Keeping it simple, making it stick

ConneXu’s new specialist Learning and Development Manager Anthony Bavastro has spent the bulk of his career training people. He says keeping things simple and helping them to think differently are the keys to being successful in learning and development.

When it comes to training, ConneXu’s Learning and Development Manager Anthony Bavastro knows how to ‘make things stick’.

He’s been training teams for many years, working with large organisations including Telecom (Spark), Fonterra, LIC, Dell, University of Waikato and Waikato Regional Council, amongst others. If there’s one thing he’s learned along the way, it’s this: keep things simple.

“You’ve got to remove the complexity and make things as easy as possible. If you’re doing training, you want people to be engaged and busy the whole time, so it’s not just me talking at you,” he says.

“Visuals are important too. In e-learning we use a lot of videos and images rather than big blocks of text. When people can see what you’re talking about, it’s easier to remember — that’s what I call ‘making it sticky’.”

“Rather than overloading, you keep things as simple as possible and encourage people who want to know more to have a conversation.”

Anthony says in addition to his classic ‘learning and development’ roles, some of his other career experiences have helped him build his soft skills.

“I first started at Telecom in residential customer support in Hamilton. I worked as an escalation specialist dealing with customer complaints as well. Those experiences taught me soft skills, like how to have conversations with people,” he recalls.

A desire to move away from a corporate environment and to help people grow brought Anthony to ConneXu.

“I wanted to get out of the corporate world. I’m all about helping people get better and helping them to think differently,” he says.

“There is a real desire to make change and continually improve at ConneXu, and I am looking forward to giving back in this role.”

His first big project is working on the implementation of a new IT system that is currently being built and will be used by the ConneXu team every single day.

“The goal is to centralise information, streamline processes and make things more user-friendly. It will be easier to pull reports, set up reminders and just make things more time efficient so that the team aren’t having to do endless data entry.”

He says he’s ready for the challenge.

“At the end of the day, my ‘why’ is to inspire people to think differently and try something new,” he says.

“Hopefully they can take what they’ve learned from me and use that to inspire someone else to think differently too.”