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Chapter 1

Preparing an Effective Message

Proper preparation and practice prevent poor performance.

—Robert Pike

Adult learners are different, and teaching adult educators is vastly different from teaching students. At best, adult learners can be interested, inspired, and enthusiastic, and at worst, they can be irked, jaded, and disrespectful. Let’s face it: some educator audiences will try to behave in ways they would never tolerate from their students. They may resist your greatest ideas and be wary of new, untested concepts. Often, this is because they have had experiences in the past that justified such skepticism. However, you have the power to prevent such negative reactions. How your audience responds is related directly to you and the message you are conveying.

This chapter takes an in-depth look into how you can tailor your presentations to be maximally effective in front of an adult audience. It begins by considering the needs of adult learners and introduces questions you can ask during the planning stage of your presentation to ensure you meet these needs. Advice for improving and augmenting your knowledge of the subject matter follows. Finally, this chapter discusses the differences that may exist in your audience members, specifically focusing on four distinct adult audiences, and provides useful ideas for how to present to an audience with diverse learning styles. All these features will help you better engage your audience and distinguish your presentation as different and inspiring.

The Needs of Adult Learners

In most instances, adults want to contribute and have their knowledge honored and respected. There are defining features of virtually all adult learning theories (Dunst & Trivette, 2012; Heflebower, 2018a; Knowles, Holton, & Swanson, 2012; Kolb, 1984; Schön, 1983, 1987). Summarizing what the various authors espouse leads to the following four key components of adult learning.

1. Relevant: Adult learners are task- or problem-centered rather than simply topic-centered. They need to know why your training is important to them: What problem might this solve? How might this make their lives easier? The useful past experiences and insights adult educators possess provide them with knowledge about what is likely to work and what is not. Although adult learners are more readily able to relate new facts to past teaching and learning experiences, clearly connecting relevancy helps them buy into your message (Rall, 2017). If it is not relevant to their needs, they are not interested.

2. Practical: Adult learners consider the immediate usefulness of any new information (Rall, 2017). They are more impatient in the pursuit of learning, and they tend to be intolerant unless they can apply useful connections between your message and their practical problems. Adults bring their own experiences and knowledge into the training; they appreciate having their talents and information recognized and used during a teaching situation. Simply put, adults like learning that provides them with practical activities that build on their prior skills and knowledge.

3. Active: Adults want experiential learning. Adult participants are mature people and prefer to be treated as such. They learn best in a self-governing, participatory, and collaborative environment. They need to be actively involved in determining how and what they learn; they need active rather than passive learning experiences (Rall, 2017). Adults are self-reliant learners, and prefer to work a bit more at their own pace.

4. Positive: Mature learners appreciate appropriate humor and elements of entertainment infused into the learning environment. Adults are more intrinsically motivated than most students; they are enthused by internal incentives and curiosity, rather than external rewards. Adult learners are sometimes fatigued when they attend trainings, so they appreciate any teaching approaches that add interest and a sense of liveliness. Use a variety of methods and audiovisual aids, and try to incorporate a change of pace—anything that makes the learning process easier.

Thinking of these key components while crafting your message will ensure you meet the needs of adult learners. Asking yourself the questions in figure 1.1 can assist in planning your message. These questions should guide your initial planning for each of the four key components of adult learning through an effective message.

Figure 1.1: Planning questions for the four key components of adult learning.

Visit go.SolutionTree.com/leadership for a free reproducible version of this figure.

Using these components and considering the planning questions will assist you in creating a thoughtful message. A great application is to use figure 1.1 (page 7) immediately to plan something you are about to present to an educator audience. Color-code each component on four different-colored sticky notes. During your planning phase, draft responses to the questions on the corresponding colored sticky notes and place them on a large surface, then clump each sticky note around others of the same color. This visual approach helps you start to see how your message will flesh out during a training process as you consider the various needs of adult learners. The purpose is to achieve balance with your ideas. You want to be certain that you have some ideas representing each color of sticky note. This way, you will be thoughtful about your message’s relevancy to your audience, practicality for immediate use, ability to actively engage others, and likelihood of infusing a positive tone. If you find you are missing a color, or you are too heavy in another, adjust accordingly.

