Although I have been training for many years, my formal introduction to leading a training team in the corporate world was as a part of a billing improvement project we called Accurate and Timely Billing (ATB). As a Senior Division Business Analyst with PSC, I delivered a unique training to a wide range of employees at approximately 20 locations nationwide to a total population of about 250 employees, approximately 10% of the total employee base at the time. The intent of the training was to ease the challenges and difficulties the organization was experiencing in billing customers for services. At the time we started the training our days sales outstanding (DSO) or the amount of time it took to bill a customer and receive payment was over 70 days. This is the amount of time on average it took our company to receive payment for work we had performed and already paid our employees for.
Our team started by documenting the entire quote-to-bill process and designed a training that would incorporate every employee who touched the process either directly or indirectly. To deliver the training we brought together employees from the Sales Department, Account Managers, Time-Keepers, Location's and Operation's Managers, and Billers and Billing Managers from each branch and within each region. Commonly each functional group only trained within their groups, this was the first time the organization had supported cross-functional training of this type.
The training would not have been successful without a class that I attended on how to facilitate. Up to that point, most of the training I had provided both with PSC or with other companies had included primarily hands-on training, drilling, experiential learning, and reviews of standard operating procedures via PowerPoint in a lecturer to audience format. This is indicative of Pratt's transmission perspective in many ways (Pratt, 2016). The audience listened passively while I taught each module and pointed out aspects of the training and asked them to follow along. Prior to the launch of ATB my team and I were encouraged to take a class on facilitation by a training organization. It was this class that provided a transformative learning experience.
The Transformative Learning Theory, introduced by Jack Mesirow is the process of changing and self-reflection and how the changer reacts to and thinks about his beliefs, experiences, and actions. "Transformative learning is essentially a learning process of making meaning of one's experience" (Merriam & Bierema, 2017, p. 84) or as Apte writes "transformative learning involves change in the frames of reference that we use to make sense in our lives" (2009, p. 170). The first in the ten phases that provide the framework for a transformative learning experience is a disorienting dilemma. In the case of my ATB facilitation project, the disorienting dilemma that led to a transformative experience was the realization of the change in my position from primary trainer to training group leader. This was the first project I had led of this scale with a team of instructors, and I was seen as the team leader, not because of my familiarity with the subject matter, nor with my expertise in any of the four different phases of the process. Instead, I became the project leader as I was the one person in the team who was being held accountable for the overall success and because all of the other trainers on the team had specific expertise within only one of the four phases we were training.
The disorienting dilemma came about in that I had always relied on the transmission perceptive as the primary belief in training delivery if only because no other perceptive seemed scalable, as easy to convey large amounts of information to large classes, and could breakdown the material quickly and easily into several parts. Secondarily, I had not been introduced nor was I aware of other forms of training styles, beliefs, or perceptions, so chose this style as it was what had been taught to me in previous roles. Prior to ATB, I had been a software and application trainer. "Click here, now click here and enter the amount of your potential sale, now click save." this lecture and drill style of training with a PowerPoint is the essence of a transmission perspective. (Pratt, 1998, pp. 234-235). As referenced by Pratt and Collins in The Teaching Perspective Inventory (TPI), most of what I trained included a "relatively well-defined and stable body of knowledge" (2000, p. 3). In all of these previous training projects, I had worked alone and provided the information to a class in a succinct, no-nonsense manner. I was the master of that information and they were the students there to learn exactly what to do. Additionally, there were no other instructors, nor were there other departments to consider.
With ATB, I was a part of a team, I was the leader of a team of instructors, the trainees were from several different departments, and I did not know the information as well as I had in previous training events. Secondly, the information we were providing did not only focus on process and procedure but went beyond that dimension to include how an individual's actions would affect others in the process, an awareness that the process was built of many individuals all acting together. As a team of instructors, we were forced to provide some of our information using the developmental perspective, where we asked the trainees to understand how the information pertained to them and how the content mattered in their world. This led directly to a disorienting dilemma.
