Behavior-Based Course Design with Stever Robbins

Cynthia Lamb 00:01 Okay, this is correspondent I guess today is Stever Robbins and Danny take it away. Danny Iny 00:08 Hello and welcome to course love the show that teaches creators like you how to make better online courses. I'm Danny, the founder and CEO of mercy and I'm here with my co host IP crystal, the co founder of zuku. Hey Danny. In each episode, of course lab, we showcase a course and creator who is doing something really interesting either with the architecture of their course or the business model behind it, or both. Today we welcome Stever Robbins to the show. Stever is a coach, consultant and teacher with a passion for understanding human behavior. Steven, thank you for joining us. Stever 00:43 It's a pleasure to be here. Thank you for having me. Danny Iny 00:46 So let's start with the 30,000 foot backstory. Who are you? And what do you do? And how did you come to be doing it? You know, take us through the winding path. Stever 00:55 Oh, my gosh, it's a very winding path in my case. So I started life as an engineer back in the 1980s. And was a total geek with no people skills, had never thought about teaching or training or doing any kind of courses. But I very much wanted people skills. So I was a technical star. And at one of my early jobs, I tried to get hired as a trainer. And they said, how ridiculous you have no people skills, and you have no experience doing that. And I said, No, but I am the best technical person you have. And I can come in with the technical skills, and you teach me how to be a trainer, and how to have people skills. And I'll be able to do some awesome things for you, as opposed to what you usually do, which is hire professional trainers and try to teach them to be technologists, so much to their credit, they said okay, and they hired me. And one thing led to another and actually it worked. It was a winning strategy. I learned people skills. And I also learned how to do course design. And I learned how to create learning experiences for people that then sparked my curiosity as to how do you systematically teach people things? How do you create experiences that give them new skills and give them new abilities, because the traditional educational model has been, really has just been lecturing people, and hope that you're telling them the right things and hope that they can take the things that you're telling them and turn it into behavior, and maybe give them a quiz to make sure they've memorized stuff. But in any event, I did that for about a year. And then I went back to business school went to Harvard Business School. And let's just say that I was a diversity admit. So they admitted me, because I didn't have the standard background that everyone else did. And I graduated with a lot of very strong feelings about that curriculum and what they taught and how they taught it. And not having great social skills better than I had originally had. But I just decided to let them know that they weren't teaching the right things in the right ways. And I proceeded to send a series of faxes to one of my professors, saying, dude, you're teaching the wrong stuff, you're teaching it the wrong ways, you really shouldn't shape up your act. He was later put in charge of redesigning the MBA program. And he called me up and he said, Hey, would you like to take a 90% pay cut, to come and help us redesign the curriculum, and help create the next generation of Harvard MBAs? I said, Wow, that's such a, that's such a persuasive argument. How could I say no. And I then went and spent a couple years helping to redesign the curriculum, during which I read every bit of research I could find on how human beings learn how they change behavior. I actually went around the world trying different business simulations and educational experiences and you know, weird brain stuff where they would they would hit you with this, the synchronized audio things to stimulate your brain in different ways, all looking for how do you take a group of people and turn them from incoherent babbling 25 year olds, into actual business leaders and people who could run a business. And that, you know, I would have to say, really, most of my life since then, has been an elaboration and a deepening of that theme. Now, sometimes it's happened in an operational role where I was running part of a company and I essentially viewed my job as as teaching the people beneath me how to do their jobs better and creating the environment in which they could do it better. And I've also been an executive coach. And as a coach, a lot of my emphasis, I really think of it as the same job in my emphasis is, there's a person who needs to learn something, I need to help them figure out what to learn and then help them figure out how to learn it and then put that learning into practice. And then also in there, I actually went back and helped with the strategy of for teaching entrepreneurship for a school called Babson, which is the number one entrepreneurship school in the world. And that was just an application of a lot of this so I am stating my career as if it were one never ending series of teaching experiences, which honestly is how I think about it, although from the outside but one would say, Oh, you were an entrepreneur. Oh, you headed up for product development organization? Oh, you were a strategy consultant. As far as I'm concerned, all of them were just teaching jobs cleverly disguised. Danny Iny 05:12 So there are few people who've done as deep dive as you have into what works with education and what doesn't. Can you