Carl J. Dunst and Carol M. Trivette (2012) found that catering to different combinations of adult learning methods resulted in increased adult learner outcomes. First, they found that active learning was an important method of adult learning. They found that when adult learners are more actively involved in the learning process, larger effects about their knowledge, skills, attitudes, and self-efficacy are noted. Think about learning a new instructional strategy—maybe a new academic game to infuse into your training or classroom to increase engagement. When you learn the game by actually experiencing it, you get immediate feedback about what works and what doesn’t. As opposed to simply passively reading about the game, this pattern of new information, practice, and feedback helps you learn the skill incrementally, and this experiential application of learning increases retention.

Time usage is also of the essence. Dunst and Trivette (2009) found that smaller amounts of chunked content increased adult retention, as did training settings that accumulated twenty or more total hours. Recall the academic game analogy. Each time you broke the new skill into its component parts (chunked), then practiced, your brain was creating neural networks for learning that part of the game. Doing these small chunks repeatedly, with settling time for the brain in between, increases the permanence of the skill. When planning the most effective use of training time, think smaller increments interspersed with practice. For instance, you may use a professional development day to introduce an idea and provide time for planning and implementation. Then you can discuss the application of an idea and refine it during regular meeting times, like professional learning communities. Using these smaller time frames to chunk, reiterate, apply, and modify during small-session follow-ups over a sample three- to six-month period of time increases learners’ proficiency and application of the new concepts or skills.

In sum, adult learners approach learning in different ways than younger learners. They are more self-guided in their learning, they require learning to make sense, and they avoid learning activities that are simply about compliance. Because adult learners typically have more life experience than younger learners, when they are confronted with new knowledge or an experience, adult learners construe new meaning based on their life experiences and are more motivated to implement it into practice.

Content Knowledge for Adult Learners

As you plan your message, you will need to know and provide critical components of the information you are sharing. This often involves defining key terms and concepts as well as providing context or relevant background information. Read. Listen. Learn. Explore the topic in depth. You must be the person in the room who has studied the topic the most. It may not mean that you know everything there is to know, but it will be blatantly obvious to the members of your audience if you lack content expertise. They have come to hear you teach them. You’d best know it well.

You might decide to use the age-old six questions: (1) who, (2) what, (3) where, (4) when, (5) why, and (6) how—to begin or guide your content planning. Explain your motivation to engage in a specific topic. Who needs to know? What is the educational innovation? Where will this work? When might you use it? Why is this important? How might you do this? Answering these questions will help you think about the clarity and comprehensiveness of your message. It may also surface the cost–benefit analysis of resources like essential personnel, system readiness, and possible unknowns. Thinking through your message in this manner will also assist in anticipating possible questions from your audience.

Another way to exemplify your content knowledge is to know which experts and resources to credit and be ready to provide them as examples. It helps to not only know others in the field who write about the topic at hand but also offer tools to support the implementation of shared concepts or practices within your message. In other words, you have lived it, and you can provide examples of practice to your audience. Be certain to use virtual professional learning networks to augment your understanding as well. You may use a common Facebook group or Twitter chat by creating or using an existing hashtag that connects others with similar interests. For example, I am part of a presenters Facebook group. It is a closed group to those who are accepted, and the discussion is specific to presenter topics. Consider using direct quotes, pictures, or examples of successful implementation of your idea or topic in other schools or districts for additional relevance.

It is also important to ensure accuracy of the concepts you present. One way to do so is to support the current learning with research, when applicable. Use applied research and empirical evidence for substantiation. For example, you may use anecdotes or real-world observations that answered a question or helped obtain information. An example might be to share pictures or videos of teachers using or explaining the strategy you are teaching. Another way to augment accuracy is to provide real-life examples of research into action. When you can share examples of actual educators from various grade levels implementing your ideas, you strengthen your credibility. Consider personalizing the information to the location and the audience, strengthening concepts with personal or location-specific examples and stories.

Augment your substantial content knowledge with some form of quality message design. Heflebower (2018a) summarizes a training format that helps you think thoughtfully about your topic. This format recommends the following.

