“To admit ignorance is to exhibit wisdom” – Ashley Montagu

Senior executive leaders are often the most experienced people within a biopharma company. With double-digit years of industry experience, they’ve often come up “through the ranks”, gaining a wealth of wisdom during the course of their professional journeys. Tenure and tacit knowledge aside, in a complex, ever-changing industry like biopharmaceuticals, learning should never stop.

In Part 1 of this series, we outlined why executive development is important and its ability to positively impact a company’s trajectory when done right. We also covered senior leaders’ most common capability gaps, including decision leadership and change management. Designing and implementing development journeys to address these common gaps is not easy. Along with known, common challenges to educating any adult, some challenges are unique to a senior executive audience. Here, we outline those challenges and explore some potential solutions.

Unique Challenges to Senior Executive Leadership Development

Time-pressed, academic-brand conscious, sophisticated; three characteristics of senior executives that create unique challenges to impactful executive leader development.

Senior executives are very busy people.

If everyone is busy these days, senior executives are busier. Time is senior leaders’ most valuable resource, and there are many different needs, duties, and stakeholders vying for that time. Getting them to carve out time to engage in development becomes a real challenge.

Senior executives demonstrate brand consciousness for academic learning.

Top executives, especially in biopharmaceutical companies, are often highly credentialed. They have one or perhaps multiple advanced degrees: a masters or PhD in their area of expertise, or perhaps an MD or MBA. They are high-utilizers of academic institutional learning. As such, they tend to be “brand conscious” when it comes to their own professional development, showing a preference for development offerings from academic institutions.

Top universities’ executive development programs can be very good. They often address burgeoning topics, bring together learners from across industries, and offer deep subject matter expertise. While valuable qualities, viewed differently these offerings tend to be generalized, rarely focusing on an industry and, less so, a specific company and its challenges or contexts. This broad approach demands more effort on an executive’s part to transfer the concepts to his or her specific company and situation and distill relevant insights to action immediately to drive new ways of working or business results.

This is not to say that broad offerings are sub-optimal. It’s the extra effort required that becomes less ideal when the learners are busy executives and not full-time students. Think back to your days as a full-time student. Most likely, you attended a professor’s lectures to glean concepts from their immense subject matter expertise and then spent additional time on your own–and perhaps with teaching assistants–to transfer the theory and concepts into tangible actions or skills you then applied. Top executives simply have less time to make the abstract meaningful.

While engaging with learners from across industries is valuable, this should be assessed against the value of a cohort of leaders from within a company experiencing and learning together. Universities have shifted to accommodate for this by offering customized learning for specific companies, and this may be a viable option. It is important to recognize that, in the end, the finished customized program often sits outside the company; making the company beholden to the university should there be interest in redeploying or expanding it.

Senior executives are skeptical of their need for development.

Many humans have suffered the slings and arrows of overconfidence bias. Cognitive research has consistently revealed that most adults tend to rate their abilities, whether those be business or non-business related, as above average. Senior executives are not immune to this calamity and theoretically they might be at greater risk. If a leader has been in the same environment for many years, it is possible that their capabilities could become a bit “ossified,” rendering them less able to adapt to—or lead—change.

In addition, senior executives—who neglect their development— may have missed significant developments that would have kept them abreast of change. While a leader may have earned an MBA 20 years ago, MBA programs of today are radically different from those even 5 years ago. The world changes. Key knowledge and capabilities change. Similarly, many senior leaders in key functions rose through the ranks in their companies more than a decade ago, largely before the cross-functional “revolution” took place in the biopharma industry. While leaders may have very deep expertise within their own functions, they can have gaps in the holistic, cross-functional understanding that is so important to strategy and operations today.

Those are just two small examples, but the key point is this: leaders who have been in senior roles for a significant period may not be aware of areas in which they could improve and develop.

High-Level Solutions

Senior executives need development opportunities that are specific to their needs and contexts and that fit within their schedules. This is why individual one-on-one executive coaching is often seen as the best approach for this learner population. And for small populations, coaching is the answer, but it also has drawbacks in its difficulty to scale and hyper-individual focus. The question is:  How can L&D combine the principles of individual coaching and then deliver them on a large scale? Answering that question correctly is the key to overcoming the challenges of creating a learning solution for senior executives.

Make it relevant.

Earlier, we drove home the idea that any learning program must be highly relevant to the learners. This means that the content should not only relate to the biopharma industry, but also to the individual learner.

The key is to communicate from the start that the program will be custom-fit to them as individuals, then actually deliver on that promise as things move forward. To do this, L&D should keep the following points in mind:

• An up-front needs assessment at the macro level is essential. This provides a foundational understanding of the needs that any program must address, and serves as a type of “North Star” that guides subsequent development efforts.
• Given the high visibility and general skepticism around executive leadership development programs, conducting a robust needs assessment is also critical to creating a compelling business case for the program.
• Needs assessments are also needed at the micro—or individual—level. While the macro assessment helps define the prioritized library of learning content that must be developed, the micro-level assessments determine how various pieces of content will need to be curated for each specific learner. These micro-level assessments typically take the form of short self-assessment exercises that learners must complete early in the program.
• As stated, the curated content must be contextualized to the learners’ specific roles, situations and development needs, as will the exercises they must complete throughout the program.

Design to accommodate their busy schedules.

Busy executives do not have time for long sessions held at scheduled intervals. Learning programs must be designed to accommodate the reality of their day-to-day schedules. From a practical standpoint, this means:

• Self-assessments should be short, perhaps requiring a five- or ten-minute commitment.
• Learning sessions should also be short and designed to build upon one another.  The design process should incorporate classic microlearning principles and approaches.
• The learners should have a high-degree of choice regarding when their learning takes place.  Therefore, most content will be delivered asymmetrically.

Make it a collaborative initiative.

A large-scale executive leadership development initiative should be a “big deal” within the organization, with a well-designed communications campaign and visible buy-in from top leadership. They should lead by example and be vocal about it. 

Even though learning experiences will be customized to the needs of individual executives—and learners will have a high degree of choice regarding how and when they engage with the content—the program should still be structured as a collaborative, group initiative. This can make the experience more enjoyable and introduce a healthy bit of social pressure to engage and participate in the program. Potential techniques for doing this can include:

• Providing regular updates on the learner group’s progress
• Setting up the ability for learners to “review” courses, rate their experiences, and share their opinions

Communicate, communicate, communicate.

We’ve mentioned the importance of communicating with the learners the need for development, its relevance to them, and the benefits.  However, we don’t want to give the impression that such communication can be achieved with a few emails and a meeting or two. In fact, effective communications must be done in a highly coordinated fashion that uses multiple channels and that truly engages the learner population in an ongoing way. This coordinated, integrated approach to communications is a highly essential part of any change management initiative…and that’s precisely what a comprehensive leadership development program is: a change management initiative. This aspect is so important that we will dedicate Part 3 of this series to it.  Stay tuned!

When you hear, “leadership development,” what comes to mind? Most think of programs for aspiring or new managers. Programs that empower individual contributors to transform into efficient and effective first line leaders. But what about existing leaders? And specifically senior executive leaders? 

In our experience, executive leaders—and, by extension, their companies— benefit greatly from a strategic executive leadership development journey as it unlocks immediate value in leaders’ enhanced capabilities and goes far deeper by impacting teams, functions, and the entire organizational culture. So, why doesn’t senior executive leadership development typically come to mind? And what does good senior executive development look like?

Over the coming weeks, we will publish a series of articles on leadership development for senior executives. Here, in Part 1, we address two key topics:

• Why Executive Leadership Development
• Common Needs of Executive Leaders

Part 2 explores the unique challenges related to executive leadership development, as well as some high-level solutions. Part 3 outlines the value of –  and helpful guidelines for – communications efforts that drive participation to ensure executive leadership development initiatives are a success.  Let’s dive in!

Why Executive Leadership Development

Developing executive leaders unleashes a wealth of untapped tacit knowledge and achieves a multiplier impact on an organization’s culture.

Executive leaders are typically the most tenured people within an organization. They house years and years of expertise in their heads, much in the form of tacit knowledge – knowledge that is difficult to explain and relevant to a specific domain. Executive leadership development builds, elaborates on, and propagates tacit knowledge across an organization, acting as a competitive differentiator. 

