How We Learn

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Putting an emphasis on contractor training and mindset growth is crucial. But if you aren’t retaining the information yourself, how can you pass it along to the rest of your staff?

Contractor University faculty member Drew Cameron knows that humans retain about less than 30% of what they read, see or hear. In this episode, Drew gives training advice so that you can maximize your training activities and make the absolute most of the slower shoulder season.

Audio Transcription (in Beta)

Learn about how we learn on today’s show.

Okay, let’s get going with today’s show with Mr. Drew Cameron. This show is called How We Learn. Take it away, Drew. Hi, and welcome to another episode of Cracking the Code. I am your host today, Drew Cameron with Flow Odyssey, as well as EJA Contractor University. And today I want to talk to you a little bit about how we learn.

I think it’s important to, to understand and gain some perspective on how we learn as human beings. So let’s dive right into the content. Now, we consume information in a variety of ways, you know, as human beings, generally speaking, right? You know, basically, we read things and we’ll retain about 10 percent of what it is that we read.

You may read a lot of things, you may understand the general framework of what it is you read, but you’re not gonna remember all the specific details. And that’s what I’m really talking about here, is how much detail, you know, do you typically retain, you know, as a human being? When you’re, when you’re learning something and studying something.

And so if you just read something, you’re going to retain about 10 percent of it and probably have just a general understanding of what it is that you’ve read. We understand and retain about 20 percent of what it is that we hear. So again, if someone were to speak to us and share information to us, such as a teacher, as we did growing up, we retain about 20 percent of what we hear.

Again, we have probably a little bit more in the way of details. Why? Because. Words are only about 7 percent of communication. Body language and, uh, tonality make up the rest of, of communication. Meaning body language is about 55 percent of communication, gestures, facial expressions. And tonality and voice inflection, uh, are another 38 percent of, uh, communication.

And 7 percent is words. So only seeing words, again, you can understand why basically the comprehension is maybe a little bit higher because you’re reading it. And you’re, you’re thinking about a little bit, hearing it, you’re hearing the words and you’re thinking about it. And there’s also being emphasis placed on certain words when you hear it, when you see something and you, uh, you see the words, maybe you hear the words you, but more importantly, you see something visual.

Um, and there’s a graphic that’s accompanying the words, you know, now we basically jump up to about 30 percent retention of what it is that we, that we learn, you know, learn and retain and then 50 percent of what we see in here. So now we start to play off multiple modalities and we’re going to get a deeper learning and understanding of what it is that we’re taking in.

And so again, the more touch points we can get, obviously as humans, the better off we’re going to be when it is that we learn. And this is going to have meaningful consequences in our life. Now, if we take something that we’ve seen and heard, um, and we maybe discuss it a little bit deeper, maybe something that we’ve read and we discuss it, but things that we talk about where we have interaction and maybe a little bit more explanation, and we go into a deeper understanding of something.

With another human being and you always hear me say when we do the training, how do we get better? We get better together. So it’s a collaborative process of sharing information and retention. So that goes up to 70%. If we experience something and, um, we can, we can basically bring in all of our emotions, right?

We may have read something when we’re experiencing it. Uh, you go to a theme park, you read, you read signs and then you ride the ride, right? You’re seeing it, you’re hearing it, you’re. Experiencing it, you’re feeling it, your emotions are, are, are immersed within in the experience. And so you’re going to retain about 80 percent of what it is that you consume at that point.

And you can probably tell, uh, retell that experience with vivid detail. Almost like a story, right? And hence storytelling. And so storytelling kind of goes back to, you know, discussion or seeing, or, or I’m assuming you’re hearing, um, or, or discussing, but you can tell that story yourself to someone else.

And then they get a higher retention because you have such a high retention of it because of the details. And many of us have obviously been through so many experiences in our lives that we can tell certain stories with amazing detail. Other stories that have been told to us about other people’s experiences, maybe not as much, obviously.

Now, if we basically pull in everything, and we read something, and we hear something, um, we read something, we see something, we hear something, we discuss it, we experience it, we take notes on it, and we review those notes. Now our retention and understanding of something is 90%. And so we’re basically on the cusp of really having an immersive experience of our whole being and that whole retention.

And lastly, when I can take all that and then I can teach others, I can give and share to others what it is that I’ve learned and understand, then I have a 90%. 95 percent excuse me, uh, learning comprehension and understanding of that. Now, why is that all important? Well, I think it’s important for us to know as, uh, as individuals so that when we consume information, we know how to consume it in such a way that it’s accessible.

that we retain it. Number one. Number two is if we’re teaching information and we’re the trainer or the coach of our people for this, the manager or the lead, the team leader or the owner of the company. And we’re trying to make sure that our people, uh, you’ll get what it is that we’re imparting to them.

