How do you create an optimal learning experience? In this episode, we dive into theories around flow, challenge level, and Vygotsky's "zone of proximal development."
Guest: Mathieu Penot, Production Manager at IXL Learning
On LinkedIn | https://www.linkedin.com/in/mathieupenot/
Host: Josh Mason
On ITSPmagazine 👉 https://www.itspmagazine.com/itspmagazine-podcast-radio-hosts/joshua-mason
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Episode Introduction
Discover how gamification, storytelling, community-building, and managing risk-taking can immerse learners while expanding their growth. Learn how to leverage the Super Mario effect to spark motivation through reward systems. We discuss research-backed methods for keeping students engaged, whether they are children in a classroom or employees training new skills. Join us as we learn the latest science behind making learning fun!
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Resources
Wide Walls Podcast: https://www.widewallspodcast.com/
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For more podcast stories from Loops and Lifecycles Podcast with Josh Mason, visit: https://www.itspmagazine.com/loops-and-lifecycles-podcast
Watch the webcast version on-demand on YouTube: (coming soon)
Flow, Challenge, and the Zone of Proximal Development: Optimizing the Learning Process | A Conversation with with Mathieu Penot | Loops and Lifecycles Podcast with Josh Mason
[00:00:00] Welcome to this episode of loops and life cycles today I have with me. Matthew Pineau who has quite an extensive background. We're going to talk about training education and how we can improve ourselves and our business. By continually looking for those spaces. For growth. The beginning of this conversation is actually going to be on Matthew's podcast. Which is. Wide walls.
And I will have a link to that in the description below.
What you are hearing is the second half of our conversation. And if you enjoy it, please. Reach out and. Go check out the first half of the conversation on wide walls. Thank you. Matthew, could you tell me a little bit about yourself? Let the listeners know your background, what you're up to
Mathieu: Yeah, sure. So my name is Gio Puno. I live in San Francisco. I'm born and raised in France. And I'm currently a product [00:01:00] manager for the, a tech company called IL Learning. And I'm someone who's very passionate about learning, especially like hands-on learning and creative learning. That's the, I feel I've walked in for the past eight years.
It's been like three years in, in Singapore developing an app to help young children of science through hands on activities and doing a lot of workshops and camps and activities with kids around making and learning. Before that I was an engineer. So that's, that was my first degree as a industrial product designer.
Didn't do much of that. Mostly. Doing stuff with cardboard and paper, which is, but but it gave me a good like frame framework in a good baseline for a lot of things afterwards. Yeah, very passionate about education in general and super excited to talk about all these topics with you.
Josh: So I'm spending a lot of time building out labs and some on demand material and you are building some training educational software. How do you think we [00:02:00] can try to apply that, getting that emotion, getting that interest, getting that storytelling into this? In impersonal sort of education.
Mathieu: that's a big question. That's really hard. Especially when you work on a software at a certain scale. Like mine is a, it's very large scale software that's used by literally millions of students. And so
Josh: Yeah.
Mathieu: it's really hard to personalize. And I think, so obviously the first thing you do. Is to turn to extrinsic motivation.
So more like badges, levels, leaderboards, those kinds of things, which work to a certain level. It does create a little bit of motivation and it does help. But it's definitely not going to create much like emotional attachment to learning itself because it doesn't matter what you're learning.
It could be one subject to another because what you're interested in is that real world, not so much how you get there. [00:03:00] So the question of like how do you make that like the journey interesting is much harder. I'm, I have big hopes with generative AI that it could provide like Reframe the problems you're working on, the whatever you're working on in that specific tool that you're creating basically reframed the problems and experience to be more personal by knowing certain things about you by knowing certain things you're interested in and be able to. And we're back to that story element, right? Be able to build a little story that is going to be only for you. And interactive AI is able to do that in ways that are in like normal language, in like human language that is understandable by by anyone.
Josh: Sure.
Mathieu: Is it easy to do? It's
Josh: you worry about privacy in a situation
Mathieu: definitely a lot. Yeah. There's definitely a lot of elements that are tricky with that. You don't control the output or you don't really know what's. It's you're not [00:04:00] sure a hundred percent what's going to come out of it. So that's tricky. You need to be careful with what kind of
Josh: just thinking.
Mathieu: as well.
For sure. Yeah.
Josh: There's a way I think of making it repeatable and while, and personal and interactive I think of Skyrim and the Fallout games.