Executive leaders are the social influencers of an organization. They have an overweight impact on a company’s culture via the philosophies they silently or expressly espouse and their observable actions, truly leading by example. The example they set may be intentional or unintentional, but make no mistake, their example gets noticed and is often adopted and repeated, whether they want it to or not.

Knowledge and influence become critical success factors for organizations operating in a rapidly evolving and highly competitive environment. Executive leadership development harnesses leaders’ expertise for new, innovative ideas and empowers them with a megaphone of influence to impact everything from day-to-day operating norms to huge transformations. Data supports this. A study by McKinsey and Co. showed that companies who invest in developing leaders during significant transformations (which are quite common in biopharma) are 2.4 times more likely to hit their performance targets. 

Executive leadership development taps into senior leaders’ power and knowledge, enabling organizations to better achieve business results.  

Common Development Needs

Executive leaders often show gaps in their cross-organizational strategic thinking, decision leadership, digital fluency, and ability to advocate for and empower change.

Leadership development programs geared towards new or aspiring leaders typically focus on foundational capabilities such as communication, collaboration, and coaching to name a few. This makes sense, as this audience is transforming from individual contributors to first-line people managers. When it comes to executive leadership development, most senior leaders are experts at these core capabilities and their needs are typically more sophisticated. Like most adult learner populations, these needs are often quite diverse, yet there are a few common gaps.

Strategic Thinking Coupled with a Cross-Functional Mindset

Generally speaking, most senior leaders have a solid foundation in strategic thinking. They define objectives, identify barriers, articulate and evaluate options, and formulate an integrated approach to overcome the barriers to achieve the objective. They do this adeptly within their functional domains. 

However, in today’s biopharma industry, strategy development has become an increasingly holistic and cross-organizational endeavor. As senior leaders grow into their functional areas, they often have a blind spot when it comes to other functions. In some cases, internal political and/or competitive factors can also limit cross-functional awareness and collaboration. Today, with the increasingly integrated nature of the biopharma industry and the more holistic nature of strategy development, SVPs and VPs must more carefully consider how strategic decisions within their own functional areas can affect—as well as be impacted by—other functional areas’ strategies.

It’s important to note that some leaders have been operating with a broader cross-functional mindset for some time. The past 5-10 years saw the explosion of cross-functional commercial planning. For example, a commercial VP planning for a new product launch understands the interplay between Marketing, Market Access, Training, Medical Affairs and Regulatory and Compliance, and can integrate those areas’ strategies accordingly. With the speed to market accelerating and the global marketplace shrinking, executive leaders must also understand and consider other cross-organizational areas’ strategies, dynamics and needs. Creating an optimal launch strategy more often requires that same VP of commercialization to understand and adjust to broader organization strategies.  Think government affairs strategy. Or a health equity strategy.  A good executive leadership journey expands senior leaders’ pan-organizational understanding and enables connections between these leaders to ensure they can craft optimal strategies that move at the speed of business.

Decision Leadership and Innovation

The biopharma industry must innovate to survive and thrive. It must develop new and better therapies on an ongoing basis. This need to innovate extends beyond scientific innovation. Every functional area including research, development, manufacturing, distribution, marketing, medical affairs, market access, business development, and more, must innovate to stay ahead of competitive and market changes, regulatory issues, payer dynamics, and so on. What most senior leaders neglect to accept is that innovation is predicated on what many in these roles consider anathema – failure.

Innovation expert Matt Ridley writes, “Tolerance of error is therefore critical [for innovation]”.  Think of how many times Thomas Edison “failed” before developing a working light bulb (over 1,000 times). Top leaders usually ascend to their roles by being successful. While, don’t get us wrong, success is a great thing, individuals who are accustomed to success have a tendency to develop an intolerance of failure and exacerbate their underlying loss aversion. Loss aversion is a known cognitive phenomenon where, in spite of being quantitatively equal, humans assign disproportionately more pain to losing (for example) $100 than joy in winning $100.

Mitigating for loss aversion bias and developing a mindset of failure tolerance requires decision leadership. Executive leaders with strong decision leadership establish decision architecture across their teams (they enable team members to make decisions within clear parameters and they manage that process, versus simply making decisions).  They view and bundle decisions in a portfolio approach versus individual decisions. These capabilities power a faster, more urgent way of working and also develop failure tolerance. Consequently, they can encourage a culture where new ideas and approaches are welcomed, even if they don’t work perfectly.

Change Management

Much ink, both real and virtual, has been spilled on the topic of change management over the years.  So, we won’t dive into its various sub-topics here.  However, it is a common area of need in leadership development, as articulated by senior leaders themselves.

In a rapidly (and constantly) evolving industry like biopharma, the ability to successfully facilitate and/or manage change is critical.  Highly tenured professionals learn a lot of habits during their career and can become “set in their ways.”  However, as leaders, the company looks to them to forge a way forward in a change-filled environment.

A strong senior leadership development program is often effective at helping these professionals

• Optimize their individual attitudes to change as well as those at the organizational level
• More effectively lead their teams, functions, and companies through change

Digital Technology and Fluency

We all know the cliché about how parents must rely on their children to show them how to operate a smartphone.  Well, senior leaders usually don’t need that kind of development support.  However, with the rapid advent of new technologies, such as artificial intelligence (AI), it can be challenging for anyone to understand what a given new technology is, what it can be used for, and how the company might be able to leverage it.

We often see executive leaders who want a deeper understanding of new technologies and how they might impact their business.  Such an understanding can also help facilitate more innovative thinking and better results for the company overall.

In Part 2, we will explore the unique challenges associated with leadership development for senior executives.  But don’t worry: along with those challenges, we’ll also look at some potential ways to overcome them.

Before designing any new learning and development program, most L&D professionals start with some form of needs analysis.  After all, it’s not wise to design a program without first gaining a deeper understanding of the need (or needs) that it’s supposed to meet.  A good needs analysis involves a robust methodology for:

• Defining the current state
• Defining the desired future state
• Determining the knowledge, skills, and capabilities needed to bridge the gap between the two

Recently, the Salience Learning team gathered for a company retreat in Las Vegas, NV. Our goal was to pool our creativity and devise fresh ways to enhance how we deliver solutions to our clients.  In one session, we focused on ways to improve the needs analysis process.  In this short blog article, we share a few high-level thoughts and ideas.

Traditional Methods for Needs Analysis

To kickstart our creativity, we considered a scenario involving a commercial pharmaceutical company seeking to craft a capability model and identify the knowledge and skills required to future-proof their customer-facing roles.  In this scenario, the company (our hypothetical client) also wanted to:

• Represent to “voice of the employee” from all levels and regions
• Leverage technology to incorporate global perspectives

Our initial step was to compile a list of traditional methods for gathering insights from target learners and leaders during project initiation.  These typically include:

• Internal research to assess organizational objectives
• External research to identify industry trends driving change in the company’s environment
• Interviews with learners, managers, and corporate leaders to gather insights into what learners need to know and do differently to improve performance and adapt to change
• Focus groups with cross-functional partners to define opportunities for enhancing cross-functional partnerships and improving matrixed ways of working
• Surveys to validate initial insights with a broader range of stakeholders

Newer Ideas

With these traditional methods established, we then ventured a bit farther afield to generate some out-of-the-box ideas.  We proposed several potential strategies that could more effectively uncover the true learning needs within the company, such as:

• Collaborating with internal departments to access field coaching reports and performance reviews to gain further insight into potential gaps
• Engaging with external customers (e.g., healthcare providers, payers, strategic accounts, and others) to acquire insights into customer engagement needs
• Partnering with external research firms and recruiters to access benchmarking
• Leveraging social media platforms for intelligence gathering
• Exploring analogous roles in different industries to draw parallels
• Implementing a nudge strategy to glean insights over an extended period
• Integrating advanced technology tools for more efficient analysis

Now, it’s true that in various cases, budget constraints may prevent a company from implementing some of these ideas.  For any given situation, the team would need to evaluate the feasibility of any given method and ensure that it’s properly aligned with the company’s strategic objectives and available resources.  As we move forward, we recognize the need for continued innovation, as well as evaluation and alignment with client expectations to ensure successful outcomes for L&D programs.

Stay in Touch!

Be sure to check our Insights Center on a regular basis to read short blogs like this one, as well as longer papers, how-to guides, podcasts, and more.  And don’t hesitate to contact us if you need assistance with any learning and development initiative!

