Imagine you are teaching someone to make a pancake. You could tell them the steps or give them a recipe, but will they learn and remember what they are supposed to do, or simply file the recipe away for another day?

To truly learn, you’d want to try to make the pancakes yourself and understand the process in a set of easy steps. You could start by mixing some flour and water then frying it to see what it tastes like. Then do the same, but with a bit of added salt, and find you’ve made a flat bread. So maybe you try adding eggs and milk. You have a pancake. But it’s still not quite to your liking. Add a little sugar or honey to sweeten it? Perfect!

You would gradually work through the stages until the result “fits” the spec you had in your head. Suddenly, you haven’t just learned to make pancakes, but a whole lot more. En route, you’ve made pita bread, omelettes, drop scones... and you’ve discovered what it takes to adjust the recipe to suit your tastes.

Later, when cooking with a friend who has seen pancakes being made, they may tell you the trick about waiting for the bubbles to appear before flipping them—you will enhance your knowledge collectively, and grow in confidence. Because you are learning together, there is less complexity than being told what to do by an expert. Peers are excellent support, and the help they provide will reinforce your knowledge by making you repeat what you have learned out loud.

Thus, we see the learning process as the smallest step you need to understand, taking it as far as it will go, then adding another “ingredient” which makes it a bit harder. Each step builds on the last and brings a little more complexity.

If the steps are small enough, good results will be self-rewarding. Mistakes will also be small enough either to fix by yourself (or with a peer), or recognizably beyond the scope of your new knowledge and therefore require “outside” advice. But you will now have the confidence to go to a teacher, a book, or Google the solution, knowing what you have already tried.

I’ve worked as a CRM instructor, consultant, and analyst for over 20 years. In the process, I’ve discovered that if I understand a concept fully, and can recreate the steps I took to learn the skill, it makes for an easy learning path for my students to follow. What’s even better is if I can make it into a crazy and memorable acronym or drawing.

I recently attended a presentation by Mark Dorling that was aimed at the school’s creative curriculum, underlining key skills children need to learn. He outlined the following, for example, as essential to learning computing:  

Persistence in working with difficult problems
Ability to deal with open-ended problems
Confidence in dealing with complexity
Tolerance of ambiguity

It’s a kind of PACT, if you like, that you can make with yourself when facing new challenges.

As a Salesforce Instructor, I spend a lot of time teaching functionality, and how Salesforce can solve business problems, but I additionally aim for our admins and developers to apply these PACT skills as they go along. Salesforce will do the rest.

In the classroom, I want my students to feel that they have the confidence to build new, complex Salesforce skills with ease. Learning new things can feel frustrating. When students come across sections they find difficult to understand, I like to break them down using jokes, stories, pictures, and discussions to help them feel relaxed and patient until the concept is fully understood. If an exercise doesn’t go to plan, I encourage persistence in working out where the problem lies and then guide them to resolve it alone—or together with their fellow students—given what they have just learned. Occasionally, there just isn’t a solution; you need a plan B, and that is OK too.

The interesting thing is that these are life skills. If you don't mind failing, you are more likely to try. If you keep trying, you are more likely to succeed. If you succeed, you are more likely to try new things in the future and get even better at what you are already doing.

A lot of being afraid is the unknown. That is what we face with students on Day One of any course. We want to give them confidence. If they don't get it, we want them to ask, but also experiment to see if they can find the answer themselves: A lot like learning a new recipe, then adapting it to your tastes. Pancakes anyone?

To see for yourself if mastering Salesforce is anything like making pancakes, learn more about our extensive curriculum of instructor-led classes and register to attend your class today. Pancake making skills optional.