Josh: Dead Redemption these games where you've got NPCs that interact with you based off of your actions And that's it's very hasn't employed generative AI yet but if you could have that sort of thing for your player character in this educational software where maybe it's You've given your character you give your character a name.
That's not necessarily you But now you've taken that on and then it can interact with you in that way where it feels personal without getting actually personal and your facts, your
Mathieu: Yeah.
Josh: information about you in this pretend world.
Mathieu: Yeah, that's true. That's true. That makes sense. [00:05:00] That's I like that. It makes me think back on the, not back. Just make me think of the. The assistant that can Academy created with generative AI can me go, if you like heard of it, like seen some of it, but they've been doing some amazing, like groundwork on like using generative AI to create a, that teaching assistants that's personalized to children.
And the part I was most excited about for that is the Creating a thought partner for creative writing. And it relate a little bit to that. So you don't necessarily immerse into a game or something more immersive like this, which would be like ideal. Actually games are such an amazing way to, to teach.
It's like such a powerful tool for learning. That's probably not used enough for it. But that's another topic. But basically the idea is that it gave you like that third partner that does not need to know things about you, but can bounce back on what you say and suggest ideas, build on your ideas, push [00:06:00] you to like, come up with new ideas and things you want to write about.
And in the end it becomes personal because it's only going to be the result of that conversation that you have with that AI tool. So it's going to be different for everybody. Yeah. And eventually it's going to make you move forward with your writing. And by doing that differently, like you're going to learn, we've talked about creative writing in particular.
It's definitely gonna help you get better at it. So that's something that I find very exciting and I wonder how applicable it is to other subjects as well.
Josh: yeah. I think it can be if you're willing to take the time to make it
Josh: That's, it's been one of my takeaways over the past several years is. So many of these things crossover we are describing looking at this process and seeing how we can improve it. Is that not the six Sigma way
Josh: For this process improvement? I, you're doing project management on like software development, right? So I imagine there's sprints and there's cycles in that same [00:07:00] way, there's going to be either features or bugs that are going to be worked on during that sprint. And that's an outcome that you're working towards based off of what's been in the past. If we can take the same idea, could we gamify how we do that process? Rather than using these features for education, could we use the same same idea? What we're talking about in gamifying the training and the education. Can we gamify Just work building the gamified training
Mathieu: For sure.
Josh: and yeah,
is there a way of doing that doesn't, you don't have to go so far out there that you have to build a whole thing, but is there a way of implementing it in just the way, I think earlier we, you talked about trying to employ certain things in a classroom, and trying to employ that gamification, Or that play the hero's journey, that arc and storytelling. You can't necessarily do it in every lesson. And I don't know that we would [00:08:00] want to do it in every single meeting or every single sprint. But is there something that we could take from that? Is there a core element of that? First principles, if you will? The reason why that works that we could take with us?
Mathieu: yeah that's interesting. I don't really have an answer to that, but that. I'm sure it's possible I don't either.
I'm sure it's possible. And yeah, maybe it's going on a tangent instead of re before we start questions, but it makes me think,
Josh: is what I do.
Mathieu: makes me think of the social aspect of it as well.
Cause in that, the social aspect is so very important to, to get someone engaged, whether it's at work or. Or at school or like learning. And so I think when we talk about gamification like we think of those immediately we think of those badges and stuff like that. And then we can think of
Josh: badges,
Mathieu: what you meant, then the idea of like more for some form of like story or narrative, that's like leveling up the gamification for sure.
And I think maybe there's definitely an [00:09:00] element on the social aspect of it that. That can be very useful. I know like in companies, like in my company or like other companies I've seen, there's the the certain concepts of like giving tacos to people who did something great for you. And and at the end, whoever gets the most tacos gets like,
some sort of reward, like a bottle of champagne or something like it's some kind of like social element to it that makes you want to like work with others and also work better and collaborate more. And so there's a form of gamification there, I think in building up and encouraging the social interactions within work.
Josh: Yeah. And that, yeah.
I just, I, sorry, my brain goes all over the place. It makes these weird connections. I recently saw a a video of an old Budweiser commercial. It's in an office and someone swears and they're like, put a dollar in the swear jar. And they're like, what are we going to do with that?
It's I don't know. So now everyone's like [00:10:00] swearing so they can put money in there. And at the end, it's like an all call that everyone's holding a beer.
Mathieu: I love that.