Nashville, TN (aka “Music City”) hosted the global annual meeting of the Medical Affairs Professional Society (MAPS) just a few weeks ago, March 26-29.  MAPS’ mission is to “advance the Medical Affairs profession and increase its impact across the biopharmaceutical and device industry”  The global annual meeting, the EMEA annual meeting (which runs May 14-16 in Lisbon), and a range of other events are key to MAPS’ mission.

Through those events, MAPS members discuss and share information and best practices about a wide range of Medical Affairs (MA)-related topics.  Last month, we sent a combined team to the MAPS global annual meeting.  This team included people from Salience Learning as well as Blue Matter. 

After the meeting, members of both teams compared notes to see what each thought were the most interesting or relevant themes that were addressed there.  This relatively short article provides a summary of the combined team’s key takeaways regarding those themes and their implications for biopharma companies.

Read the full article on the Blue Matter website.

A lot has changed over the past few years.  Hybrid working has spread dramatically and is now commonplace.  It has driven fast technological change and imposed new ways of working for which many teams feel unprepared. The result?  Well, it’s a mixed bag but a couple of things are for certain: It has made it more challenging for team leaders to maintain team cohesion and morale.  It has also made many team members more likely to explore other job opportunities to find better pathways for advancement and development.

This has led many leaders to work on building (or rebuilding) team culture to create an environment that nurtures lifelong learning and provides clearer pathways for ongoing development.  As a result, many organizations are placing professional development at the heart of their agenda.  However, they often are challenged in identifying where to start.

In this article, we explore three related topics, each of which build upon and reinforce the other.  Specifically, we discuss how to:

• Identify what your team members should be learning or developing vs. what they could be learning or developing in this ever-changing environment
• Create clear career paths that showcase your organization’s commitment to long-term career development
• Accelerate your teams’ ability to learn just the right things at just the right time

Capability Models:  Focus on what team members should be learning

Based on my experience working with pharmaceutical companies, I recommend following a systematic process to define the capabilities that are most critical and will help to future-proof the organization.  This is called a “Capability Model.” But what, exactly, is that?

First, it’s important to differentiate capabilities from competencies:

• Competencies refer to the knowledge and skills needed to perform in the present.  For example, clinical operations competencies might include specific tasks related to conducting clinical research trials.
• Capabilities define the knowledge and skills needed to adapt and flex to meet future needs and are broadly transferable including things like critical thinking, problem solving, insight generation, and strategic planning.

Figure 1:  Competencies vs. Capabilities

A capability model is a clear and concise listing and description of the knowledge, skills, and observable behaviors that individuals need to experience success—both now and in the future—in their specific roles.

The capability model has far-reaching benefits:

• Leadership Level – It helps to align organizational development, ensuring the function or team members are developing in areas that will future-proof the organization.  It also helps succession planning, allowing leaders to identify the leaders of the future and guide strategic hiring efforts.
• Individual Level – It allows individuals to rate their own strengths and areas of development to create personalized development plans to achieve their career goals.

Career Paths: Help team members see the path forward while demonstrating your organization’s commitment to long-term career development

A capability model isn’t just some document that sits on a shelf.  Teams should use them to help guide each team member as they chart their career path.  However, the idea of a “career path” has gotten a bit more complicated in recent years.

Many reports, including one from Harvard Business Review indicate that more and more organizations are flattening their hierarchies by removing middle management positions and moving toward more agile networks of project teams.  The goals are to promote autonomy and innovation, and to drive efficiencies.  While that’s a welcome change, it also brings an unwelcome side effect.  With a less visible hierarchy, employees can be left wondering what path their career might take. When they don’t see it, they stop believing in it.

Even in organizations that have traditional hierarchies, how people move from one role to the next may be unclear.  Even worse, it could be perceived as being based on factors other than merit.  Both situations can motivate your top performers to leave the organization.

Creating clear and visible Career Paths allows organizations to demonstrate the key experiences that different roles offer and to help individuals think about future roles that they would be interested in pursuing.  Through simple but powerful illustrations, career paths allow individuals to see the skills and capabilities they need to develop in order to move into those roles.  They should provide clear examples of professional development opportunities and other career steps that enable them to gain these capabilities. Career paths unlock powerful career development discussions, allowing employees to focus on the skills and capabilities they need to develop to move to their next role.

INSERT FIGURE 2 (in development):  Genericized Career Path

At Salience Learning we have seen clients investing in critical thinking, strategic thinking, and insight generation because they are transferable capabilities that employees can deploy in every role they hold over their careers.

It’s important to help employees understand that following a particular path won’t guarantee their promotion.  Other factors, such as whether the next job opportunity exists at a given time, also have an impact.  However, if they use the career path, coupled with the learning path that we will discuss below, they’ll be perfectly positioned to seize opportunity when it arises.

Learning Pathways: Guide your team’s development efficiently

As mentioned above, a career path is most useful when coupled with a Learning Pathway.  A learning pathways is a structured series of learning experiences that narrowly direct learners along the most efficient route to gain and apply new skills and capabilities. They can be structured by role, subject, or business goal.  Perhaps a better name should be “Learning Highway,” because the goal here is efficiency and speed!

A learning pathway combines a variety of learning activities such as formal training, on-the-job learning, mentoring, and self-directed learning.  A good learning pathway is typically sequenced from simpler to more complex concepts and skills.  Ideally, the design uses carefully spaced repetition of retrieving and using the content to strengthen the memory of that content, enabling it to be built into skills through practice.  

A learning pathway considers the learner’s current needs along with their career aspirations. When a cohort of learners go through the same learning pathway together, they gain the additional benefit of cross-pollinating ideas for applying it on the job.

As an example, a learning path for a newly hired Access Marketer might include their onboarding and role-specific training. While they will already have knowledge of the pharmaceutical industry, including regulatory requirements, drug development and approval processes, they will need to know the processes and standards used in their current company to ensure they stay within the rules of engagement.

Other elements might include shadowing an experienced team member to start building an internal network for collaboration and taking on stretch assignments to develop further skills.  Combined with effective coaching from their leader or a mentor, this path can speed time to performance and drive new levels of effectiveness for the team and the individual.

If you’d like to learn more about developing capability models, career paths, or learning pathways, or if you’re interested in our Capability Academies, then please contact us here.

This video discusses the Salience Learning / BMS Critical Thinking Academy for first-line leaders. It is a component of the 2023 LTEN Provider-Partnership Excellence Award Nomination.

In mid-2022, Pew Research Center reported that nearly 1 in 5 workers are actively looking for a new job while in their current role, a rate we haven’t seen since the 1970s.

One key reason for leaving?   They feel they have no opportunities for advancement.

With the large increase in remote work, many people feel like they’ve lost their connections to their leaders, the purpose of their work, and their opportunities for growth.

But there is hope!  Here are three integrated strategies for addressing this challenge.

Strategy One:  Make Career Paths Clear

By talking to tenured team members about how they advanced through the organization, you can create a single-page Career Path document for each role.

Career Path documents show current team members their potential paths forward.  The Career Path can also help attract new talent who may be looking to move up, and thinking two or more roles ahead.

Strategy Two:  Use a Capability Model to Guide Team Member Development

Well-written job descriptions are pretty good at helping you hire the right person. Job descriptions age rapidly, and are not great at providing guidance about how to do the job well after a person is hired.  

That’s why a Capability Model is so important.  A Capability Model is a concise yet robust statement that describes what a person needs to know and be able to do to excel in their current role, grow into future roles, and meet the demands of a rapidly changing marketplace.

Combined with a Career Path, a Capability Model provides excellent guidance for any team member to develop and advance with confidence.

Strategy Three: Put a Capability Model Into Action With a Capability Planner

While the Capability Model outlines what a person in a given role must know and be able to do, a Capability Planner helps each individual assess where his or her skill level is at the present time, clearly identifying areas of strength and areas where more development is needed.  Then, the individual and their leader can create development goals and action plans that support the individual’s career goals and the company’s performance goals.

Regular development conversations between the manager and team member are essential to keeping things on track. To support your leaders in driving meaningful development conversations, we recommend our leadership guide which provides support that deepens conversations and identifies specific actions leaders can take to support their team members.

Salience Learning’s team of biopharma industry veterans and learning experts is here to help you build a motivated, productive, high-performance team. We help our clients boost performance with concise Career Paths, effective Capability Models, and actionable Capability Planners and Leadership Guides—built for specific teams and roles. We also design engaging and impactful learning experiences that drive development in individuals and teams. We can do the same for you.

