Teaching or Learning?
Do you teach a curriculum or plan to offer a curriculum/training program through your business?
Below, I share with you three lessons I've learned from being an entrepreneur and from being an accreditation and curriculum leader in higher education.
1. Informal Learning.
People are learning from you, even if there is no set curriculum.
The way you get up every morning and carve out a life for yourself teaches someone something. You are teaching people to stay curious, to persist, to set and revise goals, to set boundaries, to trust themselves, to ask for support and to accept that support. I am not saying you are perfect at any of these actions. You don't have to be.
Also, the act of just learning how to use your product or service equips your clients/learners/users with new knowledge and new skills.
2. Formal/Structured Learning.
What people learn is more important than what you teach.
If you have a structured curriculum, you can teach until you are blue in the face and never connect with your learners. Your words must hold meaning for the learner. You must offer the lesson in a mode (writing, video, audio, etc. ) that makes sense for the learner. Otherwise, they cannot hear you.
If you are instructing in ways that work for you only, you are teaching for the sake of teaching. Learning may not necessarily happen. You have to do your research. YOU have to be the learner, first. You have to learn what your user needs to receive knowledge or skills through your program.
This leads to my third point.
3. Formal/Structured Learning.
Structure your client's learning process around measurable outcomes. Building a program based on measurable outcomes helps you and the learner decide quickly if they've learned what you said they would learn through the process you provide them.
For example, here are some general outcomes clients/learners/users can expect from engaging in my coaching/consulting program.
Upon completing my 4-week coaching/consulting, clients/learner/users will be able to:
Identify 5 core values in their business
State one long-term vision of their business (consistent with values)
In a simple sentence, state their single business mission (consistent with values)
Identify their ideal client
Describes wants, needs, beliefs and values of their ideal client
More specific outcomes might include the client's/learner's/user's being able to:
Design one (efficient, low burden) workflow, from end-to-end, for their client intake process or
Set up the processes to deliver one weekly or monthly newsletter for their community or
Develop one market research plan that describes activity across platforms or
Develop one client journey map.
At the end of my coaching/consulting program, the client and I can evaluate (together and individually) whether they have demonstrated the skills named above.
Starting with measurable outcomes will help you build a curriculum, step-by-step. Having measurable outcomes guides what you will cover and what activities the learners will engage in to demonstrate they achieved an outcome - they gained a new skill.
If you have ADHD, you can generate lots of ideas. Starting with measurable outcomes provides you a framework that helps you decide which of your brilliant ideas belongs in the conversation - and which do not. Having clear, measurable outcomes and having a process to archive ideas that do not support those outcomes allow you to create without over-censoring yourself. You can park the ideas that do not fit the current outcomes in a generic folder, for future use, as part of another framework.