Josh: the boss is like giving this great speech and everyone is interested. And he just keeps swearing. So they're putting more money in there. But this idea it pulled people together,
Mathieu: Yeah.
Josh: And it's not necessarily. The tacos, the like props the golden, like stickers, like stars. If you make it be like a weird thing, that's not going to work. But if you can find something that the office that the team is interested in, that's like a little bit of playful, that takes away that tension that makes it a little more comfortable.
That makes it personal, more personal to
Mathieu: create sense of community, right? You wanna create a sense of community. Yeah.
Josh: We don't want people to take unnecessary steps in their programming and create more technical debt and bugs, but we do want them to care about their coding. And yeah, could we throw out some kudos and points [00:11:00] for folks who are doing a great job or,
Mathieu: example of the coins is very interesting because it makes me think of something that I saw in a cultural, which museum it was, maybe it was the Exploratorium in San Francisco or another museum, but I found it like so brilliant. Basically he had three like big jars where you could put a dollar or something like this.
But basically the rule was. So it was something around climate change and it was like, those are like three measures we can do. You can only give 1, which one you're going to give it to. And so that forces you, cause you're like, Oh, I want to make sure I give it to the right place. And so that forces you to
Josh: only got so many resources.
Mathieu: what it is about, think what would make the most impact, engage with the content and then eventually like you put it somewhere.
But yeah, it, we,
Josh: That's huge for a museum because you could bring all these ideas and then really applying like what can we take
Mathieu: yeah. And it goes back to [00:12:00] seen all these displays. You thought of all this stuff. Now, you've actually gotta interact with it. Like, where would you
And it goes back to stakes, right? Like suddenly there's something at stake. Even if it's as small as a dollar, there's something at stake. Like you have to make the right decision. Yeah. So that I found this like brilliance, simple and brilliance. Yeah.
Josh: Have you Do you know who Mark Rober is? The former NASA,
Mathieu: And YouTuber
Josh: he's got his TED talk on the the Mario
Mathieu: I've not watched it. I need to watch it. Yeah. I watch all these YouTube videos and I encourage everybody to watch his YouTube videos, start with the squirrel one and you're going to love it. Yeah.
Josh: It's highly addicting. I like that even in those videos, he tries to find a nugget
Mathieu: Oh yeah. The learning. Now.
Josh: it's this exactly,
Mathieu: I know precisely what squirrels do when they jump and fall. I know that they jump. The first thing they do is like oriented, orient their head towards the ground to see where they're going to land. Then turn [00:13:00] their body to, I remember that precisely. And that's because the video was so fun and engaging.
And I it's like, why would I know that? But because he brought it in. Yeah.
Josh: And like the crazy takeaways from that is it entertaining? Yes. But squirrels there's this video Mark Robert does because people might not know what we're talking about. He's a former NASA engineer. He's got a YouTube channel and during the pandemic he was at home bored and he noticed the squirrels in his backyard.
And so he made an obstacle course for squirrels and videotaped it over several months. And it's a great piece of YouTube. It's a good way to waste a half hour. And in the end, yeah, you'll learn about some squirrel anatomy and how they work, but also like the watching the squirrels in there and how they interact and how they problem solve as they're going through.
It's Ooh, what do we do? Like, how do, how could we set up scenarios [00:14:00] like this in order to train to an objective? And then also we can get real matter. There were things that mark set up hoping the squirrels would act a certain way or do something funny and then they did something Totally different.
It was like whoa was not expecting that. How often do we run into that in training in
Mathieu: Oh yeah. All the time.
Josh: You have a certain goal and then you throw this thing out there and all of a sudden the takeaway was not what you
Mathieu: And show the practice of reflection, which I love too, because when it's specifically in, yeah, in his videos, again, for me, it's one of the most perfect examples, like great way to teach things there's, he always shows things that don't work and shows the reflection behind like why didn't work and how it's actually fun that it didn't work.
And found that we need to find another way to make it work and then go through that process of, okay, how can we do it in a different way? Do it better, which is so important. And it's like that whole like practice and
Josh: failure isn't Yeah, it doesn't [00:15:00] stop
Mathieu: it's It is a step towards doing things
For you, what is, what makes engineering interesting among other things, because that's where you have to scratch your head and come up with some innovative solutions to solve the challenge. We got a Nintendo Switch for Christmas, which I know is like old news now. But with our kids and my easy addiction to video games, because I remember getting a Super Nintendo when I was their age and that was the new stuff. So we finally got one. My daughters love one of these Zelda games where it's like From the top, they don't like actually playing other than like in the safe space in the village because they're worried about getting hit by one of the bad guys and like losing their hearts.
