HR professionals are often tasked with the challenge of creating lively and entertaining ways to engage with the learner. Lucie Benson speaks exclusively to Bill Bryson, the world-renowned author, to find out how he brought “dry” subjects to life in his award-winning book. Plus she looks at some other options available to employers too.

It can sometimes be a challenge to create fun and compelling ways of engaging with the learner. More often than not, the topics can be dry or dull and the trainer is tasked with the responsibility of bringing those topics alive and making them interesting and motivating.

Bill Bryson, the highly sucessful author, successfully managed to bring what some might call the “dry” topic of science to life through his best-selling book, “A Short History of Nearly Everything”, even managing to inject his famous wit into a subject that isn’t normally associated with humour.

Delegates of the CIPD’s HRD conference last month benefitted from Bryson’s wealth of experience in this area, when he spoke at a seminar there. But don’t worry if you missed it because Bryson also talked exclusively to HR Zone, to tell us how, based on his experience researching his book in which he made topics such as particle physics seem exciting, you can add sparkle to various subjects and really engage with the learner.

“My experience with doing books or articles on dull topics is that when you start looking into something, and it doesn’t really matter what, you will always find interesting aspects to it,” he explains. “I am always struck, once I start looking into it, about how fascinating it can be, and I question why they didn’t put this in my textbook at school. People who write textbooks are often concerned with just conveying information that they forget they have a responsibility to interest, excite and engage you, and I think that is a terrible flaw.”

Human interest

The human angle to the information is key, says Bryson. “What you have to do is capture people and get them excited, interested and absorbed by telling them firstly about the human interest part of the story, then giving them the hard information, because by then they are ready for it,” he comments. “I do think that all kinds of people whose job it is to convey information can lose sight of that, and it is the easiest thing in the world to fascinate people with what is interesting.”

Bryson advises that, whatever field you are in, you have to constantly remind yourself what it is that excites you about the information you are trying to convey. “I really do think that 90 per cent of any teaching is just an enthusiasm for the subject and conveying that to others,” he remarks. “And it really doesn’t matter what that subject is – in fact, I just came back from a trip to Turkey and I had to go to a demonstration on how they made handmade rugs. I didn’t want to go but I had to. This guy came out and he was brilliant. He absolutely loved rugs. In the end, I found it so interesting that I could have stayed there all day.”

Using this example, Bryson enthuses that no matter what the topic is, there isn’t anything in the world that really isn’t interesting. “I think that one of the most remarkable things about human beings is that we do have this irrepressible curiosity to find out what others know. And yet, so many people forget that it ought to be fun and entertaining.”

And there are plenty of opportunities out there for businesses to provide their staff with “fun and entertaining” ways of learning. Consultancy firm ChangeMaker helps organisations to develop the talent within it, by using a development process called “discovery learning”.

Improving your business

ChangeMaker provides a programme for its clients called “Warrior School” which is for managing directors, executive teams or business owners who want fresh perspectives on how to improve their business.

The programme involves a five-day trip to northern Kenya, to meet and interact with the Maasai tribe. It offers participants the opportunity to understand how a warrior culture is built and sustained, and the value that would bring to their business.

“The Warrior School helps people to explore how to create a warrior culture by allowing them to see it in action, ask people real questions and learn from wisdom rather than theory,” explains Chris Howe, founder and director of ChangeMaker. “A warrior culture is not ‘macho’; the qualities of this culture are humility, contribution, pride, confidence and belonging. If an organisation had that as its culture, it would be a fantastic place to be.”

During the trip, participants stay in a lodge that is run by the Maasai and all the money they earn from that goes back into the community. “We go into a Maasai community each day, so we work with participants each morning and discuss what they really want to learn that day,” says Howe. “If it is leadership, for example, we will ask the community how they create and develop leaders in their environment, and how leaders deal with non-compliant behaviour and so on.”

People will then go into the Maasai community, sit with the leaders and ask them those questions. “We will also ask other people in the community, including the women and children,” adds Howe. “The interesting thing is if you do that, you will get a consistent view, whereas if you went into most organisations and asked 100 people at random how they create leaders there, I guarantee you would get 80 different answers.”

After talking to the community, there is a debrief to discuss what was learnt and how it can be applied in their business. “It is a very active form of learning and my job is to guide that process,” remarks Howe. “The learning comes from the interaction with the Maasai, as they are giving real life examples and telling stories about what they do and how they do it. It is very human way of learning some very complex, and sometimes dry, topics. People learn in different ways, obviously, but for me it is about trying to create programmes that blend all those intelligences and engage people in a way that ensures they enjoy learning.”

Humour in training

Video Arts produces training films for businesses. The films take a serious message and deliver it in a humorous and engaging way so as to make it memorable. The company was established over 30 years ago and famously used John Cleese in its videos, who pioneered the use of humour in training.

“People don’t learn if they are bored or distracted,” says Martin Addison, managing director of Video Arts. “The best way to teach people is to entertain them at the same time, and that was the ethos behind how our company started, in terms of producing training films that are high quality and use recognisable famous faces.”

The company has now progressed from VHS cassettes to DVDs and, more recently, to video-streaming along the lines of YouTube. “This progression does not change what is at our centre, which is people having fun during the experience and in turn retaining an awful lot more of the information,” remarks Addison.

Topics covered in the films include the rather dry subject of “finance for non-financial managers”.

“This is for people having to learn how profit and loss or cash-flow forecasts work,” explains Addison. “It is a popular programme, which in 25 minutes explains how all the financial documents work and stars Dawn French and John Cleese. It is a perfect illustration of how a very dry subject can be made entertaining and it is amazing, for the people who use it, how much they actually retain from seeing this kind of subject set out in that way.”

Another area that is popular is people skills, for instance, interview techniques, appraisals and so on, says Addison. “Being able to see something that is comedy-based, and non-threatening, where you can see somebody else making a mess of it, and then actually discover the right ways of doing things, is a very strong way to use humour and make the experience fun, but at the same time still install the really important lessons to be learned.”

Bryson concludes by advising that the only trick to it all is to just find the parts of the information that excite you and hope that if you present it to others with enough enthusiasm and interest, then they will become engaged with it too. “They don’t always, but surprisingly often they do,” he remarks. “And it isn’t because the factors are necessarily all that inherently interesting, it is just because you have presented it with enthusiasm, which is always infectious.”