Follow Kirk on TwitterWhat Makes Dando’s Talks Memorable
I base my presentations and seminars on years of experience working with and for successful small and mid-market businesses in a variety of industries. Over the years, I have come across a powerful coaching tool called Accelerated Learning. Dr. Georgi Lozanov of Bulgaria developed the initial concept.
Accelerated Learning is based on the way people naturally learn and not on the unnatural, mechanistic and material intensive methods of learning dominant in the 19th and early 20th centuries.
Major Principles of Accelerated Learning:
- A Positive Learning Environment. People learn best in a positive physical, emotional, and social environment, one that is stimulating and relaxing at the same time.
- Total Learner Involvement. People learn best when they are totally and actively involved, take full responsibility for their own learning, and use all their senses. Learning is not a spectator sport but a participatory one. It is not the passive consumption of presentations and learning material, but the active creation of value on the part of the learner.
- Variety That Appeals to All Learning Styles. People learn best when there is a rich variety of learning options that allows them to use all their senses and exercise their preferred learning style. A properly arranged learning smorgasbord will always yield better results than a one dish at a time meal.
- Collaboration Among Learners. People generally learn best in an environment of collaboration. All good learning in life has a social base. Traditional learning emphasizes competition between isolated individuals. Accelerated Learning emphasizes collaboration among individuals as members of a learning community.
- Learning in Context. People learn best in context. Facts and skills learned in isolation are hard to absorb and quick to evaporate. “I hear and I forget, I see and I remember, I do and I understand.” The best learning comes from doing the work itself in a process of real-world immersion, experience, feedback, reflection, evaluation, and re-immersion.
This approach has proven to be very successful with my clients in transferring the necessary knowledge, skills and attitude to take their leadership and management team to the next level of performance.
At a recent leadership/management training session we conducted for LPR Construction (60 people), a participant stated the people present were not “classroom people.” By this he meant they could not just sit and listen. This group was thrilled with the results.
My presentation process includes:
- Some presentation
- Group interaction
- Role playing
- Games to emphasize key points
- Individual sharing
- When applicable, hands on assignments to implement critical skills during the subsequent month and report back about experiences
My speaking and training techniques, using accelerated learning principles, make the learning process enjoyable, stimulating and interesting, and most importantly, the presentation/training “takes.”
Some of the most potent and most difficult to measure benefits are the “soft” results from my presentations and trainings. These include such things as strengthening the leadership and management team through spending time together, identifying operating inefficiencies and working together to develop winning solutions. Intervention by an experienced CEO and consultant can help plan the necessary changes and coach on how to deliver the power and insight a company’s leadership and management will need to cause breakthrough results and on-going accountability.
This approach to presenting is not theoretical or material intensive. Instead my presentations are hands on and experiential, and a chalked full of real life, everyday examples of problems and more importantly solutions that face the most successful companies in the world who are passionate about growing their company to the next level.
As a young and rapidly growing company with over 800 employees across the state, we relied on Kirk Dando to analyze the unique talents of our upper management, how we worked together, and where we...