Leading by Example: The Power of Self-Leadership In leadership, one often hears the phrase, “lead by example.” It’s a timeless principle that highlights the importance of demonstrating the behaviours and values you wish to instil in others. But what if we take it a step further? What if the key to effective leadership lies not only in leading by example but also in leading oneself first? This is key right here… “By leading yourself first, you demonstrate how to help others learn.” When I was younger, I barged through life, saying things I’d been learned through school, family and community and shooting from the hip. I come from the country, and things are real out there. The weather, the flies, and the straight-shooting words that flow from people’s mouths. When I moved to different countries and worked in large cities I continued. Yes, I got promoted, probably because I was good at my job. But the issue was my emotional intelligence was low. I didn’t fully understand the impact of my words and actions on others. It wasn’t until I was forced to stop and reflect on my experiences that I realised the importance of self-leadership. This is when I truly began to grow as a leader. Through self-awareness and continuous learning, I recognised the need to improve my emotional intelligence and develop a more empathetic and inclusive leadership style. By leading myself first, I was able to create a more positive and supportive work environment. An environment where people loved to come to work, and the team thrived. Self-leadership can be hard as we often don’t know what we are projecting out into the world. It involves understanding strengths and weaknesses, setting clear goals, staying disciplined, and constantly striving for personal growth. When you lead yourself well, you set a powerful example for others to follow. Leaders in Registered Training Organisations (RTOs) play a pivotal role in shaping the culture, values, and practices within their organisations. When RTOs are dedicated to providing high-quality training and education, they are impacted by their leaders. Leaders who exhibit a commitment to continuous learning and self-improvement inspire their teams to do the same. By leading by example in this regard, they create an environment where staff and students are encouraged to seek out opportunities for growth and development. Enhancing Training Delivery: RTO leaders who lead themselves effectively demonstrate a commitment to continuous learning and improvement. This mindset can be infectious, inspiring trainers and instructors within the organisation to adopt a similar approach. By prioritising their own development, RTO leaders set a precedent for trainers to invest in their professional growth, ultimately leading to higher quality training delivery and improved outcomes for learners. Building a Positive Learning Culture: Leaders who embody self-awareness and emotional intelligence foster a positive and inclusive learning environment within their organisation. They understand the importance of empathy and respect in interactions with both staff and learners. Modelling behaviours such as active listening, constructive feedback, and conflict resolution sets the tone for a supportive culture where everyone feels valued and motivated to excel. Driving Organisational Growth: RTO leaders who lead themselves first are better equipped to set strategic goals and navigate challenges effectively. Their clarity of purpose and disciplined approach to decision-making inspire confidence and trust among stakeholders. By demonstrating resilience and adaptability in the face of change, RTO leaders encourage staff to embrace innovation and contribute to the organisation’s growth and success. Embracing the principles of self-leadership and leading by example can profoundly impact RTO leaders’ ability to drive excellence, foster innovation, and promote continuous improvement within their organisation. By prioritising their own growth and development, RTO leaders inspire their team members to do the same, ultimately enhancing the quality of training delivery and empowering learners to achieve their goals. Read more from RTO Mentor

Instructional design is the process of designing effective learning experiences that help learners acquire new knowledge, skills, and attitudes. Instructional designers use a variety of techniques and tools to create educational materials that are engaging, effective, and relevant to the needs of the learners.  This means in the land of RTO’s we need to create resources that are effective and efficient learning experiences. A huge part of the process involves identifying the learning needs of your target audience. Then from there you can design and develop instructional materials, in a format that meets their needs, implement and delivering the instruction, and evaluate the effectiveness of the instruction.  1. Identify Learning Needs: The first step in instructional design is to identify the learning needs of the target audience. This critical phase involves conducting a comprehensive needs analysis to determine what knowledge and skills learners require to achieve their goals effectively. Needs analysis gathers information about the learners, their background, existing knowledge, skills, and competencies, as well as their learning preferences and motivations. This information is crucial for tailoring the instructional design to meet the specific needs and characteristics of the learners. Various methods can be employed to gather this information, including surveys, focus groups, interviews, and observation. Additionally, analysing existing data, such as performance metrics or feedback from previous training programs, can provide valuable insights into learning needs. Once the learning needs are identified, instructional designers can proceed to develop clear and measurable learning objectives that align with the identified needs and goals of the learning experience. These objectives serve as a roadmap for designing effective instructional materials and activities that address learners’ needs and support their learning journey. 