do a little bit of like, you know, Column A versus column B, everyone thinks X. But really, it's why everyone thinks X. But really, it's why. What are some of the common Myths and Truths of, of developing an effective educational experience? Stever 05:37 Sure, I think one of the big ones is that if people understand something, they'll be able to do it. There is a book which I have never read. But I love the title called the knowing doing gap. And I think that's one of the big I think that's one of the big myths in any type of education. And any type of sorry, one second might your budget died? That's fine. I want to avoid feedback. So I'm switching switching your boats here. Danny Iny 06:10 Okay, we can hear you can you hear us? Stever 06:19 So one of my favorite books, which I've never read, but I love the title is The knowing doing gap. And that really addresses what I think is an unbelievably pervasive theory of how people learn and how people change behavior, which is that if you tell people the learning, they will somehow magically be able to do the thing. And sometimes that's true. But a lot of times, in fact, the two are almost unrelated, you can you can know how to do something without ever having been instructed how to do it, you can just figure it out behaviorally. And on the flip side, you can know all of the theory. And then when you sit down and want to put it into practice, you can be utterly incapable of putting it into practice. And to me, in fact, the business leadership world is just an absolute exemplar of this whole principle, because people say things like, Oh, don't treat your people like crap, listen to their ideas, treat them treat them well. And they've been saying this now for at least 40 years, I think was was probably one of the first management consulting books written about this. I think it was one of the Tom Peters books, maybe In Search of Excellence. And despite the fact that we have known this now, for 40 years, no matter how many people read it, it still seems like many workplaces are characterized by incompetent managers who who do more to hinder their people's ability to get things done than to help them. So that's one of the biggies is that knowing and doing are actually two different things. One of the things that I got fascinated with really early in my career, because I read about about someone who did this in a in a personal development series, is the idea of using misdirection where you decide what you want to teach people. And what you do is you embed that in something else, and you get them all worked up about something else. And they go ahead and learn the thing that you actually want them to learn as part of whatever experience they're going through. And this way you bypass all of their explicit resistance. So for example, if I wanted to teach somebody to spell a bunch of words, and this is a slightly contrived example, instead of just saying, here's a bunch of words memorized, how to speak them, or how to spell them, what I might do instead is give them a word list and saying, I want you to go through every word on this list, and count the ratio of vowels to consonants. And then I want you to do that a whole bunch of times, until you can just look at the word and almost instantly know what it is. Well, in the process of counting these vowels and consonants. I don't really care if they count if they get the ratios, right. But in order to get those ratios, right, they're going to look at those words over and over and over and really study how they're spelled. And notice where the vowels and where are the consonants, and they're almost certainly going to walk away from that exercise the size, having memorized the spelling of those words, even though they had no awareness that that was the actual assignment. Whereas if I say memorize the spelling, they're like, Oh, I'm bad at memorizing Oh, I don't know if I can do it. Whatever. I'll actually just give them a task that presupposes the task that I really am concerned about the learning Danny Iny 09:21 aim Do you want to jump in Stever 09:24 Hang on I'm not getting sound Danny Iny 09:27 Stever Can you hear us I'm just gonna slowly keep talking so they've gone through dever can hear us a little note that Geoff 09:39 we may have to reset the recording just the call just because when when a microphone or a speaker changes. Riverside tends to need a refresh. Cynthia Lamb 09:51 Oh, yeah. Yeah, you got that? Looks like putting on a chat. Cynthia Lamb 10:02 But we should all do it let's stop the recording because it's the sink is going to be off Geoff 10:07 absolutely so I'm gonna Danny Iny 00:02 Back at it. This is the interview with Steve or part two. I guess, Abe Crystal 00:11 Steve, or if he could continue to try and make things, I guess getting kind of tactical and applicable for people listening. So, for course traders who are interested in helping their own participants actually implement the techniques that are changing. 00:29 I'm sorry, you're you're, you're pretty loud. Can you back off a little bit from your mic? Abe Crystal 00:36 Yeah, since usual spot, but how's that? Danny Iny 00:39 Gonna take some deep breaths? Abe Crystal 00:42 How does that sound? 00:44 I don't know why you sound so much louder than normal. Abe Crystal 00:47 To me turn the game down. 00:50 Tips Yeah. Just attach your your too much in the yellow. So you don't have to do it a lot. Just a little bit. That sounds a lot better already. Abe Crystal 01:07 I hadn't even changed yet. Okay. How's that? Testing? Testing? 