Contact us

In this video, Anjani Patel describes the difference between capabilities and skills. She also outlines how “capability development” should be a top priority for biopharma companies, and why it can be critical to individual and organizational success.

In this video, Anjani Patel describes how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected the biopharma industry. In particular, it changed the way biopharma companies interact with their customers and it also altered how they attract and retain talent. Anjani also provides some guidance for biopharma companies who must attract, train, develop, and retain top talent in a challenging new environment.

Fads and fashions tend to come and go. For a while, a certain thing is all the rage and then, after a time, it tends to fade away, only to be replaced by something else. This is true of clothing, television programs, music, and more. But it’s also true in learning and development. As an L&D professional, you’ve no doubt noticed this.

Well, I don’t know if this is a fad, but my colleagues and I have been noticing something of late. More and more we’re hearing clients say something like, “Our teams need to tell better stories,” or “If only our teams’ storytelling skills were better.” In addition, I’ve also seen learning programs popping up that claim to teach learners how to become top-notch story tellers.

With all this talk about storytelling, it prompted me to think critically about it. Why all the fuss about storytelling? What need is driving it? Is “storytelling” even the right solution? Do learners in the professional workforce really need storytelling skills…or is the real need something else altogether? 

If you’ve thought about storytelling or think your learners might need to build those skills, then read on.  The rest of this article may help you get to the core issue and save you time and resources when it comes to acquiring or developing a learning solution for “storytelling.”

Don’t call it storytelling

First, it’s helpful to define “story.” Oxford Languages dictionary defines a story as: an account of imaginary or real people and events told for entertainment. The skills necessary to create great stories include defining story elements (like characters, settings, conflicts, and resolutions), applying language to express and explain those in an entertaining way, and (as most writers would attest) an immense amount of patience. So, when our clients and other colleagues in the life science industry say they need their teams to tell better stories, is this what they really need? I respectfully disagree.

In most cases I will argue that what clients are really saying is that they want their learners to be able to communicate information to an audience in a way that gets that audience to do something. Professionals are not telling stories for entertainment. They’re telling stories to drive action: action in the sense of physical movement or, as is more often the case in the knowledge economy and life-sciences industry, action in the sense of thinking movement, like changing opinions or conclusions. 

Account Executives communicate information to move a payer’s thinking that a therapy does not have value to the conclusion that it does – and then putting it on formulary. Marketing leaders communicate information to move a corporate leader’s thinking that a certain program isn’t essential to the department’s success to it being essential – and then securing the appropriate budget.  In either case, the information is communicated to generate movement.

If it isn’t storytelling, then what is it?

The solution is NOT to train learners to create interesting characters in unique settings where they resolve conflicts all tied up with a good nail-biting ending. The solution is to improve learners’ abilities to craft an argument: not an argument involving fisticuffs, but “a reason or set of reasons that someone uses to show that something is true or correct,” as defined by Oxford Languages. That something is the desired future state either as a thinking state (“This drug actually does have tremendous value”) or physical state (the drug is placed on formulary).

Being able to craft and deliver an argument requires two foundational capabilities: Critical Thinking and Effective Communication. It also requires Emotional Intelligence and a few others, but we’ll stick with these two first.

Critical Thinking

Critical thinking is defined as the effortful and continuous analysis of the validity of a conclusion. Think of a five-year-old asking, “Why is the sky blue?” “Why does milk come from cows?” “Why don’t I have a baby brother?”

Before communicating anything to an audience, one needs to ask “Why?” and think it through to identify the reasons an audience should move physically or thinkingly.

First, one would ask questions and gather information:

1. Who is the audience?
2. What is the desired future state (what is the “ask”)?
3. What are their needs and motivations and perspectives?
4. What are the grounds, causes, rationales or reasons that justify the desired future state? What data, information or evidence supports those statements?
5. Filter the total population of statements in #4 to identify those that are compelling based on #3.

The output of this thinking process is then crafted into a logical sequence of statements to make the case for the ask. Logical and reasonable sequencing take critical thinking to then continually question the rigor of the step-by-step argument assembled. “Would I move based on this?” “Would this move someone to action? To change their mind?” If no, then back to #4 above.

It’s not storytelling, its thinking.

Communication

When it comes time to deliver an argument to an audience—whether it’s via a presentation, video, paper, or some combination of things—it’s important to do so in a way that gets results. First and foremost, that means not arguing! If you find yourself arguing while delivering an argument, go back and think critically. Then ensure that you have:

1. Accounted for power differentials and cultural differences – meaning, include the “ask” in an appropriate way.
2. Ensured verbal and non-verbal signals are aligned – meaning, if it’s a serious decision, dress appropriately.
3. Minimized cognitive overload – meaning, give time to process and don’t read from slides.

When these attributes describe how you deliver an argument, it becomes persuasive…and persuasion yields action. 

What now?

As an L&D professional, if your internal customers say they want to develop storytelling skills—or if you are thinking about acquiring a storytelling curriculum—the first thing you should do is think critically. Why do they need to tell better stories? What outcome do stakeholders want? What’s making it difficult for learners to do that now? Once you’ve identified the core need, you’ll be in a much better position to select the right learning solution.

The second thing you should do is find that solution. Chances are, you won’t really need a curriculum that focuses on character development, settings, and conflict.  It might be better to look for a solution that empowers learners to assess their thinking process, question conclusions and gather evidence (one that helps them argue better, not tell better stories).

As an aside, this entire article was an argument, and not a dragon or damsel in earshot or a single fist thrown. That said, it did take a lot of patience.

Not long ago, success in the life science industry could be attributed to how well one mastered and executed skills:  skills in selling, account planning, customer engagement and more. Someone who perfected a skill could apply it repeatedly across similar situations without breaking a sweat.

Unfortunately, in today’s world it’s rare that the same situation happens twice, and skills are no longer enough. The products are more complex, the marketplace is more complex, the ways of working are more complex. And everything is constantly changing. As the industry evolves, so must you. Success in the life science industry today will be powered not only by narrower skills like selling and planning, but also by broader proficiencies that are called capabilities.

What Is a Capability?

A capability is a set of behaviors and characteristics applied fluidly and flexibility across conditions, situations and contexts. Critical thinking is a capability. It consists of behaviors like asking questions, thinking slowly and assessing one’s thinking. It entails certain personality characteristics, such as being skeptical and comfortable with ambiguity. One could think critically about scientific data or when dialoging with a colleague or when deciding where to go for dinner.

Capabilities come in handy across situations. They are foundational and allow you to adapt to changing circumstances and a continuous flow of information. They enhance information gathering, decision-making, and problem-solving. They’re a kind of all-purpose superpower. 

What Is a Skill?

On the other hand, a skill is a set of actions executed sequentially to achieve a defined outcome in a narrow set of conditions. Cutting vegetables with a knife is a skill. To execute this skill, you would: hold the knife safely, stabilize the item on a surface, and slice the item with the knife. You would carry out these steps in order, to make a whole into parts, and could apply this to tomatoes, carrots, basil or any vegetable of your choice.

Skills come in handy when the conditions don’t change much.

But if too many changes occur, the skill loses its value. Imagine for a second that “vegetable” is replaced with “tree,” and “knife” is replaced with “chainsaw.” Are the sets of actions for cutting a tree with a chainsaw the same as cutting vegetables with knife?

Most of would say no, unless you don’t mind losing some fingers.

Why Do Capabilities Matter Now?

This is exactly why capabilities matter in a constantly changing, complex world with endless amounts of information. Skills typically apply to a narrow set of conditions, but once the conditions change enough: poof, the skill no longer “transfers,” to use the learning science term. Could someone who cuts vegetables with a knife also cut fruit or meat? Sure. What about paper or rope? Hmmm, maybe. But expand to a tree trunk and a chainsaw and you have crossed a line. A new skill is needed. More training to be conducted. More time out of the field.

A capability, on the other hand—such as using a cutting implement safely—can come in handy whether it’s a tomato, rope or a tree. Capabilities flex further. They go farther.

How do Capabilities Impact the Business?

Professionals in the life science industry need to evolve, and capabilities provide that power.

New therapeutic areas and business models—not to mention the pandemic—have created tumult in the industry. New innovations, new types of work and new ways of engaging with customers require new ways of thinking.

