Once upon a time….using storytelling to promote NTS development

One of the key challenges faced by experts and champions inthe non-technical skills space is exactly how to encourage development ofnon-technical skills in individuals. This is further challenged by an absenceof research into... [ view full abstract ]

One of the key challenges faced by experts and champions inthe non-technical skills space is exactly how to encourage development ofnon-technical skills in individuals. This is further challenged by an absenceof research into the practical strategies people who demonstrate “good”non-technical sills use: what is it they dothat we could learn from and promote in others who need to improve theirnon-technical skills. This paper explores the use of story- telling as amechanism to tackle both issues.

There are different forms of story-telling: talking aboutexperiences, role play and case studies. The effectiveness of story-telling onadult learning is established in research (Caminotti and Gray, 2012). Usedeffectively stories reinforce the technical knowledge, provide a motivationalcontext through use of real world scenarios engaging the learner at anemotional level and present issues that can be faced in that area of work thuspromoting the use of judgement which in turn generates deeper understanding.Stories can also paint a picture of what good looks like: who are the good guysin the story, what do they do? It is this element that enable us to use storiesto explore effective non-technical skills and in doing so facilitatenon-technical skills development.

Within Network Rail the main mechanism for promoting anddeveloping non-technical skills is through two mandatory development days whichsignallers attend. The days are a mix of technical refresher training andbriefing items from the business. Over the last three years non-technicalskills have also formed part of the agenda, delivered as bite-sized chunks primarilyto raise awareness about what is meant by each non-technical skill.  Goingforward, a different strategy is being adopted, utilising a story-tellingapproach. Using the technical refresher training session as the work activityexample to be discussed, briefers are encouraged to facilitate a discussionbased on a case study where something has gone wrong but also a case studywhere something has gone exceptionally well.  Data is collected about thepositive stories and strategies that can be extracted from such an approach.Preliminary results indicate that this is indeed an effective approach to NTSdevelopment but relies heavily on the effectiveness of the briefer to createand guide the appropriate level of discussion around the stories and to elicitthe appropriate learning. Recommendations are made about how to further improvethe process to optimise the effectiveness of story-telling.