Experience in Leadership Training

I was intrigued when I read a recent post wherein they stated that "experiences sometimes even hinder adult learning, in the idea of grappling with cognitive dissonance."

We run into this often. We have a class on leadership during which we ask our trainees to use and talk about their experiences. I wrote some more about this in a positive light. With that response in mind, this response will highlight some of the negatives.



One of the negative outcomes of our asking these trainees to discuss their experiences is that those experiences can have a limiting factor on their ability to absorb, discuss, and adopt new tools and techniques. I think specifically of some of the older, more experienced trainees who have a host of experience and stories to tell. Some of those stories have biased these trainees against some of the tools and techniques that we might introduce. In this case, it goes beyond "cognitive dissonance" but instead is a negative prejudice against the training.



Although I'm overall a proponent of using experiences we do run into these instances and have yet to find a model by which we can easily overcome them. Subjectively speaking, I find that our more inexperienced trainees get more out of the leadership training than the more experienced ones. Finding a way to create a template that allows our more experienced trainees can benefit to the same degree as the less experienced is a constant challenge.