Learning capabilities may not seem as urgent as learning skills, but it’s a forward-looking exercise that in the long run pays off. Capabilities future-proofs a business. Oh, and they supercharge skills, too.

Where Do I Start?

The World Economic Forum recently found that “critical thinking and analysis” was one of the most in-demand emerging capabilities across countries and industries. Critical thinking—the ability to test the validity of conclusions—is a broad capability.

It consists of five key behaviors: thinking slowly, asking questions, gathering evidence, checking assumptions, and assessing the thinking process itself. You can see how critical thinking would come in handy no matter the specific task or ability. It can even help you identify what task to undertake and what specific skill to deploy.

The business world will continue to change—likely at an ever-increasing rate. So, focus on improving both the narrow skills that solve the problem in front of you and also the capabilities that will carry over to the next one.

Learn about Salience Learning’s Critical Thinking Academy

Do you work for a small affiliate of a large biopharmaceutical organization or perhaps a small startup that’s eager to hit the ground running? Are you looking to provide development opportunities that allow your team members to grow professionally and gain new experiences?

If you answered yes to both of these questions then, welcome.

In today’s dynamic environment, it’s no secret that more organizations, big and small, are investing in Learning and Development (L&D). From employee satisfaction and retention to protecting your bottom line and withstanding the tumultuous nature of business, investing in effective L&D programs is shown to prepare organizations to succeed in the future. Consider these figures:

• Nine out of 10 millennials rate professional or career growth and development opportunities as a major consideration in job satisfaction.[1]
• Organizations that have made a strategic investment in employee development report 11% greater profitability and are twice as likely to retain their employees.[2]
• Technological advancements are shortening the shelf life of employee skills; a typical business competency now lasts about five years.[3]

To compete, organizations need to quickly adapt to new business realities by empowering their people to build new skills before they need them. Investing in L&D is no longer a nice-to-have but an economic imperative.

However, small businesses may not have the resources or budget of larger competitors for L&D activities. Yet, to grow and expand their business in a world of continuous change and disruption, L&D programs are needed to upskill, reskill and build capacity for employees to navigate the ever-changing marketplace.

But how do you create an effective L&D program for your small business? Where do you start? Here are a few practical steps to help you get started establishing an L&D program:

1. Clarify the business’s goals: Effective learning programs align to the business’s goals. Collaborate with cross-functional business leaders to understand their goals and define the behaviors individuals and teams should start, stop, and continue to achieve those goals. Establishing a strategic partnership with the business at the onset of your program will secure L&D’s role at the table and be seen as a value-add.
2. Conduct a needs analysis: Once you have identified the business’s need and key behaviors, assess the current state and identify opportunities for L&D. This can be accomplished through stakeholder interviews, simple observation, or employee surveys.
3. Develop a set of capabilities: As the marketplace evolves and the rate of demand for new skills is faster than ever, the workforce is pressured to reskill and adapt. The needs for transferrable knowledge and skills, adaptability, and enduring capabilities are critical.Capabilities are defined as a collection of knowledge and skills that an individual applies across various situations. Using the L&D opportunities identified from the needs analysis, identify transferable knowledge and skills that can be organized into overarching capabilities. These capabilities will enable your workforce to endure evolving conditions through application of transferable knowledge and skills to new domains and contexts.
4. Draft a plan: Since resources are often limited, the key for small businesses is to use them as effectively as possible. First, develop a plan that articulates focus areas and goals. Then, identify what resources you currently have and identify the gaps. A thoughtful plan can also help gain buy-in from stakeholders and can be used to communicate what resources are needed and when.
5. Exercise change management: Inciting behavior change is difficult, but a structured approach to change can make it easier and have a far-reaching impact on the organization. That said, implementing and communicating change is more than a simple email. Gain leadership endorsement and identify opportunities for buy-in from the workforce; change agents are your greatest champions. Set success criteria, keep articulating your plans and provide continuous support through reference materials, coaching, and training opportunities. The development of new learnings is only as powerful as change adoption.

We recognize that these efforts require an investment that an individual or small team may not be able to implement alone. In these situations, quick wins or low-investment, high-impact initiatives can still be attained with some help.

In these cases, we suggest taking the following approach to help you deliver impactful learning:

1. Refresh, reuse, repurpose: Often, help is closer than we think. Invest time to investigate what resources are currently available in your organization. Once materials are identified, assess the gaps and focus on curating new content as needed. This process enables you to utilize existing training and resources to deploy more relevant learning faster.
2. Join an industry group: Great ideas are only a click away. Joining online industry groups allow you to stay informed on the latest insights, find and reuse publicly available resources and develop your skills by learning from communities of practice and other leading professionals.
3. Invest in yourself as an L&D professional: In smaller organizations, L&D teams often play multiple roles––content developer, project manager and facilitator––while also balancing high workloads and competing business priorities. Professionals that invest in their development can become more effective in their roles and gain the confidence they need to maximize their value proposition. Programs like Salience Learning’s Trainer Academy aim to help L&D professions build skills to efficiently design, develop and deliver impactful training that empowers teams to learn new skills in fresh and engaging ways.

Regardless of what stage your organization is in, establishing an effective L&D program will foster growth not only in your workforce but your business as a whole. We encourage you to assess what stage your L&D program may be in and dig deeper to explore the learning gaps or needs of your organization. These initial steps will get you started on your approach to an L&D program that gives you, your employees and your organization the desired results.

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[1] Rigoni, B., & Nelson, B. (2020, October 20). For millennials, is job-hopping inevitable? Gallup.

[2] Ratanjee, V. (2021, March 1). 4 ways to continue employee development when budgets are cut. Gallup.

[3] World Economic Forum. (n.d.). Skills stability. The Future of Jobs Report.

By Karen Foster and Krista Gerhard

These days, you probably hear a lot about critical thinking and how the world needs more of it. It’s true.  Critical thinking skills are in great demand, but they are, on average, not really where they need to be. So, on March 17, we’ll be conducting a virtual session with the Philadelphia chapter of the Healthcare Businesswomen’s Association (HBA): Using critical thinking to improve strategies and drive performance. We hope you’ll invest an hour and join us for the session. Our goals are to help you boost your own critical thinking skills and to provide some guidance on how to boost the skills of others.

Why are Critical Thinking Skills Important?

Critical thinking skills are growing increasingly important across a wide range of industries. However, the demand for them is especially great in biopharmaceuticals and healthcare. This is because of our industry’s high level of complexity, rapid advancement and the sheer amount of data that gets generated.

Overall, there are three primary reasons that strong critical thinking skills are needed now more than ever:

1. Cognitive overload
2. High-volume, high-speed decision-making
3. Human cognitive biases

Cognitive overload is a very real issue for both field- and office-based personnel in life science companies. The working environment involves sophisticated customer groups, substantial and ever-changing regulations, rapid market development, complex science and complicated business models. There is a lot of information to process on any given day. It can be a challenge to keep up with all of it and separate the useful stuff from the noise. Critical thinking is like a lifeboat that keeps us from drowning in a sea of information.

In our industry, we don’t just process information for the sake of processing information. We’re expected to do something with it. Life science professionals have to make a lot of decisions, often under serious time constraints. We need strong critical thinking skills to derive insights from information and make good decisions. 

Human cognitive biases also come into play. These biases, such as confirmation bias, overconfidence bias and “the curse of knowledge” can help us in some ways, acting as shortcuts to help us more quickly process information and make decisions. However, they can also hurt us, and we need to be aware of them. In times of cognitive overload, we tend to more easily fall prey to them, which can negatively affect decision-making. Critical thinking is the antidote to cognitive biases.

When it comes to developing critical thinking skills, it’s important to do so within the domain. In our industry, with all of its complexities, it’s much better to build critical thinking skills by leveraging real-world information from the domain, rather than simply learning critical thinking theory in a general sense.

What the Session Will Cover

As we mentioned above, the goals of our upcoming session are to help you boost your own critical thinking skills—within the healthcare domain—and to help you become a more effective “critical thinking coach” for others.  The session will cover these key things:

1. What is Critical Thinking? —We’ll define “critical thinking” so everyone will have a common understanding of what that term really means.
2. Why Critical Thinking Is Important—We’ll expand on what we’ve written here.
3. Critical Thinking Behaviors—There are clear behaviors and processes that people use when they engage in critical thinking. We’ll outline what those are and even dive into the “language” of critical thinking.
4. Strengthening Critical Thinking—Finally, we will share some exercises, tips and techniques that you can use to develop and strengthen critical thinking skills.