Josh: And I've shown them like worst case scenario, like a little screen comes up, you hit continue and it pops you right back to where you were before. Like nothing bad is going to happen, but they're so scared of that failure, you gotta [00:16:00] have that to learn how to
Josh: And it's one of those where do I want them to get good at the game?
I really don't care. I want to watch that process in their little
Mathieu: Yeah.
Josh: Like trying the thing and being like, oh, it didn't work, now I want to try it again. That's my favorite part of
Mathieu: Yeah.
Josh: is when you can see that worked out across their face. You've done a lot of workshops.
Have you seen? Things along those lines kids like struggling and then hitting that eureka
Mathieu: for sure. Especially when working on all those like hands on projects. Once they have a goal in mind, an objective that they want to achieve Oh, I want to build that robot. I want to make that thing move a certain way. Like once they have that in mind. that will go through so many, like so much effort to get there.
And
Josh: Yeah.
Mathieu: the older they get, the less like willing they are to like, just try and see how it goes. There's going to be a little more anxiety or more like planning and let's make sure everything's aligned properly [00:17:00] before I try when they. Younger, it's just Oh, let's put it that way. Boom.
Oh, that doesn't work. Okay. Let's let's just remove that. I'll try again. And they go through the cycles like much faster because they're less worried. Again, that's a generalization. You're going to have some kids that are going to be very like particular. I know, but you tend to like when you get older of less.
Yeah.
Josh: What do you think is behind that? Do you think it's a societal, like not wanting to fail or is it like not wanting to look like a failure in front of peers or. Do we train kids or maybe the society train kids? So like you wary
Mathieu: feel so I feel it's because you're getting more and more aware of. Others and like others perception of you. And so that becomes a consideration where when you're like three, four, five years old, you don't care what people think of what you do as much. So you just do your things. And so when you start caring about what people think of what you do, suddenly it becomes much more stressful to really give into [00:18:00] all the things you want to create.
So I think that's a big one. And it's definitely. It could be like something that's purely internal and already based on reality. The thing is you also receive a lot of judgment. Like whether it's from school, when you're at school, whether it's from parents I've seen some kids that create something and their parents being like, ah, that's not really, no let's do it that different way.
But next time you're going to think twice before you, you build it that way and presents your parents because. You're like, Oh, it's I did wrong at the beginning. I don't care. The more you go, you're like, I'm the more I don't want to do it wrong. Cause you also don't want to disappoint. So yeah I feel definitely that there's, it's an external pressure that you get on yourself.
And like when we adult, there's nothing we do. I don't feel we do anything really freely or very little. Like we are, most of us, we always have a. So it'd be enough. What will such and such, I think about it and it can be like a small group where it can be like what everybody's going [00:19:00] to think about it.
Sometimes it's just what will my partner think about it? What will my parents think about it? What will my colleagues think about it? There's always going to be a little, how is this going to be received rather than just yourself? What do you think about it? And sometimes it's good. It's just so create some boundaries in what you create, but you definitely don't have that much I would say agency in like the thing you do.
Josh: there's a term that we use in cybersecurity risk appetite where an organization will. Choose to do something at a certain level of risk based on their risk appetite. And it can be things from like big companies wanting to buy a new company. Is this something that we can afford to be wrong on?
And how much are we willing to be wrong on? If we were to make this merger, say we've got the money we can do it. And we're at the point, yes or no. Then comes the decision of all those other things that come into What will this mean to the rest of our company? And if this bombs [00:20:00] completely, what's going to be the impact on the existing organization or the new organization? We take that into cyber security. You've got all these threats that happen that could happen potentially. Like, how likely are you to be a target? Like, how much do you have to lose? How much do you want to spend to protect the things that that you could lose. There's this idea. You don't want to spend you don't want to have a thousand dollar fence for a hundred dollar horse,
In the same way you don't have vault doors bank vault doors on your front door, right? But you do have a deadlock probably. And so there's a certain risk appetite, something that we're comfortable doing. And, in that same way, some people in business will have a certain risk appetite.
I know mine is very low. After flying airplanes, be like no one's gonna die. Everything's recoverable. Idea that I've got with life means that I'll make some choices that other people are like whoa. We didn't think about, like, all the possibilities. It's we can just roll it back.