123. Okay, that's fine. level appropriate. Yeah, you're good. Danny Iny 01:16 It all sounds exactly the same to me. It's the old trick of a graphic designer, right? You show someone a design? And they're like, Yeah, I wanted to just be a smidge more vibrant. So you just print it out. Again, you show them perfect. Abe Crystal 01:34 It was more green, not yellow. I'm just saying Go ahead. And read redo that question. Make it more concise also. So Steve refer course leaders listening who are kind of struggling with this themselves. They want their participants to be able to actually implement and apply the ideas that they're teaching, what would be some of your recommendations for them, or what would be some things that people could try out in their courses to help folks actually change their behavior? Stever 02:06 Sure. You know, at this point, my understanding of how humans learn things, is primarily, it's like learning to ride a bike, you stick someone on a bicycle, maybe with training wheels, and you say ride, and you have someone right along next to them when they start right along next to them. And when they start to fall over, you kind of reach out and study them a little bit, until they can ride without falling over. And I think of that, the same way with teaching almost anything, if you're teaching someone to paint, give them a paintbrush, give them a canvas and say, Now, you know, look at the thing you're painting and start painting. Now, they're not gonna do it, right, because they don't know how to paint yet. But that's when you start dropping in the things that you would normally teach and explain to them and you drop them in at the point where they need them. So in the case of something like painting, and I don't, by the way, know how to paint, although I've read a couple books on it. But I know one of the things that you're taught to do is to view an object is nothing but shades and colors. Like if you're looking at a vase, don't think of it as a vase, think of it as whatever that shape is, with a dark area where the shadow is the light area where the where the light is. So if I were teaching someone to, to paint or to draw, I would say first, here's the vase, just draw it, however, you would normally draw it. Wait until they get halfway through. And then if they need some correction, say, Okay, now let me teach you how to look at light. Now draw that same vase, again, using justice, one, justice, one distinction. And generally, what I would do is then just layer things on, and what I'm layering on his behavior, not concepts. So whatever you want your people to be able to do that they currently don't do, actually sit down and write out for yourself, what behaviors do they need to engage in, in order to be able to do the thing, and then lead them through that series of behaviors? And, you know, it sounds very simple. And honestly, it is, that's how human beings have been learning for hundreds of 1000s of years. Now, when you're doing it online, or if you're doing it through a mass produced course, what you have to do is figure out, what are the patterns of those things, and lead people through things, you know, at arm's length through recordings, etc. But, you know, for instance, I have a number of, I have a number of mentees who are in their 30s. And they've all come to me and they've said we're finally starting to save money. Could you help us understand how to invest? And the answer is no, I mean, I'm not. I'm not a fabulous investor myself, but I've learned an awful lot about how to evaluate investments such that you can lose money very quickly. And the opposite of some of the analyses that I've done in it, a lot of the things that I've learned, have really deep into my understanding of how money works. And if I could go back and talk to a 35 year old me, you know, I could I'd be I'd be a gazillionaire. So what I've what I'm doing in terms of helping my friends out, I'm saying look, I What I can't do is tell you go invest in IBM. But what I can do is I can take you through the steps of analysis to deal with how to understand an investment. And then I will do something for my friends. And I'll say like, Okay, how much is how much would you pay for a share of Apple stock? And, you know, I know in advance, they're gonna say, Well, I don't know, I'm just going to look at what it says in the newspaper. And if I've happened to like, Apple, maybe paid a couple dollars more than that. And then I'll say, Okay, well, how do you know that that's a good investment. Right now, you're just saying that you're kind of doing it on gut feel. And piece by piece, I would start to introduce Well, here's what stock actually is. Now that I've given you that definition that what stock is it's a percentage ownership of the company? How does that change the way you think about it? Now? How would you value it? They might say, Oh, well, I figure out how much the whole company is worth. And I would take some percentage, and that would be the value of my share of stock, let's say great, well, how are you going to? How are you going to decide how much the whole company is worth? And essentially, repeat these things. Now, I'm describing this as if you do this thought by thought and idea by idea, I will probably lump a bunch of these together. So I would start by saying, how much would you pay and have them do it completely cold. And then I would say, Let me teach you a little bit about what stock is, and how you value a company. Now go back, and let's do it again. And I would then build on that foundation. Okay, so So in creating your course, for example, I would start off by by asking, like, really imagine what