Learning is the Riskiest Thing We Do
How receptivity starts from a safe place
Someone coined the phrase we can’t unlearn (or unsee or unhear) that. The fact it has become a truism points to something important. We are all, to some degree, concerned about what new information might do to our internal status quo.
That makes every meaningful new piece of information a potential threat. To be receptive to what a trainer or presenter is offering, a person must be open to change in that area. They must feel safe enough to loosen their grip on the old and invite in the new. A reader of yesterday’s Spark and Tinder post reminded me that the filters we erect to limit information are often there for self-protection.
In that post I pointed out how, in education, we spend an extraordinary amount of time refining the spark. Better slides. Better presenters. Better activities. Better technology. But none of those things matter if the audience arrives emotionally fireproof.
I’ve spent much of my professional life trying to understand why one group leans in while another leans away. Why prisoners sometimes embrace difficult conversations while skilled tradespeople dismiss them. Why one class comes alive while another quietly waits for the clock to reach the hour.
The answer, I suspect, isn’t found entirely in the curriculum. It’s found in receptivity. Not willingness. Not intelligence. Not even motivation.
Receptivity.
The quiet readiness to let an idea in. That’s the tinder most trainers and presenters are looking for, often by trying to create it through better slides, workbooks and technology.
And once you begin looking for it, you realize something uncomfortable.
Training doesn’t begin when the trainer walks into the room. By then, the emotional landscape has already been shaped. The resentment. The curiosity. The fatigue. The scepticism. The hope. The fear of change. The quiet belief that this will be another wasted morning. That atmosphere has been generated by every individual in the room.
Emotion, as we know, is contagious. That’s why one person panicking can send a crowd into a fearful frenzy. Why people still go to the theatre to watch comedies they could stream at home. When someone else laughs in the darkness, you often feel like laughing too.
So the emotional weather influences how well your ideas will land. The trainer doesn’t create it. They inherit it, for better or worse.
If the prevailing mood is boredom or disinterest, the presenter must spend valuable time trying to improve it. Tell a joke. Ask questions the audience feels duty-bound to answer. There are plenty of techniques.
But they are all focused on repairing damage that’s already been done. Trying to square up the walls when the foundations are already cracking.
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Which raises a question I’ve been thinking about a lot lately. If receptivity determines whether the spark catches, shouldn’t we spend as much time preparing the tinder as we do fashioning the match?
It’s the question I’ve been exploring for much of my professional life. Learning theory has given us motivation, engagement, readiness, psychological safety, adult learning principles and much more. Yet where does receptivity fit in?
Those ideas overlap it, but receptivity doesn’t feel quite the same thing to me. Receptivity is permeability. It doesn’t ask, do I feel safe enough to take risks in this space. It asks, am I open enough for this idea to get in?
We all know trainers pay attention to body language. When someone folds their arms, avoids eye contact or withdraws from the conversation, we naturally assume something has closed down. Whether those cues always mean the same thing is another question, but every experienced trainer recognizes the challenge of trying to reopen that conversation.
Because this isn’t really about arms. It’s about emotional state.
A reader of my last post reminded me that many of the filters we put in place are there for protection. The reality is that most of us are cautious about change. Every meaningful piece of information we genuinely absorb changes us, however slightly.
Of course, most of us don’t think about it that way. We create explanations that feel more rational. I’m not bright enough. (Protecting self-image.) I don’t need to know this because it isn’t relevant to what’s important to me. (Protecting existing goals.) I’ll wait and see if the trainer convinces me it’s worth learning. (Protecting effort.)
Different stories. But perhaps the same underlying instinct: Protect what we already know against what might disrupt it.
Think about the in-house trainer introducing the latest version of an IT package to people who already know the old one well. They’re perfectly competent. They’re comfortable. They resent yet another upgrade that will consume time and mental bandwidth.
Which leads me to wonder what the difference is between the person who says, Ooh… something new. Let’s explore it, and the person who says, Something new. Let’s ignore it and hope it goes away.
I wonder whether part of the answer is safety.
One person has learnt through experience that change can be rewarding. They trust themselves to cope with not knowing during the process. The other has learnt that new things often end in frustration, embarrassment or failure. Remaining with the familiar simply feels safer.
So how do you generate the kind of safety that allows internal change before a learner even arrives?
Not, I suspect, by sending questionnaires and probing questions that remind people of exams they barely passed thirty years ago. Or by signaling how important this training is to management so they’d better get it right.
Walls go up, even while heads nod politely. The perceived risk has increased.
If we want barriers to come down, perhaps the risk has to come down first. Only then do the sparks have a real chance of landing.
The question is… how?