We don't have that much to lose. It doesn't cost [00:21:00] anything to do. Like, why don't we try it? For some reason I have this picture of a young kid learning to play pool or billiards and like as yeah as a young kid you get the stick, you see the cue the, yeah, you've got the cue stick, you see the cue ball and like the other balls on the table, and you might be willing to like, hit it and look silly and go nowhere and not hit the right things.
But if you don't do that, at some point, you don't learn how to do it right. And it becomes a lot harder down the line. If you're scared of looking silly and you don't know how to do this thing that you feel like. Other people might judge you being like you know how to do that yet. That's harder. Can we do put people in a situation and build them up and create training and education in a way where they, where we can force them to feel less anxious, less stressed about making a poor mistake in order to
Mathieu: Yeah, that's very interesting. [00:22:00] Yeah. I love the idea of. Playing, like having to play freely in a silly way or free form way with whatever you're going to engage with or learn to evacuate that first, just do whatever you want with it. And then once that's done okay, now it was fun.
Don't you want to get a little more in, like in depth with it? And I think there's a lot of games do that too, where you can play a game like mindlessly and just play and play. And. And that's fine. You could still get value out of it. But after a while, if you do that, it'll be like, what's the next thing I can do?
What's the I can, I get like to that next level I'm bored of just playing that ways. Yeah. You always looking for a little bit of challenge. And so
Josh: Yeah.
Mathieu: probably play in that like natural appetense for challenge, but by giving that no stake free from play before.
Yeah.
Josh: Super Mario effect. If you give players [00:23:00] Unlimited lives and no rewards, they're gonna get bored But if you've only got three Mario's and then like you start over from the beginning But and you get coins along the way and you get stars at the end Then now you don't know why, but you want to get more stars, and you want to get more coins. They're not going to affect your life at all, but for some reason, now you're emotionally invested, and you don't want to lose those Marios, because you earned all these coins and stars. And now you're interested in getting better at that thing. Why?
Mathieu: there is a form of pride, right? It's a form of like self satisfaction. Like I can do it I'm able to do this and I'm able to do more. This because as a human being, you want to feel that you're competent at things. If you were, if you feel you're competent at nothing that's really hard.
Like you, you want to find some areas where you feel some form of competence. So there's maybe some of that involved too.
Josh: Yeah. One thing I, with, Skill based training is obviously if you throw [00:24:00] someone in the deep end of the pool without any lessons you're likely to scare them
Josh: Their chances of failing are super high. And so if we put things in people's places. if you put the training and a little bit of the assessment of the training, the education at a level where it's a little bit challenging so that they stay engaged, but rewarding enough when they complete it, when they solve it, then they'll want to continue. If they're not challenged, they're going to get bored. If they're too challenged, they're going to be discouraged.
Mathieu: Yeah. That's, yeah, there's a lot of like theory learning around that. There's like a, something called the zone of proximal development by Zygotsky. I hope I get his name right. Zygotsky.
Josh: I would tell them.
Mathieu: Something like that. Sorry. Sorry for the ones who care about his name, but basically it's the idea that you learn best when you are slightly out of your like level of comfort and competence
Josh: Yeah.
Mathieu: and you have [00:25:00] support.
So it's basically, if you're in your comfort zone, you're not going to learn much. If you're too far out, you're not going to learn much. Cause it's going to be too stressful and too difficult. If you're slightly out. Plus you have some support, like some resources or someone to help you. That's where you can learn best.
And it also makes me think of the idea of flow. We talked about it with another guest, Chris Bennett in another episode. It was super interesting because, so the idea of the flow is also to have that right level of challenge so that you constantly engage and eventually you get into that like time and space where.
You can go like three hours on something, completely forget about everything else and have that complete immersion. But what was very interesting is that he said, the problem is that You don't want people to be in the state of flow when learning, it doesn't help to learn because when you're in the state of flow, you do things the most like automatically in some ways.
And you don't necessarily have that. Ooh, that challenge, that reflection [00:26:00] that, and I was like, Oh that's super interesting because I would assume that if you're in that state of flow and you study that's great. Like you're going to learn so much. It was like, not necessarily because you need to keep those like roadblocks a little bit.
To really get that element of learning. Yeah. Yeah.
that, yeah.
Josh: Interesting. Interesting. I'm thinking of a lot of stuff that we do with work is pretty repetitive. I don't know that many people feel like they're learning at work which might be indicative of the problem. Because theoretically, we're doing something repetitively, you should be getting better at it, right?