Be sure to join us online on Wednesday, March 17 at 12:00 noon EST. You can register here.

We hope to (virtually) see you then! 

Any field of expertise is bound to have its fair share of buzzwords—those terms or phrases that become highly fashionable for some period of time before fading away.  Inevitably, they get replaced by newer buzzwords and the cycle never seems to end.  Learning and Development is no exception.  In fact, our field might be better than most at coming up with new buzzwords!

We could write an entire book on L&D-related buzzwords, but our goal here is considerably less ambitious than that.  Instead, we’d like to focus on a few terms that relate to learning technology, with an eye towards sorting out how those terms have changed over the years.  Hopefully, we’ll clear up some confusion in the process.

From e-learning’s humble beginning…

In general, e-learning is a term typically used to refer to learning that is enabled by electronic technologies.  If you rewind a quarter of a century, back to the mid-1990s, the term e-learning was coined to describe learning that involved a computer in any form.  Back then, it was the height of the dot-com boom, and people were tacking “e” onto everything: e-mail, e-commerce, e-research, E-Trade, e-tailing, e-filing, and so on.  It basically referred to the electronic version of to whatever the “e” was added.

It was the same with e-learning.  Initially, the term referred to any form of electronically-enabled learning, which might include computer-based offline resources (e.g. CD-ROM-based programs) or online learning.  For many years, e-learning as a term retained its catch-all status even as the “e” field branched out into increasingly specialized approaches. 

Today, the term e-learning can be polarizing.  It can be a bit of a turn-off for some, because it hearkens back to experiences that were just glorified slide presentations that people clicked through with a quiz at the end (not the most effective way to facilitate learning).  For others, it generates enthusiasm and promotes effective learning practices. It is a skillset that is promoted and in high-demand: the e-learning designer and developer.  

Ultimately, e-learning is still a relevant and popular term that is intended to broadly describe both synchronous and asynchronous learning enabled by technology.  Its most popular use is to describe self-paced learning that is formalized and often delivered through a learning system such as an LMS. 

A collection of “specialized” buzzwords

Now, a broader collection of specialized buzzwords are available to help us distinguish between different forms of…well…e-learning.  And that has caused some confusion, so we’ll attempt to clear up some of that.

Digital Learning

Digital Learning is sort of like today’s e-learning.  It’s a broad term that refers to various forms of learning where the delivery is facilitated via digital technologies and mediums. Because of the broad nature of this term it is often positioned as a learning strategy. It can refer to learning delivered via a web browser, e-mail, a learning management system, or even offline digital media.  That learning can be self-directed, but it doesn’t have to be.

Virtual Learning

Many people use “virtual learning” to refer to any form of online learning, where the internet is required.  However, these days, its definition has morphed a bit, primarily referring to live, synchronous learning approaches, such as live webinars, virtual instructor-led training (VILT), or other forms of synchronous learning that’s enabled by online technologies (whether instructor-led or not).  It’s fair to say that all virtual learning is digital, but not all digital learning is virtual.  Confused?

Platform-Based Learning

Platform-Based Learning refers to any form of digital learning that must be accessed via some type of portal, LMS, or some other system that integrates various services like data analytics and assignment management.  It’s not one you often hear, but when you do it is usually meant to call attention to the system functionality nuances and services that differentiate the experience.   You might hear people refer to a learning curriculum or program as a “learning platform.”  That’s not a correct usage of the term, as the “platform” is the digital system that hosts the learning experiences and the portal through which they can be accessed.  The curriculum is delivered through the platform.  In the end, this term is a nuanced way to talk about digital and virtual learning experiences.

Where do we go from here?

Most assuredly, digital learning technologies will continue to expand and proliferate.  As they do, more buzzwords will be developed to describe them. 

However, other buzzwords not related to technology will also continue to blossom in the field of L&D.  Just think about synchronous and asynchronous learning.  A few years ago, nobody outside of specialized L&D circles used those terms.  And even then, they didn’t use them much.  Now, everybody is using those terms…a lot.  Thanks to COVID-19, schoolkids all over the country know the difference between synchronous and asynchronous learning, as their schools now routinely use those terms to describe their pandemic-altered approaches to education.

In future articles, we’ll tackle other buzzwords and digital learning nuances that are emerging and explore them with you.

It’s no secret that the life sciences industry is getting more complex each day: Customer and stakeholder groups are becoming increasingly sophisticated, evidence requirements are getting more stringent and the need to engage more effectively with key stakeholder groups is paramount.

This growing complexity is driving an important phenomenon: The rise of Medical Affairs as a highly strategic pillar for biopharma companies, alongside Clinical Development and Commercial & Market Access.  McKinsey & Co., in their recent report, A vision for Medical Affairs in 2025, documents this trend that many of us have seen with our own eyes over the past few years.

There is a challenge, however: As Medical Affairs gains in prominence and strategic importance, the capabilities that medical affairs professionals must possess are compounded.  It used to be that strong scientific acumen was the key qualification.  However, as needs in medical affairs have changed, so have the job requirements.  Now, medical affairs professionals need to be highly strategic, think critically, have excellent communications skills and possess strong business acumen to be successful in this evolving environment.

Excellent training is needed to ensure these professionals are prepared for the tasks at hand.  Medical affairs teams are aware of this need, but they’re confronted with a challenge:  The traditional approaches to medical affairs training — and the resources available for it — have not advanced as rapidly as the job requirements.  Here we explore the challenge and what can be done to help.

Read the full article here.

There are a lot of top 10 lists out there.  Some are just for fun and some are useful.

Consider the list created by the World Economic Forum in its 2022 Skills Outlook.  That list identifies the top 10 capabilities employers are looking for in their team members and includes skills like critical thinking, complex problem-solving, technology design and programming, emotional intelligence, systems analysis and evaluation and others.  Unfortunately, most working professionals have never learned these skills.

To be successful in today’s work environment, professionals must be able to learn and continue learning as things evolve.  This is especially true in the complex biopharma industry.

But there’s a challenge: Learning is a skill all by itself.  And for many of us, it’s not a skill that is very well developed.  This has implications for learning and development (L&D) teams tasked with helping develop team members and begs the question, “Does L&D have an opportunity to boost outcomes for all by actually training learners how to learn?”

We think the answer is yes.  Let’s explore why and how.

Read the full article from LTEN here.

Speaker programs are a common tactic of most biopharma companies’ peer-to-peer education efforts.  The Office of Inspector General (OIG) in the US Department of Health and Human Services refers to speaker programs as marketing “presentations” or “speeches” that pose, “fraud and abuse risks,” for which the OIG is, “skeptical about their educational value.”  As a recent Fraud Alert indicates, OIG is ramping up its scrutiny of these programs.  This article shares several steps biopharma companies can take to demonstrate that their peer-to-peer programs do, in fact, prioritize education, are “conducive to learning,” and help improve patient care.

Why the increased scrutiny?

The OIG’s core concern is that biopharma peer-to-peer programs are primarily marketing tools to drive prescriptions rather than educational programs that can enhance patient care.  They also cite a range of characteristics that can indicate fraudulent programs, such as:

• Remuneration for speakers that’s tied to meeting targets for a certain number of prescriptions written
• Events held in venues that are not conducive to educational presentations (such as wineries, sports stadiums, golf clubs, fishing trips, etc.)
• Events at high-end restaurants with expensive meals and alcohol served
• Attendance at events by people with no legitimate business reason for being there (e.g., spouses and friends of physicians)
• Programs that present no new data or “repeat” programs that the same physicians attend multiple times

Most biopharma companies do not engage in peer-to-peer programs with these characteristics.  In fact, most companies have established in-depth internal controls and hired individuals, if not teams, dedicated to ensuring that peer-to-peer programs are deployed in accordance with the OIG and other regulatory agencies’ guidelines (for an example, see Pfizer’s White Guide here).  Unfortunately, that compliance can be overshadowed when a few “bad” actors skirt the rules, thus drawing the attention—and criticism—of the OIG. 

Nevertheless, OIG is skeptical about the educational value of such programs in general.  Our intent as a learning company is not to focus on the compliance and the legality of peer-to-peer programs, but the true intent of what we all hope to achieve with them: education.  Below, we look at steps pharma companies can take to demonstrate the educational benefits of programs that leverage adult learning principles and cognitive science.

What to do about it?