are the steps you want someone to be able to carry out behaviorally? And when I say behaviorally, I also mean mental behavior. So I want them to do these calculations. Well, let's, let's use a course let's say you're teaching what's, uh, give me a topic. And I'll, I'll see if I can do this on the fly. 06:55 How to manage stress. Okay, let's say Stever 06:58 you're teaching someone how to manage stress. And you decide what you want to do is teach them how to do micro meditations. So when they feel stress, you want them to stop and take a couple of deep breaths, you know, whatever. So So I would start by saying, you know, here we are, we're gonna learn how to manage stress, we're gonna learn how to manage stress by micro meditation. And then I would imagine, what are the actual steps that I want someone to go through by the time they're done with this program. So right now, somebody is at their computer, I'm going to just go ahead and use that as the context. Since we're all at our computers so much these days, someone's at their computer, and they're running late on a deadline or something is happening to cause them stress. Right now, all they do is work harder, tense their body up, and just basically increase the stress. That's their present state, the desired state, what I want them to be able to do after the program is done is they're in front of their computer they're working on and they're missing a deadline, or they're up against a tight deadline. And I want them to stop and take a really deep breath. It's been 10 seconds, just relaxing and breathing in and out and focusing on their breath, and then go back to doing what they do. So what I'm going to do as the instructor is I'm going to identify those behaviors. And the behaviors, there are our number one, recognizing that they need to do this. And that's something that I think often gets overlooked, is if you want to give behavior change out of people, you have to teach them the trigger, that will to when to do the new behavior. So in the course of stress, if I were teaching someone how to overcome stress, I would say Okay, first figure out where in your body you feel it, and that will become your trigger. So that will become the thing that you will train yourself to recognize that will kick in the new behavior. And you feel the trigger. And you kick in the new behavior, the new behaviors to take a deep breath and to to be present. That's a very high level, I would, I would probably break each one of those downs and have a teaching module on each piece. So my first module would be, let's recognize how stress feels to you, so that you know what it is that that is causing the problem. And that is your that is the thing you're going to use to recognize when to calm down. And then if what I want them to do is stop and breathe deeply, I might have a module on how to do deep breathing, and say right now we're just gonna learn how to breathe deeply because a lot of people don't know how to, they breathe deep. They think they're breathing deeply, but what they're really doing is just expanding their chest, they're not actually taking a diaphragm breath. So let's have a class on how to breathe deeply. Now, what we also want to do is teach you how to be present and how to be centered in your body, which is different from breathing deeply. We're going to have a little class on that. And now we're going to put all the pieces together. So in the next class, now you know, pull out your book, find something that you're stressed about and as soon as you feel that feeling in your body. Now do the deep breathing piece that we talked about. Once you've done the deep breathing piece. Now do the centering. And now go back, go and look at the thing again. And essentially, I would just have them practice that a whole bunch of times. And you know, all. So again, like I said, at this point, all training to me comes down to that identifying triggers and behaviors, and just running the people through the behavior as many times as I can. And now, in the service of doing that, I might use films to give them some of the behaviors I might use reading, I might use small group exercises and debriefing. But those are all just specific tactics. In terms of the instructional design, the main thing that I'm concentrating on is, how can I get them in some fashion? To engage in the behavior that I'm trying to teach them? Like the spelling example? How can I get somebody to look at a word and repeat it in their mind enough that it becomes a habit? And the answer is, well, if I tell them, that's what I want them to do, they're gonna obsess about it, and they're obsessing is going to get in the way of it. But if I tell them to pay attention to the numbers of consonants and vowels, you know, they will, in the course of doing that, look at the words over and over and over and probably memorize. Abe Crystal 11:07 And that that makes a lot of sense. And, like, indicate the original analogy you gave, of helping someone ride a bike and you're running alongside them, you know, also makes sense in the context of say, like, one on one coaching, where you're like, right there with the client, either in person or virtually on video or something. How does that work? If someone is teaching a larger scale online program, where they're not necessarily having direct interaction with participants, how do they ensure that people were actually going out and running these behaviors as you describe? Sure, Stever 11:44 well, I mean, right, in some deep philosophical sense, there's no way to guarantee it. But I am a big fan. I believe that