a position. “If you look at your candidate with empathy, you can see the person and the human they are. And if they’re going to bring that to the table and bring those right skills and the right fit culturally, and all those other pieces just by thinking about that,” said DeLoreto. Working with clients. By employing empathy in your conversations with clients or subject matter experts, you can better understand their pain points and get on the same page. Having an open, thoughtful, empathetic conversation—especially with difficult clients—where you align and get on the same page will improve your relationship. In addition, empathy allows you to understand how another person is likely to behave, which can be powerful in negotiations.Why Leadership Training Can HelpDuring the webinar, DeLoreto polled the audience, asking who had worked for a leader who lacked empathy at any point in their career. The response was a resounding 95 percent “YES.”Effective leadership training needs to include soft skills training such as empathy. While there will always be a demand for training on hard skills, at ELB Learning, we’re seeing more and more clients come to us for manager and leadership development.

Most Important Skill for Leaders Is Empathy—Here’s Why

A common question I am asked when delivering workshops on applying learning science is “what’s the best way to teach someone \[insert topic or skill\]?” Or, “What is the best way to explain a particular topic or concept?”Let’s think about this. If I want to teach someone how to make a new kind of soufflé, what’s the best way to do it? It depends!I need to know things like:Does the person know how to cook at all?Do they want to know how to make this new kind of soufflé?Has the person ever made a soufflé before?Do they know how to separate egg whites from egg yolks?Do they know how to make a water bath in the oven? Do they even know what a water bath is?Do they know how to use a whisk and how to tell when the whites have been whisked just enough?How I help someone make a new kind of soufflé depends on all these things (and more). But what it doesn’t depend on is the person’s “learning style.”Here’s a truth: Cognitive psychologists have conducted in-depth reviews of the literature in search of well-designed studies showing clear evidence of a connection between instruction tailored to learning styles and differences in student outcomes. Their conclusions: “There is no adequate evidence base to justify incorporating learning-styles assessments into general educational practice.”To be fair, the idea of people having different learning styles is appealing because it is intuitive. Just as height, head and foot size, and eye color and shape vary, people vary in their abilities.People are better at some things than others.Some people have an uncanny ability to remember faces, some can hear a piece of music and play it immediately, and others are extremely skilled at hand-eye coordination. Yes, we’re different, and we have certain preferences, interests, background knowledge, and motivations, but that doesn’t mean that the way we actually learn is better depending on our preferred modality of instruction.Back to the soufflé. Thinking about the “best” or optimal way to teach someone to make the new soufflé depends on the content, the context, the learner and their motivation, and how much they already know (their background or prior knowledge). To teach a complete novice how to make the soufflé, a video, an in-person demonstration, and some step-by-step, scaffolded practice would likely be needed. To the more seasoned soufflé maker, I could probably hand a printed recipe with the “innovative” part highlighted, and off they’d go.I am instructing neither person differently based on a stated “learning style.” Instead, I’m meeting them where they are and either starting from the very beginning and going over the basics using some visuals or live demonstrations, or letting them apply their prior knowledge and experience to learning a new recipe or technique.When I plan my workshops, I think about not discussing learning styles. It’s a subject people feel extremely passionate about, and it tends to stir up sometimes contentious, polarizing debates. Most importantly, these discussions can come at the cost of derailing otherwise productive discussions about improving teaching and learning using evidence that we know positively affects learning.Does it matter if some people believe that they have a “visual or an auditory learning style”? Is it really risky or damaging to keep this myth of learning styles alive?I think it does matter and here are some reasons why:Opportunity costs: As educators, we ought to think like scientists; consider the available evidence and tailor our teaching and learning practices to that. Trying to shape our teaching practices around individual learning styles comes at a cost; every moment of educator training or professional development spent figuring out ways to tailor instruction to learners' individual learning styles is an opportunity lost to help support the implementation of practices that have solid scientific support.Growth mindset: As well as costs in terms of time and money, another reason the notion of learning styles is risky is it creates the belief that certain people are unable, or less likely to learn because the material or mode of instruction is inappropriate for them. Talk about slamming the brakes on the idea of “growth mindset” (which interestingly, does not tend to stir up contentious debates and discussions).Telling people they can only learn in a certain way can both shape and constrain the way they approach learning. We have a tremendous capacity to adapt, change, and grow. It matters, therefore, for learners to believe they can grow and learn and are expected and encouraged to do so. Without that belief, people may lack the motivation to put in the mental effort and perseverance required to learn something new or get better at something. Learning is hard, and we do a disservice to learners if we let them believe otherwise or give them an “excuse” to give up on something they find more difficult.Square peg in a round hole: A person told they are a “visual learner” may try and process new content in the mode of their stated “learning style” even if the style does not fit the particular task. Or they might disengage from a high-quality learning experience because they think it won’t benefit them as it’s not in the “right” mode. This is an incredibly inefficient way to learn.Policy and practice reform: Misconceptions and myths about learning can impede education reform efforts at many levels. If a large percentage of people cling to beliefs on the benefits of a learning styles approach, they are less likely to support or engage with initiatives that oppose it. Some have used the analogy of climate change to illustrate this point. Skepticism and debate around climate change serves only to slow down meaningful policy action—even though there is broad consensus that climate change is real and poses a real risk to the future of our planet.Perhaps because most of us have encountered learning in some form, when we discuss ways to optimize learning, it can seem that everyone’s opinion is equally valid and that we don’t need to consider scientific data and evidence of efficacy. We do not all, however, have the same common experience with medical research, quantum mechanics, violin playing, or architectural design. This likely explains why we may be more willing to accept it when experts arrive at a consensus that a certain medical technique for knee-replacement surgery is no longer valid, or that a certain type of bridge design is better than another for a particular climate, than we are to accept that a common belief around learning is not based in evidence.In Think Again, Adam Grant wrote: “Scientific thinking favors humility over pride, doubt over certainty, curiosity over closure. If we believe we have already found the truth, then we stop searching for or recognizing gaps in our knowledge.” Grant uses the term “idea cults” for those who “preach the merits of their pet concept and ‘prosecute’ anyone who calls for nuance or complexity.”An admirable educational goal is to help make people better consumers of information. Equally so is the need to make educators and decision makers “critical consumers of scientific research” and to normalize the practice of evaluating research evidence. Surely this should trump the status quo of relying on personal beliefs and experiences and that which makes us “feel good”?My hope is that I can stop worrying about engaging in fruitless discussions about learning styles. This is because we are aware of and have respect for the wealth of excellent, reliable, robust research on how people learn and how to create effective learning experiences (details of which are outside the scope of this piece). And, perhaps most importantly, that we, in whatever teaching and learning role we play, continue to be open to evidence that calls into question existing beliefs, allows us to recognize gaps in our knowledge, and ultimately serves our goal of promoting long-term meaningful learning for all learners.

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