First, following all applicable regulations is clearly a must.  Beyond that, leveraging adult learning principles and employing active learning activities establishes educational value and enhances learning.

Of course, that starts with delivering new and relevant information to the health care providers (HCPs) in attendance, not just key marketing messages.  But, what about how that information is delivered?  That’s where you can add some significant value.

The traditional format for peer-to-peer programs involves little more than didactic slide presentations for upwards of an hour or longer.  In that format, it’s challenging for anyone to retain—and in the future recall and apply—even the most interesting information.

In recent years, medical and healthcare education curricula have been moving away from didactic methods and proactively toward active learning.  A good overview of active learning and its growing use in medical education can be found here.

Incorporating active learning into your peer-to-peer programs improves retention and recall and delivers educational value to the HCPs by establishing social/experiential learning opportunities that far exceed reading articles online or processing alternative sources where HCPs might, “gather information..[for the] treatment of patients.”

For example, peer-to-peer programs could incorporate:

1. Patient Clinical Scenarios – HCPs are asked to think through a series of patient case scenarios and discuss how they might vary their treatment decision-making based on the factors specific to each case.
2. Peer-to-Peer Dialog – HCPs engage in discussions around an issue or challenge relevant to the disease or its treatment process to share their best practices, outline potential solutions or draw conclusions.
3. Critical Thinking Exercises –Rather than passively receiving information, HCPs review the relevant clinical data and then formulate questions, conclusions, or concerns that could then be discussed in open forum.

These are just a few examples.  The possibilities are only limited by the creativity and expertise of the individuals you have partnered with to design and develop your peer-to-peer program and materials.  However, the right program design is only one link in the chain.  The two additional links are how it’s facilitated and setting attendees’ expectations.

What is necessary for success?

Previously, the individual who delivered these programs was a “speaker” and was accustomed to presenting a didactic presentation.  As a result, these same individuals may not be 100% comfortable or proficient shifting to an approach that is less “presentation” or “speech” and more learning facilitation. As such, empowering facilitators with their own opportunity to learn and practice facilitation techniques only further reinforces that peer-to-peer programs will have educational value and be “conducive to learning.”

There is yet another key link in the chain: the learners. Those who attend peer-to-peer programs need to come with the mindset that these programs are more akin to continuing education than a dinner out.  We recommend that learners receive communications and even pre-thinking exercises before they arrive to see these experiences as learning-focused and providing educational value.

If peer-to-peer programs empower facilitators and learners while employing adult learning principles and active learning techniques, then the results will be positive in all sorts of ways.  By making programs about the educational experience, we improve our ability to have participating HCPs see the company and its program as a valuable resource.  In addition, patient care will improve, as HCPs use what they’ve learned in their day-to-day clinical practice.

Salience Learning has already helped other biopharma companies ensure their peer-to-peer programs bring educational value and are, “conducive to learning.” Contact us for more information on how we can do the same for you.

In your career, you’ve probably delivered or sat through dozens, maybe even hundreds, of presentations; the vast majority of which have probably faded into the deepest recesses of your memory.

But did they all?

Chances are a few of have stuck with you.  Take a minute to reflect and identify those that were truly memorable.

Have you got a few? 

Most likely, the ones that stuck with you have done so for a reason: they were either really great…or really bad.

Recently, I sat through a presentation that, unfortunately, will stick in my memory for being not so great.  Why? Well, because throughout the 45-minutes the presenter often resorted to one of the worst things a presenter can do: read content from the slide out loud, word-for-word to the audience. 

As someone who has presented in front of audiences from 5 to 500, I understand why a presenter might do this.  The pressure of an audience, one’s undying passion for the content or a lack of preparation can lead us all to use this tactic―myself included.  In addition, presenters rationalize that reading the text on a slide will help audiences, “really get it,” and, “be excited!” Unfortunately, it is just the opposite. In fact, there are several valid reasons why reading content from slides is really, really bad. And in some cases, those reasons are backed by scientific research.

Let’s take a look.

It’s boring.

For one thing, it bores our audiences. Why? Here is the science behind it.

In most cases, when you project a slide on a screen, it will have text written on it in the form of key messages or bullet points.  Research has shown that audience members read those messages on their own, without prompting.  If it’s in their first language, they actually can’t help but to read it.¹  It’s automatic.  And, they read it in a matter of seconds.

The average reading speed of adults in their first language is about 200 words per minute.^2,3

Top executives and those who love to read can double or exceed that to 400 ̶ 500 words per minute.⁴

Let’s assume a slide has about 40 words on it in your audience’s first language⁵ (33 is the recommended maximum number of words per slide, however, most go far beyond that).  You just advanced from the prior slide and took 10 seconds to set-up the current slide.  By the time you get around to the reading the text out loud on the current slide, audience members are in one of two possible situations. 

It can harm understanding and retention.

In one situation, the fastest reading audience members finished reading your slide over five seconds ago! And in their minds, they are already thinking, “so what?”  If you resort to reading the same material to them, they droop and wilt from boredom, silently screaming in their heads, “I already know this!  Tell me something new!”

In the second case, other audience members are still silently reading the slide content in their heads at the same time you start reading the content on the slide out loud. This creates an even worse situation than boredom―confusion. 

Why? Well imagine listening to your favorite song using earbuds. However, in the right earbud, the song is broadcast at ½ speed and on a five second delay versus the left. Painful, right? It’s the same in the second case and again, it comes down to words per minute. 

Presenters are generally coached to speak at about 100 words per minute.⁶ Average audience members are reading at 200 words per minute.  So, the average audience member is simultaneously receiving the same information in two different ways at two different speeds; visually by reading at 200 words per minute and auditorily by listening to you at 100 words per minute.

The brain struggles at effectively processing information in this way⁷.  So, when the presenter reads out loud content on the slide, he or she is not reinforcing what’s on the slide, they’re actually interfering with it. From the audience members’ standpoint, it all just becomes noise.  Overall understanding and retention are reduced.

It’s disrespectful.

This may sound a little harsh, but parroting slide content out loud to an audience is a bit disrespectful.  In a way, it communicates to the audience members that they cannot read the content for themselves. 

No presenter wants to bore their audience while disrespecting them, making the information harder to comprehend and reducing their own credibility! Whew! That’s not exactly a recipe for success.

Don’t worry, there’s hope!

So, I’d like to offer some useful tips that have worked for me.  Anyone who delivers presentations can use these tips to be more effective and have more engaged audiences.

1. Don’t be afraid of a little silence. When you put a slide on the screen, it’s OK to be silent for a few moments so the audience can read it (and they will).  Give them a little time to read and absorb the key messages on the slide before you start talking.
2. When you speak, supplement what’s on the slides. When you do start talking, say things that expand upon the information on the slides.  The audience has already read the key messages, so now you can offer examples to illustrate key points; tell an anecdote to drive home a particular message; offer additional details regarding a specific bullet point.  The words you say should explain, elaborate, illustrate or otherwise reinforce what you’ve captured on the slide.
3. OK, sometimes you can read what’s on a slide. Occasionally, it makes sense to read out loud exactly what’s on a slide.  For example, if you really want to emphasize a specific point, you can give the audience time to read it on their own…and then read it out loud slowly.  This avoids the “noise” issue mentioned above while effectively emphasizing the point.  In other cases, you may have to read certain points out loud verbatim due to regulatory requirements.  This can be the case in some compliance-oriented training sessions.  In those cases, remember to give the audience a moment to read it first, and then you can read it aloud for emphasis.

You may also have tips or suggestions regarding this topic.  If so, I’d love to see them in the comments.  Until next time, here’s to delivering only positively memorable presentations.

Notes:

1. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2805254/#R43
2. https://iovs.arvojournals.org/article.aspx?articleid=2166061
3. https://psyarxiv.com/xynwg/
4. https://www.forbes.com/sites/brettnelson/2012/06/04/do-you-read-fast-enough-to-be-successful/#7cc4093f462e
5. https://www.virtualsalt.com/powerpoint.htm#:~:text=The%20rule%20of%204%20by,bunch%20of%20bookworms%20(screenworms%3F)
6. https://virtualspeech.com/blog/average-speaking-rate-words-per-minute
7. Mayer, Richard E. “Cognitive theory of multimedia learning.” The Cambridge handbook of multimedia learning (2005): 600-601.

