Accelerated learning is based on several important principles

Accelerated Learning elicits natural brilliance

Most conventional training courses are based on the principle of explaining a new skill to delegates, asking them to try it and then giving them time to finehone it. Unfortunately this is predictable, not to mention tedious, and it exposes delegates to a potentially lengthy period of 'not being able to do it yet' of which they will be acutely aware. This can result in complete withdrawal and failure to learn, and represent a toxic learning experience that remains present in years to come. Not surprisingly this is not going to maximize your training budget.

Being in the 'unconscious skilledness' zone (doing something so well that you can shake it out of your wrist without thinking), is the highest aspiration of most learners - it is the most wonderful zone to be in - and yet conventional teaching places learners firmly outside this zone, often for an extended period, which merely adds to the learners' frustration. Delegates spend all their time trying to understand what the unconscious skilled zone (flow) is like and how to get in it, rather than actually being in it. Most conventional courses are taught this way and it is not surprising that a few weeks after a course you would never know delegates had ever learnt anything new. It is a major indictment of training today.

In Accelerated Learning we avoid this by asking delegates to do a task which already involves doing the skills they have signed up to learn, but without them realizing that they are already doing it. We then ask them to tell us what they have just done - they become the scientists and researchers - and spend the rest of the day identifying the wobbles and using fun games to empower the delegates to excel. In this way delegates have a positive experience from the start. They learn that they do not need to be in the conscious skilled zone at all to learn, and can choose to be in 'The Zone' - performing at their best - all the time.

Accelerated Learning focuses on brilliant goal-setting

Most of us would like to think that when we learn something new, our learning curve would be represented on a graph by a slanting line of skills development starting bottom left and rising diagonally across the page in a smooth straight line to a peak of excellence in the upper right hand corner.

Reality shows this is far from the truth. We start off with a honeymoon period, when everything is new and exciting, and the first things we are shown about a new skill all make sense and seem easy to do. This is usually followed by a series of plunges into clumsiness when we realize that it will take more skill than we have at that point to achieve our goal. It is at any of these points on our learning curve that we can give up, if we have not cultivated the relevant internal and external reserves to carry us through, and it is at the first of these troughs when we are most likely to give up our endeavours.

Observation of successful change strategies in people shows us that maintaining a strong outcome, being determined, and cultivating a positive mental attitude - that one will be successful by taking baby steps over time - makes the difference between success and failure. Those learners who allow fear and negativity to enter into their thinking, experience a lowering of expectations and a corresponding drop in drive, which leads to failure. Those who do the opposite, succeed.

In our courses we elicit from our delegates a positive focus throughout the training. By giving delegates an early sense of already having achieved what they have come to learn - their goal - failure is not on the horizon. The focus is then simply on seeking eureka moments, applying the insights that these offer and celebrating the results of this as a means of enhancing an already brilliant output. In essence we put delegates at the Goal to start with and facilitate them to learn skills that will ensure that they stay there.

Accelerated Learning makes you smart

We seek to teach delegates to formulate motivational outcomes that are SMART - specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and timed (in terms of being specific, we take this way beyond what most delegates expect) - and which are therefore far more likely to elicit the skills and reserves needed to achieve success.

We invite and teach delegates to review their goals and factor in their most recent enlightenment so that their goals will remain SMART and serve them well as a motivational force for the longer term. This directly opposes the rather more common human experience of people tending to ditch their goals or sabotaging their own success when they feel their circumstances change and they feel that they are not aligned to their sense of purpose.

We teach that it is better to rephrase a goal - to own it and play with it to get it right - than it is to throw it out at the first hurdle. This has nothing to do with compromise and everything to do with learning about accurate self-assessment and how to be a canny learner. We call this NOPS and we regard this as the key to being a successful learner of anything and someone who is able to move and develop in tune with their environment.

N = notice what is happening
O = own it
P = play with it
S = stay with it

Accelerated Learning expands your mind

Howard Gardner, a luminary in the field of learning, identified that human beings have multiple intelligences, defined as below. He recognized that each person can be naturally gifted in any two or three of these, and that these gifts will be motivational forces in their lives, determining the careers, leisure interests and the nature and course of their relationships.

Picture smart - visual/spatial
Logic smart - logic/mathematical
Word smart - verbal/ linguistics
Music smart - music/song/instruments
Nature smart - nature/environmental
Body smart - physical/tactile
People smart - interpersonal/communications
Self smart - intrapersonal/philosophical

Gardner identified that if we use our leading gifts in our approach to learning, we will have a more profound learning experience - 'Deep Learning' - and so find it easier to recall the things that we have learned. By the same token, if we use those thinking skills for which we have no natural gift, this learning style will produce stress, under-achievement, demotivation and failure. In career terms and for children in education this can be devastating.

As AL trainers we know that we must apply the principles of multiple intelligences, both in structure and content, to achieve maximum results. On a course every kind of gift will be present and so to capture the audience fully we must bring their interests in. This means multi-sensory learning for everyone.

Accelerated Learning gets learning into the muscle

To use multiple intelligences in the training arena is to allow delegates to build more neural connections across more parts of the brain - whole brain learning - all of which will be available for use in future learning, thus building creativity, problem-solving, lateral thinking and mental focus. It creates a safe, playful environment for people to explore the material to be learned, get comfortable with it, and subsume it so that they get it into the muscle.

Although there are many more principles in Accelerated Learning to apply than we have outlined here, we hope that this has given you a sense of how important this material is in the world of education, training and human development, and showed you our commitment towards putting this out into the world.

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