Run training sessions? Here are six key steps in gaining a successful outcome.
1. Do the House Keeping!
My wife is an interesting woman. Whenever she’s in a new building, the first thing she does is to work out where she’d escape if a fire occurred. I am not like that, but when I settle into my seat to be trained for a day, the first thing that I wonder about are the breaks – when is morning tea, how long is lunch and do I get an afternoon break? And until Georgina works out where the fire escape is, and until I find out when the breaks are going to occur, concentration is difficult.
When you facilitate a training session, don’t forget the housekeeping!
If the building is new to the participants, tell them what the emergency evacuation procedure is. Tell them where the toilets are, what the breaks will be, whether they were supposed to sign in and whether they should be wearing name tags.
To you it might be all pretty trivial stuff; to the participants it may well be vital in allowing them to settle and concentrate.
2. Be responsive to the participants… but don’t let them drive your agenda
Most training facilitators working with a group that is unknown to them will, early in the session, ask each participant to tell the group a little about themselves and what they want to get out of the day. It’s a good idea – during the day you can take into account these different backgrounds and desires.
However, asking the people what they want is quite different to then letting them drive the day’s agenda!
So what’s the difference? Here’s an example.
Once I attended a training session on writing – the course was about how to get the most out of your writing, how to structure your written language, and so on. The participants were all from the one government organisation. At one stage in the morning, discussion turned to the writing of minutes, a formalised procedure where the document had to be developed under subheadings like ‘background’, ‘recommendations’ and so on. In the blink of an eye the group was off and running, talking about how one of their bosses kept rejecting their minutes because he thought different material should go under each heading. The discussion then went on for over 30 minutes!
Given that this was clearly an issue internal to the organisation, and the recalcitrant boss wasn’t even there, the discussion achieved absolutely nothing in terms of benefitting the participants’ writing skills.
What had happened was that the facilitator had lost the leadership of the group – she was no longer driving the agenda. Remember, as the trainer, you’re also the leader for the day!
3. Don’t overstimulate!
I went along to a training session once where the trainer was using PowerPoint slides, a whiteboard, a flipchart, a workbook and another projected PC screen showing what she was typing on a laptop.
To tell you the truth, I had no idea where the hell I was supposed to be looking!
Occasionally, as I am sure was the case with every other participant, my mind would drift and then, when I woke up, it took me ages to again orientate myself as to what was going on.
Keep the different participant stimulations to a maximum of three – for example, PowerPoint, a whiteboard and a workbook.
Oh, and while I am on workbooks, ensure that the workbook matches the course. I’ve now sat through multiple training sessions where the trainer jumped hither and thither through the book – “Now we’re on page 60…. OK, back to page 3 please… Pardon? Oh, no, we’re on page 89 now….” It quite drove me nuts.
If the workbook doesn’t match how you teach the course, redo the book. It’s being professionally lazy to do otherwise.
4. Physical movement
The physical movement of the trainer is very important.
This was brought home to me vividly when I attended one particular training session. The trainer was an older man but he was dynamic, had tons of energy and moved around the room a lot. Trouble is, by mid afternoon he was reduced to sitting at a desk, just pressing buttons on his laptop and pointing at the distant projected image.
The contrast between morning and afternoon was extreme, and I distinctly lost interest that afternoon – the life and energy had gone out of the presentation.
Two points come from this.
First, set yourself an energy level that you can maintain all day. Sure, you need to get your audience on-side early – but you also want to give them a full day of value.
Second, deliberately set up your day’s activities to give yourself breaks. When I was a teacher I used to do this when planning my day’s lessons – the first period might be a high-energy lesson, perhaps with physical activities and lots of group work. But then I’d make sure that the next lesson was much quieter – perhaps reading, or the students did a self-directed worksheet. And so on through the day.
This ‘change of pace’ also works very effectively with a single group, as not only does it give you – the trainer – a chance to recharge batteries, but from the participants’ view it also makes for a better pattern of light and shade.
So remember to organise your day to give yourself breaks – and not just the formal ones of morning, lunch and afternoon.
5. The takeaways!
When you’re training, keep in mind that most of what you say will not be retained by the participants. That doesn’t mean they’re not listening, or even not thinking about your content. But the sheer amount of material that you’ll likely get through in a day is a lot to remember.
The way to still achieve your desired outcome is to, at the end of each section, distil your message down into a few key points – the takeaways. Even people who have been lost – or dreaming – will benefit from this approach, and those who have been concentrating hard will understand why the takeaways are important.
I once sat through a trainer’s morning session and at lunch I asked her what the morning’s key four or five takeaways were. It was a question she found hard to answer – and if she found it hard, I figured the participants would have found it impossible.
Takeaways are also good because you can use them to….
6. Build successive concept development
If your training session is well structured, you should be able to build ideas upon ideas. That is, if early in the day you introduce skills, knowledge or concepts, you should be able to refer back to them as further content is built upon that base.
Your group will be able to see the interconnections within the material you are covering, especially if you take every opportunity to draw these links.
If you have been clearly stating takeaways throughout the day, relating content in this way becomes much easier. You can say things like: “Remember how this morning we covered [A] and [B]? Now you can see how [Y] and [Z] ties in and supports those ideas.” Participants just love these sorts of connections being made because it allows them to develop context and also makes remembering the content far easier.
At the end of my training sessions I ask each participant to nominate the takeaways that are most relevant to them: they can pick from the 10 or 15 that have been made during the day and distil this down to four or five clear points that they then write out in their own words. They’re the points that are most likely to provide individual, personal benefit.
Julian offers ‘training for the trainer’; contact Acorn Training and Consulting for more details.
Filed under: Articles on training
