Randy Sabourin, Co-President In response, organizations are implementing strategies to increase diversity, improve equity, and build inclusive cultures. Practica Learning has been helping them achieve these vital transformations by equipping their leaders to lead conversations about DEI-related issues confidently. The company helps businesspeople learn, practice, and master inclusive conversation skills using Deliberate Practice.
In conversation with Manage HR’s editorial team, Randy Sabourin, the Co-President of Practica Learning, shares his insights on how the company provides engaging, immersive, and compelling DEI learning experiences to its clients.
How is Practica Learning positioned in the DEI learning space?
From our beginning, we’ve helped businesspeople practice difficult coaching, sales or leadership conversations on a one-to- one basis. But eight years ago, our clients began coming to us saying we also have diversity-related situations that we want to integrate into these practice conversations. So, we started incorporating scenarios where, for example, bullying, harassment, or exclusion were challenges.
The results have been excellent. The data is fascinating from all kinds of angles. For example, we’ve learned that even when leaders are consistently good at coaching, they tend to be poor at behaviours like unconscious bias or homophobia. Of course, they’re also afraid of those conversations, but our analysis reveals gaps in critical skills such as curiosity, listening, and empathy.
To address those issues, we provide an opportunity for them to practice with us – privately, one-on-one, and in a safe virtual environment. When they work with our Roleplayer Coaches, they can try new things, make mistakes, and try again. And there’s no consequence. We’re there to help them learn, practice, and master tough conversations – not judge or test them.
What challenges are your clients currently facing?
This year attracting and retaining talent is a massive issue for our clients. They know that employees choose to join or stay at their organizations primarily based on their immediate manager. They understand that it’s the manager’s role to build an environment of psychological safety. To join (and stay), employees need to feel included, safe to learn, safe to contribute, and safe to challenge the status quo – all without fear of being embarrassed, marginalized, or punished in some way.
And this safety is built mainly through conversations between the manager and the employee or team. So, our clients are coming to us and saying, you know, we need to make a difference in these conversations. We need to instill a culture of safety.
They also tell us that their customers want to be respected, and they want to be understood as having a diverse set of needs and wants. But unfortunately, diverse customers often experience unconscious bias in customer transactions, and I think they are fed up with it.
As a result, companies are looking for help to skill up their customer-facing employees. No customer should face discrimination on any basis. So we help their employees to build awareness of their biases, and we help build skills they need to serve clients in a diverse marketplace.
How do you deliver impactful learning solutions to your clients?
Practica Learning provides one-on-one learning experiences that combine practice with professional actors with personalized expert coaching and feedback. It is a brain-based learning methodology. We’ve been applying it successfully for 22 years, but I imagine it’s new to most of your readers, so let me explain how it works.
The bottom line is that if you practice something, you get better at it. Anyone who has tried an athletic pursuit or music or art knows this. But here’s what research in the last 15 years has taught us. Simply doing the same thing over and over will not make you a master. The truth is that how you practice makes a big difference. The very best experts, athletes, musicians, and artists do five things:
1. Choose the skills they want to practice and outline them in detail
2. Measure where they are now, define they want to be, and track their progress
3. Work with an expert – a professional that understands the skills
4. They practice in real-time and receive real-time feedback and coaching from that expert
5. Gradually, increase the level of challenge, so there’s stress and even a little anxiety
We apply this methodology to practicing essential business conversations. Here’s an example. A client recently said, “we think our 5000 managers are not competent at displaying empathy during crucial coaching conversations. We want threequarters of them to be competent, so that’s our target.”
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We create a safe environment for participants while introducing real-life scenarios and situations that induce stress among leaders. Imitating real-life conversations, leaders become aware of the consequences and also have the liberty to learn from their mistakes
In turn, we developed a series of practice scenarios to help managers build competence with empathy. And then, we measured where they were at the start and when they finished. The final solution was a fully customized virtual learning experience with real-time feedback that aligned with the client’s existing business models, supported their current programs, and ultimately aided them in achieving strategic goals.
How have you enabled clients to overcome hurdles and attain desired outcomes?
Here’s another example. Two years ago, a large airline asked us to help their managers who were noticing microaggressions and unconscious bias in difficult conversations with employees. The airline had two goals: first, to help their managers respond in real-time and to demonstrate that they cared enough to invest in training.
Over a year and a half, we worked with over 1000 managers to practice four difficult coaching conversations. Half of these scenarios were about microaggressions, unconscious bias, and diversity.
And the data was impressive. Not only did 78% of participating managers demonstrate empathy but over 90% expressed deep appreciation for the opportunity to practice in a safe environment. In subsequent internal polling, they said they felt for the first time in years that the airline truly cared for them.
What makes Practica Learning stand out in the marketplace?
Ultimately, it’s our years of experience that clients value most. Since 2000, we’ve helped hundreds of thousands of professionals to practice one-on-one for no more than the cost of attending a virtual classroom session. In that time, we’ve refined an approach to customizing design that allows us to fit easily and comfortably into our clients’ eco-systems. And, as I mentioned earlier, participants love the safe environment we create. As a result, they consistently rate us as the most valuable learning they’ve ever experienced.