• Identify the purpose and outcomes of the presentation clearly and at early stages.

• Develop key ideas early.

• Use and organize appropriate materials to support your message.

• Use meaningful, purposeful, and engaging activities and interactive learning strategies.

• Check for audience understanding and input on a regular basis; provide a means for adults to ask questions in a public or private manner.

• Allow time for application and reflection.

• Provide adequate closure and effective summary.

Applying these suggestions helps you design a learning experience that has a natural flow, and accounts for how adult brains often absorb, sort, and apply information (Brookfield, 2006).

Four Distinct Adult Audiences

Audiences have some similar, basic needs. One is to be respected as adult learners. Adults come with knowledge and experiences that should be drawn on and cultivated. What will you do or say to honor that? Consider touching on what your audience brings to the table early on, during your introduction to the topic. Honoring your audience early pays dividends later. For example, asking groups to total the years of experience represented at their table, then totaling those for an entire amount of experiences represented in the room, is a wonderful way to encourage others to share and realize they have ideas to offer throughout the training.

Although audiences have comparable needs, they also have some distinct differences. Some presenters will consider using one of the many products or processes for ascertaining the differences about how adults learn and consider information. You may have heard of or experienced these yourself. These include, but are not limited to, True Colors (Adamo, 2014), CliftonStrengths (Rath, 2007), Emergenetics (Browning, 2006), and Compass Points (School Reform Initiative, n.d.a).

Although these types of categorizations all have unique characteristics and can jumpstart many great team-building activities, in this book I opt for a detailed construct more specific to training adult learners, modified from Weller and Hermann (1996, 2015). This classification serves as a great planning tool and gives insights that a presenter may often overlook.

Weller and Herrmann (1996), and Herrmann and Herrmann-Nehdi (1996, 2015) identify four types of unique audience members presenters should consider.

1. The first group is logical and methodical. These learners need the facts, the numbers, the research, the data. They require you to answer the question, Why?

2. The second important audience type includes creative and imaginative learners. They appreciate pictures, metaphors, and the big picture. They thrive on knowing how things connect and ways in which to visualize it.

3. The third type includes the more relational and emotional listeners. They appreciate your stories and having a chance to interact with others about the topic.

4. The fourth is the relevant and practical group. Most adults appreciate practicality and relevance, as I mentioned previously; however, some audience members thrive in this area of application, examples, and details.

As you read more about these four distinct audiences (presented in figure 1.2, page 12), consider which bulleted characteristics are most indicative of you, as an adult learner. Interestingly, that is the very type you will often plan for first and amplify naturally when conveying your message. You may notice you have some needs in all areas of the quadrant, yet one type is often most dominant. Pay close attention to the words and phrases that describe that audience type. Plan accordingly. Closely consider the category diagonally from your strength area, as it consists of characteristics more opposite of you. It is the one you are most likely to overlook or even forgo when you are pressed for time. Consequently, paying particular attention to your message so that you address each quadrant helps enhance your message for all types of audience members. It is helpful to ensure that each portion of the quadrant is acknowledged for each major point or chunk of content. In fact, using the planning quadrant depicted in figure 1.2 will augment your preparation (and, later, your delivery) of an effective message.

These variations in audience member characteristics and corresponding suggested phrases will help you in planning an all-inclusive message.

Not only are there various types of learners within an adult audience, but there is also a suggested process—an audience planning cycle—for addressing each of the various learner types throughout a presentation.

1. First, begin with the facts and figures; meet the needs of the logical thinkers. Capturing them early on will help them listen (and even tolerate) later messages and experiences. Once the members of this group know what you are discussing works, they will listen. Yet, do not overdo this, or you will alienate the other audience types. One or two key facts, figures, or charts will likely suffice.

Figure 1.2: Four distinct types of audience members.

Source: Adapted from Weller & Hermann, 1996, 2015.

2. Next, consider the relational and emotional participants. Create your message with the people involved. Who will be affected? Where can you accentuate compassion through a story or a quote? Connect the people to the topic.

3. After that, consider moving toward the creative thinkers. Here is a great place to share a metaphor to model possibilities. Use some creativity by involving the group in a visual depiction.