As far as the lessons we, you know, we don’t want to just go ahead and throw a white paper at them or give them a book. That’s why book club is a great thing to have in your company. You should assign books, assign a chapter and then bring it in and have conversations about it. Put notes up on the whiteboard and have everybody else take notes on what it is that they’ve learned from reading those books.

So again, as a leader, it’s a great way to go ahead and train and coach your people, right? From an education and training standpoint. But here’s the one thing I don’t think that we’ve taken into consideration when it comes to our businesses. Remember, we are in the business of teaching people how to buy and where value comes from.

You hear me talk about that all the time when we talk about sales training and coaching. Um, but it’s that our, that’s our job is to teach our customers, you know, how to buy and where value comes from, you know, what the standards are of the industry, uh, that, you know, that we are mandated to follow and that we accept and how we measure ourselves against those standards so that they get the results that they want.

And Help them understand if they’re talking to other companies, how maybe those other companies don’t embrace those standards. And so from a marketing perspective, I think if we take this into consideration, this framework of understanding, and we seek to teach our customers about all of these things.

Our company and our products and our services and the impact that they can have in their lives. And we take this framework into consideration. We might think about how we go and attack the market with our marketing and advertising. So a white paper, while it could be meaningful and something that a customer could download or a pamphlet, um, might be helpful and they could read it.

There might also be some graphics in there and they see it and they touch it. Right. We can, we can basically, you know, tap into their psyche a little bit and their top of the mind of awareness and their understanding of the topic that we’re trying to get to them. But if we take it and we put it into a video onto our website or onto a YouTube channel or into a television commercial or over the top streaming service.

Again, we’re probably going to get a lot more contact, uh, and understanding there. However, what if we were bringing that customer into our business and we had, maybe like they have at Best Buy, the Magnolia Soundroom, and we had, um, ways for customers to experience our products and then have a conversation with us.

Where they can read about the products. They can, uh, maybe there’s some placards in front of the products. They can read about them. They can see the products. They can hear the products operate. They can have a conversation with somebody on our team within our, within our business, they’re going to experience them firsthand.

They can take some notes if they want, um, and maybe take their notes and go home and review those notes. Right. And of course we can have some little, uh, little breakout sessions where we’re educating people. This is where you might think about, and you’ve heard me talk about in the marketing masterminds, having an open house where you invite your customers to your business.

This is the time of year you get to do this. It’s the end of this, the end of the year, you’re in your shoulder season. Maybe things are a little bit slower. How about show a little bit of gratitude, bring your customers to your business. And teach them about what it is that you do and why you do what you do and talk about your people and your processes and let them meet your people and let them see your processes in action.

Maybe you show them how you test airflow. Maybe you show them how you braze and solder and charge by superheat and subcooling. Maybe you let them, uh, you know, see a laser particle counter and, uh, you know, the, uh, the, uh, the flow hoods and the various things that you do to, to size and design equipment.

And you allow your customers to interact with you. So, again, I think this framework of understanding how it is that we learn is important to us when it comes to training here at EGIA. It’s why we give you all the modalities that we do, right? We give you downloadable documents. We give you spreadsheets that you can interact with.

We have classes where you can come and interact, you know, see, take notes, experience, uh, breakout sessions, working sessions where we have, uh, like when we do the bootcamps. We give you the spreadsheets, you bring in your numbers and you do this. We’re discussing it with you, uh, Gary and myself, we’re collaborating there.

We have these webinars, uh, that we record. We also have live webinars and then we have obviously the epic experience. And so you can see we have all kinds of ways where we’re touching you. We have a video podcast, we have audio podcasts. You can consume content any way you which, uh, you wish. And retain it the other way that you need, because we understand that people learn differently and consume things differently.

Some people are very auditory, some people are very kinesthetic, meaning by touch, some people are very visual when it comes to learning. And so I think you have to find ways to tap into all that when teaching. People for educational purposes, but also for marketing and advertising purposes. So I just thought that was important to kind of touch on.

I think you want to share this with your people, um, share this with your leadership team. So they understand how to do what they need to do when they’re training and educating your team. But also share this with your marketing team and your sales team and talk about what do you need to do when you’re marketing and advertising, but also technicians, salespeople, comfort advisors, when you’re in the home, how do you need to be interacting with people so they retain more about what it is that you’re sharing with them and less probably about what other contractors are sharing with them because most contractors won’t even take this into consideration.

So as a member, you’re, as you know, you’re always the mission. And so if you have any questions about this topic or any other topic, please feel free to reach out until next time. Awesome content right there from Jew as always. Now, listen, be sure to share this on Facebook. If you’re not a member, click the button below to get a 30 day free trial, giving you access to all of our amazing content.

Well, folks, that’s our show for this week. We’ll see you next time until then. Bye bye for now.