2. Design Instructional Materials: The next step in instructional design is to design instructional materials that meet the learning objectives. This includes creating a plan for the learning experience, including the learning objectives, instructional strategies, and assessment methods. During this phase, the aim is to carefully select and develop materials and resources that facilitate effective learning. These materials may include textbooks, handouts, multimedia presentations, interactive simulations, and online learning modules. Additionally, designers consider factors such as accessibility, learner engagement, and alignment with instructional goals to ensure the effectiveness of the instructional materials. The ultimate goal is to create engaging and informative resources that support the specific learners in achieving their learning objectives and acquiring new knowledge and skills. The instructional materials should be accessible and inclusive, ensuring that all learners have equitable opportunities to succeed. By incorporating interactive elements, multimedia content, real-world examples, and opportunities for practice and feedback, instructional designers can create effective learning resources that inspire learners to actively participate in their learning journey. Additonally, ongoing evaluation and feedback mechanisms can help refine and improve the instructional materials, ensuring their relevance and effectiveness in supporting learners’ attainment of their learning objectives. 3. Development: From the plan, you commence using the appropriate instructional strategies, developing the content, designing assessments, and creating any necessary visuals or multimedia. Create instructional materials, such as videos, interactive activities, and assessments, to make the learning experience engaging while meeting the specific needs of the training. This phase often involves collaboration with subject matter experts, instructional designers, multimedia specialists, and other stakeholders to ensure that the instructional materials are aligned with learning objectives and instructional strategies. By incorporating real-life scenarios, case studies, and examples that resonate with the learners’ experiences, instructional designers can enhance learner motivation and promote deeper understanding of the subject matter. Additionally, leveraging technology approaches can enhance interactivity and engagement in the learning process. This may include using gamification elements, simulations, virtual reality, and social learning platforms to create immersive and interactive learning experiences that captivate learners’ interest and promote active participation. Providing opportunities for learner collaboration and peer interaction can enrich the learning experience and foster a sense of community among learners. Group discussions, collaborative projects, and peer feedback activities encourage knowledge sharing, critical thinking, and problem-solving skills development. When the instruction is delivered in a way that is engaging and interactive it maximises learner engagement, motivation, and retention of key concepts and skills.  4. Evaluate Instructional Effectiveness: The final step in instructional design is to evaluate the effectiveness of the instruction. This involves collecting feedback from learners and assessing the learning outcomes to determine whether the instructional materials were effective in meeting the learning objectives. Based on the evaluation results, instructional designers can make any necessary revisions to the instructional materials. Instructional design is a complex process that requires a deep understanding of the learners, the subject matter, and the goals of the learning experience. By following a structured approach that includes analysis, design, development, implementation, and evaluation, instructional designers can create effective and engaging learning experiences that help learners achieve their goals.  The design of your training is a critical process for creating effective and efficient learning experiences. If you base your RTO on the quality of it’s service, then this is a great way to promote your RTO. Your RTO and it’s training will be flush with word of mouth advertising when you create engaging and relevant instructional materials that meet the learning needs of the target audience. Whether designing classroom instruction or e-learning, instructional designers must carefully consider the needs of the learners and the desired learning outcomes to create effective instructional materials. How RTO mentor can help RTO Mentor can provide you with valuable insights and advice based on what they see within your RTO and their own experiences. They can share their successes and failures, and teach you how to avoid common pitfalls. This can save you time and effort, and help you make better decisions in your business. CLICK the button to book a FREE 30 minute call and find out how.  Click here