As Mezirow states, "A third way we learn is to transform our point of view. We can have an experience in another culture that results in our critically reflecting on our misconceptions of this particular group. The result may be a change in point of view toward the group involved. As a result, we may become more tolerant or more accepting of members of that group" (Mezirow, 1997, p 7). By working with SME's from sales, operations, billing, finance, and accounting, and by having to become the leader of our training team I was forcing myself to change my point of view about these departments and their importance in the process as well as change my perception and beliefs on training and teaching.
Looking at the other nine of the 10 phases of Mezirow's transformational Learning, I see where each of the phases became present either immediately or overtime in our ATB training, among the more distinct would be the "critical assessment of epistemic, sociocultural, or psychic assumptions" (Harbecke, 2012) and the final step of "reintegrating the new perspective into one's life" (Merriam p. 85). In terms of the assessment phase, this became evident as our facilitation trainers showed the ATB trainers tips and tricks to use that would lead our classes to understand the learning objectives themselves without our having to blatantly tell them the answers. "To promote discovery learning, the educator often reframes learner questions in terms of the learner’s current level of understanding. Learning contracts, group projects, role play, case studies, and simulations are classroom methods associated with a transformative education. The key idea is to help the learners actively engage the concepts presented in the context of their own lives and collectively critically assess the justification of new knowledge" (Mezirow, 1997, p10). Not only were we trained to use tools to help develop the class's thoughts and perceptions, but we role-played so that we as instructors experienced the same epiphanies regarding the billing process we were hoping to foster in our classes. As trainers, we used these tools and techniques when delivering the training across all of our branches throughout the following months.
The last phase, using the new perspective in my life, is the clearest to see in that not only did we use the tools and techniques of training we learned in the facilitation training in our own facilitation of the ATB course, but I have continued to use these tools and techniques throughout my training ever since. Our team learned from this experience that breaking down internal roles and providing training across different departments not only sped up the delivery of training but would help the trainees understand challenges that others in the process.
The results of this six-month project in blended training was a distinct and immediate drop in the DSO of almost six days. For a company that made one million dollars a day, this meant a savings of almost six million dollars attributed to our work in bringing groups together in a comprehensive training. For the learners, the experience left them with a better understanding and appreciation of the challenges faced by other members of the team who might work up or downstream of their processes. The training would not have been as effective without this blended approach combined with facilitation. The training would also not have been as potent without the facilitation training that I and the other trainers had to take. It led no just to a transformative experience for us in the short-term, but in the long-term, I have taken the tools and techniques I learned in the training along with me into other areas of my training and teaching career. Helping to develop new perspectives, understanding and acknowledging the learners current and changing positions, utilizing the learner's diverse perspectives to help develop their perceptions and helping learners understand and adopt the change are all a part of Apte's framework for facilitating transformative learning (Apte, 2009) and are among the tools and techniques I have taken from our ATB experience.
Apte, J. (2009). Facilitating Transformative Learning: A Framework for Practice. Australian Journal of Adult Learning, 49(1). https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ864437.pdf
Harbecke, D. (2012). Following Mezirow: A Roadmap Through Transformative Learning. RU Training @ Roosevelt University in Chicago. https://rutraining.org/2012/10/08/following-mezirow-a-roadmap-through-transformative-learning/
Learning Theories. (2020). Transformative Learning Theory (Mezirow). https://www.learning-theories.com/transformative-learning-theory-mezirow.html
Merriam, S. B., & Bierema, L. L. (2014). Adult Learning: Linking Theory and Practice. Jossey-Bass.
Mezirow, J (1997). Transformative Learning: Theory to Practice. New Directions for Adult and Continuing Education, no. 74, Jossey-Bass.
Pratt, D. D. (1998). Five Perspectives on Teaching in Adult and Higher Education. Krieger.
Pratt, Daniel D. & Collins, John B. (2000). The Teaching Perspectives Inventory (TPI). Adult Education Research Conference. https://newprairiepress.org/aerc/2000/papers/68
