I’ve often maintained that leadership is more about mindset than skillset.  Leaders need skills but the best leaders aren’t the ones with the best skills.  The best leaders are the ones who look at the world, frame problems, and identify opportunities in a different way.

As a result of this belief, many of my workshops are much more about changing perspective and thinking than they are about building discrete skills.  Leaders and executives tend to get that.  They appreciate it.  They seek it out.  It’s what they are looking for to get better.

The problem that I run into is that often my workshop outline winds up on the desk of someone in a training and development department.  More often than not, the following conversation ensues:

“Um, could you tell me a bit more about your workshop?”

“Sure, what do you want to know?”

“Well, it says here that you are going to help them gain an appreciation for the ways that their brains unconsciously misinterpret information.”

“Yup – that part is really cool by the way.”

“Yeah…so…what exactly are they learning?”

“They are learning that the unconscious part of their brain takes in a lot more data and information than does the conscious part. And, while they may think they are focusing on very specific pieces of data to make a decision, the unconscious part of their brain may be actually incorporating other data and information that isn’t relevant.”

“That’s what they are learning?”

“Well, that’s part of what they’re learning.”

“So what do they do with that?”

“They make better decisions.”

“So, you are teaching them how to make better decisions?  Can you make that into an objective?”

“Well, that’s the result although I’m not specifically providing decision making tools so I think that would be misleading.”

“Then how can they make better decisions?”

“Because I’m increasing their appreciation for the way their brain works which will help them think more critically as they work through a decision.”

“Can you give me an example?”

“Sure.  Suppose that you are ranking your employees during the annual review cycle.  While you think you are being objective, you are probably being influenced by your going-in opinion of that employee.  You will interpret someone’s performance data differently if you believe that they are a high performer versus a low performer.  In fact, you may unconsciously manipulate the data in such a way that the exact same data point will justify a good rating for the high performer and a poor rating for the low performer.”

“So you are going to help people make better performance management decisions”

“Yes”

“Can you put that down as an objective for the course?’

“No”

“How come?”

“Because that’s not what I am teaching in the course.  This course isn’t about performance management.”

“But you said they’ll be able to make better rating decisions.”

“They will, but they’ll be better at making ANY decision.  They will think better and will have a better appreciation for the unconscious biases that creep into their decision making.”

“You keep saying ‘appreciation’.  That doesn’t really sound like a skill.  Our people need skills.  How about this?  I’m going to send you a job aid about something called “Bloom’s Taxonomy”.  It’s really important for building good training.  It shows different levels of learning.  For each level there are a set of verbs that represent that level.  Why don’t you see if you can rewrite your objectives using some of those verbs.  It will help you focus on building skills and not just providing information, or appreciation, or whatever you are teaching.  I think it will make your workshop better.”

“Really? Changing the words in my objectives will improve my workshop?  That’s cool.”

“No, I don’t mean that it will change the workshop, it will just make it easier for people to understand what they are learning.”

[After receiving the attachment]  “But none of these verbs seem to apply to what I am teaching.  I think that if I were to use them, they’d confuse people.”

“How come?”

“Well it seems like these verbs are better suited for performing a specific task or set of tasks. My workshop is about changing people’s perceptions of how they think.”

“Have you actually taught this before?”

“Yes, it typically gets very high ratings and feedback.”

“Hmmmm.”

I have this conversation all of the time.  People seem to believe that if you can’t frame your objectives in terms of Bloom’s taxonomy, then you really don’t have an effective course.

But there is a major problem with that perception and with the way Bloom’s Taxonomy has generally been implemented in the corporate training world.  The job aid that this well-meaning person sent me (and the one that is probably sitting on 90% of training and development people’s computers) isn’t Bloom’s Taxonomy.  It’s the Cognitive Domain of Bloom’s Taxonomy.  There are two other, often ignored domains in Bloom’s taxonomy. One of these is as, if not more, important, in helping leaders and individuals navigate the modern workplace.

Bloom’s Taxonomy has three domains:  Cognitive, Affective, and Psychomotor.  Each domain focuses on a different aspect of learning that drives behavior and performance.

The cognitive domain is the one most often used in training.  It is the nuts and bolts of doing stuff, particularly knowledge worker type stuff.  Bloom’s levels of the cognitive domain increase the learner’s capacity for making sense of and using knowledge and information:

• Knowledge – the ability to recall and define
• Comprehension – the ability to compare and differentiate
• Application – the ability to use knowledge to solve a problem or perform a task
• Analysis – the ability to find relationships
• Synthesis – the ability to recombine knowledge into new ideas
• Evaluation – the ability to assess and judge the worthiness of an argument or idea

The cognitive domain is very much focused on the manipulation of knowledge to enable a person to perform a task.  However, it doesn’t address how the person thinks or feels about that knowledge.

The affective domain is where attitudes, emotions, and feelings are built.  This is where actual behavior change occurs.  Having knowledge or skills doesn’t matter if a person does not believe that there is value in using them.  The affective domain is where you build empathy and emotional intelligence.  It is where you change people’s perspective on the world.

The affective domain’s levels are quite different from the cognitive domain:

• Receiving – being attentive to a discussion or issue
• Responding – actively engaging the discussion or issue
• Valuing – assigning meaning and purpose (e.g., “worth”) to an idea
• Organizing – internalizing an idea or issue
• Characterizing – motiving and driving behavior based upon an idea or issue

Any type of performance requires learning in both the cognitive and affective domains. The affective domain might cause a person to want to do something, but without the cognitive domain they won’t have the tools to act.  Conversely, giving someone tools without attitude also won’t produce results.

Bloom also recognized that there is a physical component to some performance.  For that, he developed the psychomotor domain.  The levels in the psychomotor domain attempt to increase a person’s physical ability to interact with the world.  I’m not going to list them here, but there are quite different from the other two domains.  You can’t teach someone hand-eye coordination with the cognitive domain.  You have to throw a ball at them a bunch of times and give them feedback on how they (and their body) reacted to it!

Bloom’s complete taxonomy addressed three distinct aspects of learning – cognitive, affective, and psychomotor.  Problems in one of these areas can’t be fixed using the tools from the others.  Many aspects of performance require at least two if not all three of these domains.

Somewhere along the line, corporate training lost sight of the full taxonomy and began focusing solely on the cognitive domain.  However, in the last twenty years, we’ve come to realize that many of the issues that people face in the workplace are not cognitive (knowledge/skill); they are affective (attitude/belief/emotion).

By trying to fit everything into the cognitive domain (and its “verbs”), corporate training has effectively stripped out the part of learning that helps us become more human.  Ironically, when we read about the gaps in leadership and employee engagement, most aren’t lack of tools, they are lack of understanding and caring about one another.

In today’s world, much of a leader’s success depends on his or her attitude and beliefs.  The verbs in the cognitive domain don’t change attitude, they just build toolsets.  Attitude is about affect.

In many of my workshops leaders don’t take away a lot of new skills. I’m ok with that (as are they). What they take away is an entirely different worldview.  As a result, they become significantly more effective with whatever knowledge, skills, or tools that they choose to draw upon.

It’s time to give Bloom his due.  Stop short-changing the model.  Good training should change people.  We just have to become more sophisticated in the types of change that can occur.

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Brad Kolar is an executive consultant, speaker, and author.  He can be reached at brad.kolar@kolarassociates.com.