Follow That Squirrel!

I love the Disney/Pixar movie Up!. It's a cute story, but the real value lies is that it finally gave us a name to those random distractions that draw our attention away from something we're trying to concentrate on - squirrels.

In life, real squirrels are small, cute, fuzzy, and the bane of my father's existence since they have been wrecking his attempts to plant a beautiful flower garden in front of his house for decades.

In learning, squirrels can be tangent conversations that appear to pull you away from your training plan and send you in directions that can seem off-topic and useless.

Did you catch it? Did you see the "appear to" and "seem" in the previous sentence? If you did, give yourself 5 extra points.

I'm a great believer in squirrels in learning. What some can see as a distraction or deviation from the lesson plan, I see as a door opening. When squirrels appear during a learning session, participants are starting to open their minds up to what's going on in the room and inject what's going on in their heads to what's going on in the room.

That's not to say that conversation squirrels can't get out of hand. A good teacher or facilitator needs to watch for squirrels, let them run around the room for a little bit, then gently connect the squirrel back to the original conversation. If you're not careful in monitoring them, squirrels can quickly multiply and take over the classroom.

So how do you cultivate the kind of squirrels that are beneficial to learning? Everyone should develop their own technique, but one that works really well for me is to plant acorns in the conversation with tidbits from my personal life or experience that are relevant to what we're learning. This acts as a signal to others in the room that it's OK to open up and share their relevant personal experiences.

Try it sometime and see for yourself!