Credibility is a mainstay of any professional development or
learning event. When you fail to establish and maintain validity in
the eyes of learners, you risk failure from the outset.
Unfortunately, many trainers and educators neglect this basic
premise and haphazardly use information or quote data without
thoroughly double checking their facts. In doing so, they not only
share erroneous and sometimes misleading information, but they also
detract from the potential learning outcomes.
Credibility equals trust
How many times have you sat through a class, presentation, or
training program and heard the facilitator or teacher say,
"Research shows that"? If you are like me and many other curious
or skeptical attendees, your hand immediately goes up and you ask
something like, "Could you give me the citation for that study? I'd
like to learn more about it." Normally, the response received after
a bit of stammering and hesitation on their part is, "I don't have
that right now, but if you'll see me after the session I'll get
your name and get it to you." I cannot tell you how many times this
has happened over the years, and I am still waiting for most of
those citations.
One of the fastest ways to destroy your credibility or trust with a
group of learners is to be caught without substantiating data for
your statements or claims. This is why when I do trainer and staff
development programs, I stress the need for including a reference
page in lesson plans or notes. On that page, detailed citations for
books, articles, studies, and other data that will be used during
the program should be listed so that there is a ready response to
questions from participants.
Authors are also often guilty of failing to do their homework and
in many cases simply copy or quote data, models, or other sources
of information from someone else's published work. This is a
serious mistake and can come back to haunt them later. Often a
writer will assume that since something is in print, the original
editor or someone else verified the facts. This is a bad
assumption! Unless the editor is an expert in the field covered by
the work, they often assume the writer is the subject matter expert
who has done all the homework. The role of an editor is to make
sure that grammar, spelling, syntax, and other such rules are
followed in the actual preparation of the document and that the
work is professionally designed. They do not generally correct
expert content, although they may make suggestions. If an author
simply parrots or modifies what was written by someone else without
verifying, they could be perpetuating inaccuracies and simply
putting out incorrect information. Besides, if it is something
created and written by another person, the originator owns
copyright and no one else can modify it without permission.
Examples of incorrect data
Two examples come to mind related to overused, and many times
misused, information that I have experienced through my career.
The first example is the practice of referencing Albert Mehrabian's
classic study, published in his book Silent Messages on
the meaning of messages exchanged during interpersonal
communication. You may have seen the study results - 7 percent of
meaning comes from words, 38 percent comes from vocal cues (pitch,
volume, intonation, rate of speech), and 55 percent comes from
facial cues (eyes, smile, etc). Mehrabian's study focused on
degrees of liking and the meaning that someone draws from
various sources during communication with one other person.
Unfortunately, his findings are often expanded upon and used to
explain communication between a teacher, facilitator, or presenter
and an entire class or audience of people. Obviously, the two
scenarios differ due to the number of people involved, and the
study's finding are not applicable per se. This is akin to the old
adage of comparing apples to oranges or trying to compare two
things that are not alike. Mehrabian even addresses this issue on
his website
and writes, "Please note that this and other equations regarding
relative importance of verbal and nonverbal messages were derived
from experiments dealing with communications of feelings and
attitudes (i.e., like-dislike). Unless a communicator is talking
about their feelings or attitudes, these equations are not
applicable." Still, I continue to see trainers, teachers, and
authors refer to this study when doing trainer and staff
development programs or when writing about various topics related
to group communication. In doing so, they typically reassign
Mehrabian's figures to other situations.
The second example of often misquoted information involves Figure 1
(or some variation), with which many trainers and educators are
familiar. The challenge is that there is much controversy
surrounding the origin and authenticity of such graphs and their
content.
Such graphs seem to be a variation of chart called "Cone of
Experience" found in Edgar Dale's book Audio-Visual Methods in
Teaching, which first appeared in 1946. However, in that book
(and the 1969 version cited), there were no statistics associated
with that image. Since the publication of that book, there appears
to have been a number of variations and additions to Dale's
original model (including the addition of percentages and other
details).
The problem with the Figures 1 and 2, and many others, is that they
are wrong. The quoted article in the April-June issue of the
publication does not contain the graph or the statistics shown in
Figure 1 and the chart in Figure 2 does not appear in the 1969
version of Dale's book. He also does not call his model the "Cone
of Learning." In more than 30 years of experience in training and
adult learning, I had never seen any one source consistently
associated with these figures. In fact, until I researched the
statistics several years ago for possible inclusion in one of my
own books, I had no idea of the origin. Apparently, no one else
does either because, depending on the user of the charts, you will
be referred to the NTL Institute or to articles written by numerous
people. The dilemma still exists today, and I cannot find a
definitive source of the research for the statistics to
substantiate them. The numbers in the figures seem to be a
compilation of information from different sources and are often
shown and discussed by many trainers and educators or used in
presentations and publications. Over the years, I have seen various
iterations of the charts along with differing percentages, which is
what actually started my research on the topic. I had two different
charts in my office with differing percentages and wondered how
that could be.
The point here is that anyone who stands in front of a group or
purports to be an expert should act accordingly. This means doing
some homework, checking facts, being ready to substantiate what a
piece or research says, and always projecting a professional and
credible image.