Helping other people to learn is a challenge we continually face in RTO’s. During your TAE training you would (well should) have learned many theories and ideas around getting the message across.  There is an art form in helping people to learn. Yet not many of us are taught to do it in a way that relates to the person you are teaching. Pooja Agarwal the co-author of a book called Powerful Teaching says there are three stages to learning. The three stages of the learning process are encoding, storage, and retrieval. Encoding is when we get information in and absorb knowledge, almost like a sponge. Storage is where we hope that once we encode information, our knowledge sticks around. Retrieval is when we reach back and bring something we previously learned into mind. We tend to think that most learning occurs during the encoding stage, but a wealth of research demonstrates that learning is strengthened during retrieval. We tend to focus too much on getting information into peoples’ heads (encoding) and not enough on getting it out (retrieval). Encoding means inputting information into our heads via a podcast, reading a book, or face to face training course. Retrieval Retrieval is the end process where we pull information out of our brain. You might be thinking, of this is the formative assessment part.  It isn’t. I am referring to the learning process, and how the person can recall that information at any given stage after they have been in the training. Retrieval in this context is actually about the learning process. We are wanting to know if the student learned something and did it stick. What Pooja says is we learn when we retrieve. I totally get this as I know that I learn most when I teach others, or tell a story about what I’ve learned. Pooja says the act of retrieving helps us to put the information into the future. She says “We learn when we use stuff.” The act of practice makes it more permanent. Key ways to get it to stick are: Get curious. This is what I love about this process is the fact of using coaching skills in the role of training. For me this being curious. Asking questions. This is when we consult our memory and consider what we know. As a trainer your role is to ask questions of your students so that they recall the information, share it and then they are more likely to remember it. Practicing retrieval has shown to boost learning by pulling information out of students’ heads (e.g., quizzes and flashcards), rather than cramming information into students heads (e.g., lectures). I know from my own facilitation of qualifications is the best reviews of my sessions is when I’ve really asked them to think about what has been said. Whilst initially people resist, in the end they love it, and really get value from the training. Brain Dumps. Pause your lesson, lecture, or activity. Ask students to write down everything they can remember. Continue with the learning activity.   Ask – get them talking in pairs or individually – tell me what you remember from this conversation? Get them to write a brain dump – What are the key things that you remember from this project that are deliverable? Write 3 points that stood out for you from the information so far. When we read books sometimes we highlight, write notes. What pays off in the long term, is to close the book and write down the top 3 points you’ve just read. You might feel this takes time, but you will benefit from this time of retrieving information so much more. Retrieval practice is a learning strategy, not an assessment strategy. Consider ways to incorporate retrieval practices into your training delivery. Conversations and sharing stories are a form of retrieval. As a trainer or coach you want others to do the work. You ask the questions, they unlock their own potential by responding with what they have learned. This way you’re helping them to learn, rather than teaching them. Short term learning doesn’t help us to learn that for the long term. As a leader you want to embrace long term learning. An example is cramming for exams. Cramming works, but only in the short-term. Spacing For things that really matter in our business consider ways to have a long-term retention, incorporating spacing is very effective. Spacing boosts learning, and is based on research. This rather than cramming information into a three hour lecture, try giving information over three one hour lessons over a period of time. Incorporate retrieval opportunities into the time frames. In a meeting ask someone to recall what they have done, or learned. Silence is a measure of success. Allowing the silence, allows the thinking to take place. This brings the neural connections and they are increasing their capacity. As an introvert this is a common practice, we need the time to process the information in our brain. So often people are uncomfortable with silence, and they jump in before we’ve had time to process. When we have silence, it gives us the right to measure out our answer. Metacognition Metacognition is thinking about our own learning. The awareness of our own learning. When someone is comfortable with their own metacognition, they ask for feedback and then become aware of what they know and don’t know. Let people be uncomfortable and find out if they know or not. This allows you to become more aware of your own learning. As a leader you can help raise their (the student) awareness of whether they have it or not. You can do this by being curious. Encourage an environment of people retrieving and making mistakes and be comfortable in making the mistakes. Ask questions that have no right or wrong answer to encourage your learners to realise they will not be told off or get it wrong. For example what is your least favourite