I’ve been recruiting for 26 years, the last eight running Salesforce Staffing, a Salesforce recruiting firm. I place Salesforce admins, developers, architects and consultants. The hire is where my job usually ends. It’s also where a lot of my clients’ problems start. A strong hire gets a week of onboarding slides, then gets judged on how fast they ramp.

David Lieberman of Gravity Learning came to learning and development from clinical psychology and software training, then spent years leading teams. I asked him what people get wrong when they onboard new employees or train the ones they have. His answer changed how I think about it.

Experts make bad teachers

David’s explanation goes like this. We learn through experience. We keep the knowledge and forget the experience. Things that used to be hard for us start to feel easy, and the brain rewards us for that. That’s great for solving problems and terrible for teaching.

So when an expert teaches, they hand over the knowledge and skip the experience that made it stick. That’s why onboarding feels like drinking from a fire hose. Even good trainers forget they’re teaching and start listing everything they know.

If you’re the senior admin training a new hire, or the admin walking users through a release, this is you. It’s me too.

Fix onboarding by teaching less

David’s version of onboarding that works:

• Pick the few things that matter most and teach them as a real learning experience, with discussion and practice.
• For everything else, teach people where to find it. Make it a drill: “If you needed this, where would you look?”

The checklist with a hundred bullets turns into one skill: knowing where to look.

Start with a problem

Most of what we learn, we learn because we have a problem. David builds every session on that cycle:

1. Start with a problem the learner has already lived.
2. Let them talk about it.
3. Teach the method.
4. Rehearse it.
5. Talk about how it went.
6. Plan when and with whom they’ll use it for real.

His example is feedback, which he says is the number one driver of motivation: give people good feedback, then let them go. Telling a new manager to cover the behavior, the impact and what to do next (Gravity calls it BIG feedback: behavior, impact, growth) doesn’t land on its own. Ask them first about feedback that didn’t help them, or a leader who never helped them grow. Let them talk about it with someone. Now they want the answer.

Gravity doesn’t role play. Nobody says “Pretend I’m Sandy.” People rehearse the real conversation they’re about to have.

Why the conference high fades

I see this every fall after Dreamforce. Great keynotes, a lot of laughs, a lot of energy. A week later the vibe is gone, and what’s left is whatever you put on your calendar.

David says inspirational training without steps drifts away within days. Steps matter most in the hard moments. Once you’re past middle management, he says almost 25% of promotion decisions come down to presence, more for women than for men, and presence gets built or lost in a few tough moments in front of other leaders. When someone senior says something flat wrong in a meeting, the subthalamic nucleus, a small area just under the thalamus, lights up and you freeze. Being told to be confident doesn’t fix that. Knowing the steps does.

Keep the steps short. Short-term memory holds about four chunks at a time (Cowan, 2001). David builds most of his models in threes. Larry, Curly and Moe are easier to remember than Larry.

Make it safe to speak up

Getting called on in front of a group feels risky. Nobody wants to be the one who says “Sorry, I wasn’t listening.”

David teaches facilitators a technique he calls setup and pass. Say the person’s name first, so they have a moment to get their thoughts together. Ask about something they can’t get wrong, like what they think or what they’re noticing. Then let them off the hook: “It doesn’t need to be a big speech.”

When David and I first talked, he told me something I haven’t forgotten. Someone who already has a question needs about six seconds to raise it. Someone who doesn’t have one yet needs about twelve. Most trainers wait about three seconds after “Any questions?” Saying the name first buys that time. Talking it out helps too: David says we use seven or eight parts of the brain when we talk that we don’t use when we just think, so you’re literally sharper when you’re talking.

When people practice something new, they do it in small groups or breakout rooms, not in front of everyone. Struggle in private.

And close the laptops. In a simulated lecture, students who could see a classmate multitasking on a laptop scored lower than students who couldn’t (Sana, Weston and Cepeda, 2013). David says once people hear that their laptop hurts the person next to them, the laptops start closing.

During change, say what you know and what you don’t

People fill silence with the worst possible guess. David says change and ambiguity are what his clients ask for help with most right now. When people don’t know what their role will be, they stop moving.

I hear this from candidates all the time. They like their job, but there are rumors about a buyout or private equity, and leadership has gone quiet. They assume the worst and start taking recruiter calls. Tell people what you know and what you don’t know yet, and keep telling them.

The hiring side

We also spent part of the episode on interviews. The short version:

• Walk candidates into a real example. Asking “Tell me about a time…” cold invites a made-up story. Try: “You’ve had difficult clients, right? Tell me about one. What did you do?” Small steps pull out real situations.
• Have them do the work. David recommends three work tests, with at least one on the people side of the job. One of his clients, a senior IT leader, added a hands-on test and found that some people they would have passed on were the right hires, and the reverse.
• Use the right personality data. David rates the Thomas-Kilmann conflict instrument as one of the most statistically significant personality tests for predicting real behavior, because it measures your go-to conflict style and the backup you fall into when the go-to doesn’t feel safe.
• Listen for listening. I recently interviewed two candidates for a senior role who answered every hard question with theory instead of what actually happened. A candidate who stops and says “Let me make sure I understand what you’re asking” is showing you they listen.

I wrote more about behavioral interviews here.

If you train people

• Teach the few things that matter most. Teach where to find the rest.
• Start with a problem, rehearse, and plan the who and when.
• Keep any model to three or four steps.
• Say the name first, ask an easy question, and practice in private.
• During change, over-communicate.

About the guest

David Lieberman is with Gravity Learning (gravitylearning.com), a research-based professional skills company that works with mid-sized and large organizations on leadership, communication, hiring and change. Every program is built on peer-reviewed research, and Gravity measures behavior change, impact and ROI for its clients, which David says almost no one else in the field does. He came to learning and development from clinical psychology and software training.

About The Hiring Edge

I host The Hiring Edge with my co-host, Scott Stafford. I own Salesforce Staffing, a Salesforce recruiting firm. On the show we talk about hiring, interviewing and the Salesforce job market, for hiring managers and Salesforce professionals.

• Salesforce Staffing: https://thesalesforcerecruiter.com
• Gravity Learning: https://gravitylearning.com
• Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/OEu3-XRtlJk
• Listen: https://thehiringedge.buzzsprout.com/2134593/episodes/19919193-the-neuroscience-of-learning-teaching-and-hiring

Sources

• Cowan, N. (2001). The magical number 4 in short-term memory. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 24(1). https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X01003922
• Sana, F., Weston, T., & Cepeda, N. J. (2013). Laptop multitasking hinders classroom learning for both users and nearby peers. Computers & Education, 62. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2012.10.003