people are accountable to each other, by and large, that the most powerful form of accountability is to know that someone else is depending on you, and that, that you have their success in your hands. So I really like to do, I'm a huge fan of small group exercises. And in fact, just earlier today, I was taking a workshop. And they brought in us over zoom. And zoom has a way to break people out into breakout rooms. And in fact, you can even do assigned to breakout rooms if you're using if you have people pre register. And I will have people go into breakout rooms, and then act as give act as the feedback givers on each other. Now, it's an interesting thing, because you're taking two people who were both learning a skill for the first time and asking them to give feedback to each other. And so it's natural to say, Well, wait a minute, how that does that make any sense? It's the blind leading the blind. There's two things about this that I find fascinating. One is, people can often recognize proper behavior before they can do it themselves. So weirdly, you can have two inexperienced people give each other feedback. And they will actually give each other surprisingly good feedback. Despite the fact they don't know anything about the problem domain, I have no idea how that works in the brain. But it reminds me of language, the way that you can understand the language long before you can speak it. And we seem to be able to understand what good performance is before we can actually execute it ourselves. So that's one piece. Another is, if necessary, I will teach people how to give each other feedback. So I'll say you know Danny and Abe, I want you to go into a small group, a small group, and I want I want Abe, I want you to walk Danny through the vowel of the consonant exercise. But as you get the answer sheet, so Danny does the exercise. And then UAB can say, Oh, you got that, right, you got that wrong. So to some degree, I can prove I can actually provide you the tools to give each other feedback. Obviously, that depends very much on what the exact skill is, and, and whatever. But you know, but that is something else. Like if I were teaching yoga, over zoom, which I might do during a pandemic, I might give people a PDF of this is what this yoga posture looks like, properly done. Now, again, as I do this course, I will discover probably five minutes in if you have a group of people who do not do yoga, they are not going to be able to do the poses properly, because they're not flexible enough, or they're not strong enough. But you as a yoga teacher know what it looks like when somebody is going up the learning curve. You know, if they do downward dog, and they can't put their heels on the ground or they can't straighten their legs, you still know what good form looks like and what poor form looks like. So as an instructor, the what I would do is I would not just provide diagrams of here's what the perfect pose looks like. When it's done by a yogi master who has been doing it for 40 years. I would say your partner is not going to be able to do this properly. Here's what it looks like when they're using good form, but they're only able to get halfway into the position. So I would actually teach people how to be how to do the judging. And by the way, what else is going to happen there? When you a we're watching Danny do a downward dog and saying gee, Danny, you know you're you're doing the beginners version of a downward dog. But you're bending your knees slightly to the left, and you shouldn't be bending them straight on you as are going to be thinking about all of that and yourself. And you're not realizing that you are now learning how to do a proper beginners version, and it's going to ramp up to a downward, downward dog. This is another example of that misdirection is in teaching people how to give each other feedback, you're actually teaching people how to do the thing, but because their attention is on the other person, they're not stressing over, am I getting it right? They're stressing over is my partner getting it right, without realizing that they're going to start incorporating that very same thinking into their own behavior. That's, that's a sneaky, sneaky thing that you can do. But people will do that, because people tend to, to understand information by trying to internalize it, even if it's information that they're, they're doing with someone else. Danny Iny 16:11 Steve, have a question. The the approach that you're describing, it's, it's a little bit reminiscent of the early scenes in The Karate Kid where Daniel Russo is learning karate, by, you know, painting the fence and wax on wax off and all that kind of stuff. hadn't even thought about that. Yes, it's exactly the same. So he's doing all those things. He develops the muscle memory and the skills. And of course, you know, there's the big reveal where it's like, you defend yourself, hmm. And you can do it. But what brings that scene to a head is Daniel Russo being like, I don't like this process. I don't feel like I'm learning anything. I'm super frustrated. Which for us, of course creators is problematic. How do you lead people down this path where they're doing the things that they're learning, even though they don't realize that they're learning? Like, this is so different from what people expect, in a learning experience that I can imagine people coming into a course, going through this, even though it's it's better, but they're like, What the hell? This is not what I signed up for, I want my money back. Stever 17:11 Right? Well, that's a good question. And the answer is, whatever