Yeah. And that in and of itself is training if, in another sense. So what is it that takes work and makes it different than training and education? Obviously, a a lecture or a lesson on a specific topic is very different than a day at work, but that what we would do with an interactive lesson.
[00:27:00] A lesson that challenges and pushes someone and gets them interested in the subject to become, to try to figure it out and solve it on their own. Is that something that we could apply in the business world in our day to day lives? You're right there as a program manager, like during a sprint, is there are there requirements or a goal or something that could be passed down to a developer?
In such a way that they want to solve it, that you've employed that Mario
Josh: It's, and put them right in that in that challenging. Where they're interested in doing it.
Mathieu: So it makes me think of two things that we are doing. One thing is that in, in that sprint, so basically a sprint if for the ones who don't know, it's a, it's a time period for us, for example, it's two weeks where you have, you start the sprint with at least half. Features you want to develop are bugs you want to solve.
And the goal is to complete that list within the two weeks and then you keep iterating like [00:28:00] that. And basically we have multiple engineers in, we have multiple teams and in each team we have multiple engineers. And they are the one picking up which features, bugs, tasks they want to work on during that sprint.
And they are encouraged to Work on pieces of the product that they don't know as well. So the goal is for them to it's basically telling them don't work on the one you're comfortable with, or the one you worked on in the previous sprints, because then you're not going to learn as much, but go work on this other one and the person is going to take the task that you worked on before.
It's going to learn from you. It's going to ask you questions. So it also creates those interactions and co learning, co teaching among the team. So that's that's a great example. And I think another one is also to keep challenging the way things are done. So trying to always be like, okay, we keep working on these new features, new books, okay, now let's just take a step back, look at one of our process, one of our systems [00:29:00] and say, is there a way to improve that, and so it again, challenges the way things are done and forces like engineers to think.
On like new ways that, that things can be done. And that's so part of learning. So I think those are two ways that help to keep that, like learning element here. What about what do you think? What are some ways that we could implement as well? That could help to keep learning.
Josh: I'm thinking about I work with a lot of consultants a lot of clients doing consultancy as well. And. Yeah, if I could get them to do a little bit more problem solving and guiding them along that, it's something that you want to do as a consultant, don't want to be like, do all these things and you'll be like, set instead you want to help them problem solve and give them a new perspective for thinking maybe having seen multiple like examples Of a scenario, their business, they hopefully they don't run into these problems over and over,[00:30:00] with cybersecurity.
Hopefully they get to a point where they're like I don't know what to do. Okay, that's fine. This company, we've all been through it and I've worked with them and help them through it. Let me guide you through that. But it is at the same point if you just give them a answer, they might be.
There's room for I don't agree with
Help guide them towards. Solving it by guiding the discussion, asking them what they care about, asking them what outcomes they want, asking them like, what is working, what isn't working in your current scenario?
Like, why have you all used your budget towards that? Like, how do your interests in the cybersecurity fit with the company's interest in this next go to market or with this next product and in that, have I solved anything necessarily for them, help them figure out a little bit of that that process on their own.
Because I've seen examples
Josh: And Yeah.
That's what kind of came to mind for
Mathieu: It's just, yeah.
Josh: like how I would[00:31:00] put it in practice.
Mathieu: some of the things we've talked about, like I said, the beginning around one, like being engaged in in the experience. And and that's what I can have for most co designing or co agreeing on the objective. And solving towards that. So that that they are interested in the objective as well and in the outcome.
Yeah, so so you bring that back on.
Josh: It's funny, a lot of the like how, like instructional design theory. It often makes me think of Dale Carnegie's how to win friends and influence people, a lot of those same principles being interested in the other person, getting them to say yes getting them to agree to your side.
As not by convincing, but by showing them that they're interested. Anyways it's crazy though, how taking that same idea, just turning it a little bit for the scenario. It's it fits perfectly here. And if you just turn it like that, it fits perfectly over [00:32:00] here as well. Yeah.
It's wild how that, how things like that work in our world.
I, one of the things I like about where I'm at in cyber security and training, because there's so much of that cross correlation.
Mathieu: No, for sure. It comes back always to getting interested in the other person. It always comes back to that human connection. That's always the key.
Josh: I wonder what would you after all of this discussion, You thinking about implementing I was thinking about what's a little bit of the takeaway or what could I use from even this discussion tomorrow?
Mathieu: That's that's a million dollar question.
