He asked to talk to me 1-on-1.
We walked into a small glass room and he slid the door closed behind us. “I’ve answered this before”, he said. “I don’t want to repeat myself”.
He was complaining about an employee who reports to me.
Shortly after that conversation I wished I had responded better in the moment. Instead, I thanked him for the feedback and told him I’d think about it.
I’ve since learned that there’s tons of research across psychology, neuroscience, and education demonstrating that humans learn effectively through repetition.
The first experimental evidence msy have been written by Hermann Ebbinghaus in The Forgetting Curve back in 1885. He showed that spaced repetition significantly reduced memory decay.
In 2006 a paper titled Spacing Effects in Learning deomonstrated that spaced repetition leads to better learning compared to cramming.
A review titled Content and Process Priming, from 2014, summarizes how repeated exposure enhances learning and memory, even outside of conscious effort.
There are many more studies.
The bottom line for managers is that we can use repetition to our advantage by repeating what’s most important.