Over the past couple of months, a lot has been written in the Learning and Development (L&D) world about the COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on learning design.  We’ve all read—or written or recorded—about how L&D teams are transitioning learning programs from live in-person formats to virtual formats and the challenges that brings.  Today, I want to go a bit deeper and address this question:  How can enhancing metacognitive skills boost learning in a virtual environment?

What is metacognition?

Metacognition is most simply defined as, “thinking about thinking” (Flavell, 1979). One is being metacognitive when questions such as, “Why is it I have such a hard time remembering names?” or “How come this email isn’t making sense?” or “What assumptions am I making in this decision?” are either said out-loud, or more likely, echo within the confines of our heads. (More on that in a moment)

Going a little deeper, metacognition is often divided into two distinct components:  a knowledge component and a monitoring and control component (Fernandez-Duque, Baird, & Posner, 2000). Different researchers may use varying terms, but the concepts are basically consistent. 

The knowledge component relates to one’s knowledge about how humans think and the processes the brain executes to support thinking.  These include memory, attention, perception and decision making, to name a few (Pintrich, 2002). One would have high metacognitive knowledge if they knew the rule of 5 +/- 2, that efficient multitasking is an oxymoron and that the black/blue dress internet sensation is due to color constancy, which is when our brain attempts to interpret colors based on past experiences and lighting effects.

The monitoring and control component refers to the self-reflective, higher-order cognitive actions taken to regulate ongoing cognitive processes (not only thinking about thinking, but actively trying to think more effectively) (Roebers, 2017).  Think of this like the so-what component.  Now that you know the dress can literally be seen differently due to the brain’s visual perception pathways, what steps do you take to assess and evaluate information you receive via visual perception?

Someone is engaged in monitoring and controlling their metacognition when, knowing the rule of 5 +/- 2, they chunk a list of 15 statistics and facts into three to four categories to increase the accuracy of recalling them.  Other examples of monitoring and controlling metacognition could include when:

• Knowing the myth of multitasking, a person logs off of email when embarking on completing a demanding thinking task
• Knowing the variability of visual perception, a person recognizes that a colleague might really perceive a customer’s intentions as benign while they saw them as dismissive.

How metacognition relates to virtual learning environments

Research supports that learners with strong metacognitive knowledge, monitoring and control skills will learn better than one whose skills are more limited (Ford, Weissbein, Smith, Gulluy, & Salas, 1998).  This holds true for in-person and virtual learning environments.  However, those skills become even more critical with virtual formats.

With virtual learning formats, learners are more often at home, and the home environment typically has more distractions with which learners must contend. This pertains to both adults learning and children homeschooling.  In addition, the very nature of virtual learning (lack of cues, increased cognitive load, etc.) and the added stress of the current times can conspire to further challenge the attention of even superheroes, thus limiting learning’s impact.

All of this makes learning harder for the learners, unless they empower their metacognitive skills. By doing so, they must be more self-regulated and employ greater metacognitive skills to truly absorb new information and be able to use it.  The problem is, those skills are often underdeveloped for most learners.

To help students get the most from any training, L&D needs to help them boost their skills in self-regulated learning and metacognition.  For example, research has shown that, “when metacognition is effectively taught in schools then there is a very positive effect on pupil outcomes.” ^{(Perry, Lundie, & Golder, 2019)}

It stands to reason that teaching metacognition will help adult learners, as well.  But how to do that?  Should we teach learners metacognitive theory by itself and then hope for the best?  Or is there a better way?  Before reading on, think about that question for a moment and see if you can think of a better way.

Boosting skills in self-regulation and metacognition

While there is some utility in teaching learners about metacognition as a “stand-alone” subject, that’s not the preferred way.  Instead, the priority should be on teaching metacognitive skills in the context of the domain in question, as research has shown that will have the greatest impact on learning (Veenman & Beishuizen, 2004).  In short:  integrate metacognitive training into the core subject matter.

But what does that look like?  How can we encourage learners to think more deeply about how they’re thinking?  Below are a few techniques.

Content Reflection – Ask learners to think about the material they are reviewing and answer a few questions to themselves.  This is most useful in pre-reading or home study situations.  For example, you might ask learners:

• What parts of this material are most difficult for you? 
• What parts are the easiest to grasp?
• What is most familiar to you, or most closely related to things you already know? 

Asking learners to categorize the content and reflect on it gets them to more deeply engage with it.  Plus, it focuses attention on areas that might be more difficult for them.

Self-Monitoring – Have learners set goals for themselves and monitor their own progress.  For an exercise or pre-read packet, for example, you might ask the learner to estimate how long it will take him or her to get through it. Then, ask the learner to set a timer for halfway through.  When the timer goes off, have the learner evaluate their progress.  Are they ahead, on track or behind?  Have them think about why.  If they are behind, have them articulate to themselves why they think they are behind (i.e., What’s been giving them the most difficulty?)

Self-Directed Learning Strategies – Ask the learner to focus on an area or areas of content that are the hardest for them to understand (or those things that are causing them to fall behind).  Then, have the learner outline several strategies he or she could use to boost performance.  Those strategies might include a 15-minute call with the instructor, a quieter learning environment, or any number of others.  Encourage them to articulate a few ideas that might be helpful.

Process Reflection – When asking learners to create a deliverable or complete some type of exercise, have them do “talk-alouds” or self-reflections on the approaches or processes they used.  For example, when creating a SWOT analysis, it might be helpful for a learner to stop and articulate out loud the process he or she used to identify threats or strengths.  Then, ask the learner to answer if it was a good process and why or why not.  Finally, you could encourage them to outline ways to make their process(es) better.

Self-Regulated Retention Strategies –  At key points in self-directed learning, it’s sometimes helpful to ask the learner to pause and think about how they are trying to absorb content.  Have them answer a few questions to themselves such as: 

• What approaches am I using to absorb this content? 
• Given the limitations of short-term memory, what am I doing to overcome my own brain’s barriers to retention?

By compelling the learner to truly think about how they’re learning, you also encourage them to think of different or better ways to overcome barriers and learn more effectively.

What about your ideas?

These ideas mentioned above offer just a few ways L&D professionals can incorporate metacognitive training into their programs to improve results.  And while we are talking about these ideas in the context of virtual training, it’s important to remember that they can apply to all types of training.

What do you think about the ideas listed above?  Which ones would be easiest for you to apply to your own programs?  Which ones would be most difficult to apply?  Do you have other ideas that aren’t reflected above?  I’d love to hear your thoughts…

Works Cited

Fernandez-Duque, D., Baird, J. A., & Posner, M. I. (2000). Executive Attention and Metacognitive Regulation. Consciousness and cognition, 288-307.

Flavell, J. H. (1979). Metacognition and cognitive monitoring: A new area of cognitive–developmental inquiry. American Psychologist, 906-911.

Ford, J., Weissbein, D., Smith, E. M., Gulluy, S. M., & Salas, E. (1998). Relationships of Goal Orientation, Metacognitive Activity, and Practice Strategies with Learning Outcomes and Transfer. Journal of Applied Psychological , 218-233.

Perry, J., Lundie, D., & Golder, G. (2019). Metacognition in schools: What does the literature suggest about the effectiveness of teaching metacognition in schools? Educational Review, 483-500.

Pintrich, P. R. (2002). The Role of Metacognitive Knowledge in Learning, Teaching, and Assesing. Theory into Practice, 219-225.

Roebers, C. (2017). Executive function and metacognition: Towards a unifying framework of cognitive self-regulation. Developmental Review, 31-51.

Veenman, M. V., & Beishuizen, J. (2004). Intellectual and metacognitive skills of novices while studying texts under conditions of text difficulty and time constraint. Learning and Instruction, 621-640.

As this article is being written, many people are adjusting to a newly imposed work-at-home lifestyle, courtesy of the COVID-19 pandemic. This pandemic has been very disruptive to people’s lives and livelihoods all around the world and those of us who work in learning and development (L&D) are no exception.

As an immediate response, L&D teams have been rapidly converting previously planned live instructor-led training (ILT) into remote learning, often in the form of virtual instructor-led training (vILT). They’ve also been looking down the road, trying to figure out what short- and long-term changes to their training plans might be required.

While live and vILT solutions each have their benefits and drawbacks, it’s clear that — for the time being anyway — vILT formats are going to rule the day. So, it pays to make sure those solutions deliver the best results possible.

To do that, we need to understand the limitations of virtual training and follow some best practices to maximize its benefits.

Read the full article here

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