Josh: Yeah, I know. Sorry. It's a lot for a Friday night.
Mathieu: That's a good question though You really got me thinking about. And I feel like we came into it together, like, how do we create stories and some of that gamification? How can we apply that in some of the typical situations?
I think definitely like the, yeah the story part of a narrative, like how do you create a narrative or a story around, [00:33:00] around some of the things you want to teach or learn. Can you get us to create a narrative for yourself, right? If you want to learn something, you can also apply that to yourself and try to build a narrative for yourself.
And that's. That's very interesting, still feels a little abstract. I'm not really sure exactly like how concretely it would look like, but yeah but I think there's something there for sure. In your own
Yeah. I yeah
And I think the other thing is that maybe it's like directly applicable is thinking back on that sense of community and.
And and social playfulness, don't know if that would be the right terms, but I, with whoever you work with, whether it's like colleagues or clients or stake, whoever, like other stakeholders or students, what can you do to build up a little moment when you're going to get to learn about each other more? That's one. So if it's at the beginning of the meeting, what are you going to do to just create a little moment when someone shares something or that, that [00:34:00] moment that in, like in the building where you're going to make sure that you stop and talk to someone and get to know that person at a different level.
But also what can be some symbols or. Practices, or I'm not sure what a term is, but something you can create that, that build up that sense of community that you can gather around. It can be, it can be an activity that a team does every week, it can be I love that example.
The, again, that's in another podcast, another episode that actually is not out yet, but it's going to be out like next week, normally with Callie Cherokee, who's an amazing like children's TV host and a lot of other things that she does. And we were talking about that trend that we've seen on TikTok of the teachers doing like an individual check to their students when they come in class.
And everyone has a personal check Yeah
And that's such a great way to [00:35:00] build, just start the day in a very unique personal, exciting way. Yeah. So how does that look like if it's at work? How can you have something personal with each one that either with each one. Or for a group that like bring you together and create that bond and that sense of let's work together.
'cause we are like a unit in a way.
Josh: I had a boss who would start every meeting on Monday morning talking about and people liked, but I'm, I haven't been a big fan of football for a long time. I grew up in Southern California. So like back before when the Rams were there for the first time and then when they left, so I didn't have a football team. And growing up, so it's, I like football, I know football, but like on Monday morning, it wasn't like I watched eight games the week, the night before, and so like it didn't hit with me, it would hit with others. I think if we could find ways of just like that personalized handshake, as they enter the classroom, find ways of engaging [00:36:00] each person on their own level, coming into a meeting, starting a day, if there was a way of doing it in our training some way to, oh, man, now I want to try to put this into practice, some way of building it so that it's personable to that exact person doesn't need to be like as unique as some of those handshakes.
I've seen those the videos and the tick tocks. Something that just makes you go oh, this is for me.
Mathieu: Yeah. Like something. Like very simple, for example, if you're in a meeting with people around the world, or like in different places, different cities, you could just do a round and say What's the weather like at your place right now? It's like the most basic, cause that's what you would ask anybody what's the weather like?
It's like the most basic question, but each, everyone can say Oh, right now it's raining, and right now it's sunny, and right now it's just a small thing it just anchors the day in being present and sharing a little something about where you are and that's first thing that comes to mind, but there's a lot of ways that, that this can be done.
Yeah.
Josh: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But that's, I [00:37:00] think I, I like that we're thinking about it the difference in a lot of folks is that I want to spend time talking with or that they stop and think about how can we make this better? How can we do this better? And I really love that.
And I think it's innate and all of us, some, sometimes it's. You've got way too much other things to
Mathieu: Yeah, no, exactly. Like life happens and it's it gets much harder. Yeah. But no, definitely. It's such,
Josh: I'm glad we,
Mathieu: Such a wonderful conversation.
Josh: that we had this to do just
Mathieu: No, totally. Totally. And it's funny how we. We went to so many different topics and subjects and yet there's still a little bit like of that thread through it and at the end you're like, okay, I can see this kind of like big points, big topics that encompass the whole thing.
Josh: Hopefully inadvertently we took our listeners on a hero's journey here. But yeah, this has been great. And thank you for spending the time
Mathieu: Yeah. Thank you too. And I [00:38:00] hope everybody like enjoyed the conversation and. And join the conversation too, if you have some ideas, things you want to share feel free. And
Josh: we'd love to know what people want to hear
Mathieu: yeah, definitely. Thank you, Josh.