4. Then, follow with practical examples of others who have tried or experienced the topic firsthand to reach your relevant and practical members.

It is important to note that this is not the only way to approach the group through the lens of audience types. You may find a particular group is primarily composed of only a couple of the quadrant areas. For instance, imagine that you are asked to speak to a group of mathematics teachers. By nature of the discipline they teach, they are more logical and mathematical. This does not mean you should exclude the other areas of the quadrant but rather know thy audience. If you are working with a group of visual and performing arts teachers, you will likely encounter those with more of the visual and creative strengths. If you are uncertain, ask. You might provide a four-question Google survey, containing one question from each area of the quadrant, for the audience to complete prior to your training, to help you understand their strengths and needs. By all means, appeal to the masses first. Yet, if you are new to this idea, using the planning cycle in figure 1.3 may prove beneficial.

Figure 1.3: Audience planning cycle.

As an example of how to use the audience planning cycle, consider the design for a new mini-presentation, titled From Perspiration to Inspiration: A Flash on Fitness, to be given in a forty-five-minute breakout session at a district conference. The presentation will involve quick reminders and strategies within the following four areas: (1) physical, (2) mental, (3) sleep, and (4) nutrition.

The presenter begins by selecting one of the four topics listed—in this case, choosing to begin with physical. He or she then uses the sticky note strategy (see page 8), placing information from each quadrant of adult learners onto a separate sticky note. For example, when considering logical informational items, the presenter adds two notes. The first one reads, “The CDC cited 80 percent of Americans don’t get the recommended 2.5 hours of moderate exercise per week.” The second adds, “Adults should also engage in strengthening exercises twice per week.” These two examples present facts and figures to appeal to the logical learners.

Next, the presenter lists ideas for the relational area. One sticky note reads, “Have you ever tracked your physical fitness in one week?” Others ask, “How many of you have some sort of fitness tracking device on your watch or phone?” and “Everyone go to the week of February 3–10, and look at your schedule. Is there any time to include 2.5 hours of physical activity that week?” Another sticky note indicates that these questions are planned to lead into a physical activity. The idea is to turn on some upbeat music and provide participants with the options of engaging in some physical activity right in the room. The options include marching, walking, jumping jacks, or scissor kicks for one full minute. Afterward, the presenter will ask participants to record their heart rates.

The creative section is the next area of focus. The presenter posts a few sticky notes in this section. One reads, “What if you scheduled your physical fitness like you do a required meeting?” Another idea is, “What if you connected your physical activity to another routine event, like taking a shower or eating breakfast? You don’t complete one without the other.” The presenter plans to provide a story for emphasis and humor at this point—an idea that is listed on another note.

The presenter then considers the practical examples. He or she notes, on a sticky note, a connecting phrase to reach out to this group: “Here’s how this might work …” He or she demonstrates by displaying a picture of a calendar in which “physical activity” is listed. Another sticky note displays the idea of using a device-based activity tracker and noting the weekly summary. Considering an activity for the audience, the presenter notes an opportunity for tablemates to converse about how they find time to infuse physical activity. He or she plans to listen in to the discussions and have a couple of participants share their responses. The presenter notes another idea to teach (or reteach) the group the Fox method for monitoring individual heart rates for maximum benefits (Waehner, 2019). This method helps women and men calculate their maximum heart rate (220 minus age for women; 220.5 minus age for men), as well as their target ideal heart rate (80 percent of the maximum).

Although more details, visuals, and stories will likely be included in the presentation, the presenter has now fleshed out one major portion of his or her presentation in a way that will appeal to each audience member, no matter the learning style.

As a final consideration when planning your message, please don’t poach. When you state another’s idea, give them credit. When you share a quote or an excerpt, ensure it’s carefully cited. Be mindful of taking the intellectual property of a great introduction, a funny story, or a catchy phrase. Always, always give credit to others when due. And try to use your own stories and examples—they will be better received because they are authentic.

Summary

This chapter highlighted the important considerations and needs of adult learners. It detailed some thoughtful planning questions as well as a useful organizational quadrant to help presenters reflect on their meaningfulness and purpose when crafting the message itself. Chapter 2 will help you take your message into the delivery phase.