this whatever the misdirection is that I'm doing, I'm going to make the misdirection seem like the point so that they feel like they're getting the information. So I'm going to say, if you really want to learn how to spell words, you need to learn the differences between vowels and consonants. So we're going to do this exercise about vowels and consonants. So as far as the students are concerned, they're doing a step in learning how to spell words, except what they don't realize is I'm putting all of their attention on, on something that is not actually that meaningful a step, because they're going to do the actual meaningful step as they did so. So I mean, it really is misdirection. Danny Iny 17:55 And is there really like the magician showing haha, actually, the consonants and vowels didn't matter. But look, now you've learned? Or is it a secret for you and other course creators to, you know, never share with the audience. Stever 18:10 I would say honestly, my personally, I, especially when the when these things work. I just get so tickled by them that I share them with me, I share them with the students, they remember that exercise we did earlier today where you know, ostensibly, it was about it was about limbering up. And what I actually did was lead you through the five yoga poses that you're going to be doing later today. But you didn't know that at the time. Well, guess what you've already been through them. So now it will be easy. Other times I don't when we were designing, and I've never said this before on air, dumped it up when we were designing the Harvard Business School curriculum. And I think the last remaining person involved in that just retired or is about to retire. So, you know, there's no one who can contradict me now, when we were when we were designing the curriculum. One of the things that I felt very strongly about was that our students be able to recognize when they when they were wrong, and be able to ask for help, and be able to say, I don't know what I'm talking about, please educate me, because one of the big criticisms of Harvard MBAs is that they don't know how to recognize when they are wrong, and they are completely impervious to that feedback for the first several years of their career. And not only is it very unpleasant for the people who work for them, it is also often very unpleasant for them. I mean, a lot of them end up getting fired from their first job or going through a lot of stress. Because they haven't yet understood that having a bunch of book knowledge is very, very different from working in a real life, real world situation. So the challenge that I took was, how can we teach the students how to say, I don't know, and how to ask for help, given that these are people who if you said to them, we're going to teach you how to say I don't know and ask for help. The very ego that prevents them from doing that in the first place. This would prevent them from learning. They would say, they would say, Are you kidding? I'm, you know, of course, I can admit when I'm wrong, I never do because I'm never wrong. But you know, I have this skill, I don't need to learn it. So, what I designed and sadly, this for political reasons that had nothing to do with what I'm about to tell you, this didn't make it into the final curriculum. But one of the things that we wanted to teach was what we called applied personal skills. And it was going to be, you know, just basic stuff about how you interact with other people, some emotional intelligence. And I was going to teach a module on how to make a logical argument. Now, ostensibly, what this was, was, when you're putting together a presentation for your team or for your board of directors, here's how to lay all the pieces out logically, so that you have a coherent argument. So as far as the students were concerned, they were just learning how to make a logical argument. And by the way, that is a useful skill for them to have. However, the real agenda is that part of making a logical argument is diagramming your logic. And when you discover that you're missing a piece of logic, you say, Oh, look, I'm missing a piece of logic. I don't know what goes here. Could somebody help me with this missing piece of logic. So even though the students and frankly most of the faculty thought what they were teaching, or what they were going to be teaching, because like I said, sadly, this module never launched. But it was all ostensibly about teaching logic. That's not what I cared about. What it was really about was giving them a framework in which they could justify saying, I don't know, and literally giving them the words and the practice saying, I don't know. And then asking for help, to be able to get through it. And that the the, I don't know, and the asking for help. That was the skill that we really wanted to teach. Danny Iny 21:53 Very cool. I don't see we're running up on time. So to wrap it up, but Steve, this was this was fantastic. Thank you so much for coming on the show and just sharing so, so generously and thoroughly about what you've learned over the years. Stever 22:09 Absolutely. Well, thank you for having me. The time really flew by amazing Danny Iny 22:14 if you want to read this out. Yep. Abe Crystal 22:18 Steve Robbins is a serial entrepreneur and the founder of Steve Robbins, Inc. You can check out everything he has to offer over at Stever robbins.com That's Stever robbins.com 22:32 All right, well done. Did you guys have anything else you want to throw on before I hit stop recording? No, I think we're good. Check and check. Well done. Stever. Thank you