You hear the complaint all the time, “I spend money on training and my team just goes back to the old way of doing things.” 

Anyone who has ever been to a college campus has noticed the paved sidewalks and the inevitable dirt path shortcut through what used to be grass. People use the shortcut. 

Training is the mental equivalent of practice. You train first so that you reduce mistakes. You practice moves or sequences so that you eliminate the use of the conscious brain. You automate physical and mental responses. That’s training. You continue to train to make your brain and body have no other choice but to do something one way — and only one way. 

Not to get too into the weeds, but most training in the automotive aftermarket is poor education and little to no training whatsoever. Education is the exploration of an idea — what is an alignment, how alignments work, theory, concepts and math. Education is the acquisition of new knowledge and the adoption of the concept into a person’s life. Training is the repetition of physical or mental gymnastics to repeat the process exactly so that the outcome is uniform. 

If education is poor, knowledge is lost. If training is poor, the repeated process dissolves into “the old way of doing things.” Why does the old way usually win out? It had the benefit of good training. It has years of repetition — thousands of times of execution that make it comfortable to use. Sure, the results may not be great, but the process is as comfy as your favorite chair. 

It’s not just an industry problem, though we have unique issues within the problem. For one, most training events are a “subject matter expert” in front of a small audience, simply telling the class what something is and how it works. Telling isn’t training. And training isn’t education. 

Going back to our college analogy, everyone who is subject to American schooling knows the class they hated the most was the lecture, one-way communication designed to dump a massive amount of information on the learner, followed by a test or quiz at some interval. In an almost universal fashion, once the test is over, the information is dumped out onto the lawn to be used as fertilizer for the grass, where no one walks. 

Don’t even get me started on “e-learning,” where the lecture is replaced by slides or fancy videos. It’s still just a one-way communication technique and — surprise, surprise — it’s usually followed by a quiz. Guess what happens after an e-learning quiz? 

Education is a guided tour of information. In capable hands, it’s an exploration of ideas presented in a very structured way that increases the chances of adoption. The idea is that “This information works in my world. It helps me personally.” In order to do that, communication has to be opened in a two-way format. The learner has to be able to ask tough questions. Either the content or the instructor may have an answer, but the questions — the doubts and the voiced concerns — have to breathe. The grass needs a chance to grow. And it doesn’t end with adoption. Just because an idea is good and seems to work in real life does not guarantee repeated use.

How many of us have seen a technician use his palm to strike an object on a vehicle when his hammer is 10 feet away? Can you train that technician to use a hammer? You can educate him, sure. The best teacher? Wrist pain. 

Dialogue, which is the best two-way communication, can be done in a classroom or online. E-learning is terrible, but distance education is not. Dialogue shares ideas and concerns in a structured way, while leaving the decision to adopt up to the learner. Then the training — the repetition — takes place. 

Training must occur in an environment where the outcome doesn't exist. Training is for the process — not the results. You don’t train to learn how to parachute by going to 10,00 feet on your first day. You train first to find your mistakes. You practice and make corrections. The outcome is irrelevant. Once you stop making mistakes, then you test your outcomes. If you didn’t believe the education would work, you shouldn’t have practiced it. 

Education is dialogue to figure out if something can be applied. Training is practice, making it impossible to do anything else. Teaching something is not just being an expert on the subject. It’s knowing how to build a path toward an outcome where the results reflect the effort.