Great Training Programs – The Overlooked Open Secret!

I would like you to answer two simple questions, before we begin our quest to find the secrets of great trainings. Here are they!

Are you a great trainer?
(Now…don’t be modest! Of course you are. If you are someone who loves to impart learning and whose happiest moments are those when the learner has learnt, and if your passion for making learning happen shines through your efforts, you are a great trainer.)

Do you conduct great training programs?
(Ah…now you are thinking…aren’t you? Despite being a wonderful trainer, answering a question such as this one, isn’t an easy task. “Well,” you muse…” I do conduct great training programs, once in a while,” then you stop and review, “but then…it depends a lot on what you’d call great training program?” you raise your eyebrows and send the question back into my court!)

My thoughts here are about great trainings…not about great trainers! They are some gems that caught my eye in my own training programs over all these years. I collected them to share with you…these tips…they’ve worked for me, and I am confident that they’d work for you. These tips have got nothing to do with your body language, your communication capabilities, or any of the other characteristics that build the traditional persona of a wonderful trainer. However, they have a lot to do with what I think defines a great trainer – the passion to make learning happen! So if you have that passion, read on – these gems are free and I hope that the light they reflect, multiplies and grows!

Those who conduct training programs understand the importance of preparation. In absence of correct and sufficient preparation, no training program can leave its mark on the audience’s thoughts. Unfortunately, we often put our preparation efforts in the wrong direction.

We prepare ourselves for smooth content delivery instead of smooth content reception. We prepare the handouts for activities not for active participation. We prepare the training halls for aesthetics, not for kinesthetics!

Let us see how we can change just a few things in the way we face a training program, and see some magic happen!

Make Preparations for Content Reception and not for Content Delivery:
Just before the training don’t spend your invaluable time figuring out how to deliver the content. As long as you are confident about the content, adding finesse to your delivery wouldn’t impact the learning effectiveness. Yes, your being suave and your delivery being smooth would awe your audience, but that’s about it!

Learning effectiveness, is the direct result of your connect with the audience. Prepare yourself by understanding your audience. Find all that you can about them, and prepare to connect with them. Reflect upon their possible reasons for taking your training program, their current skill levels, their need to share their own experiences, their comfort level with the language in which the training is being conducted, and so on!

Yes, you probably create your audience profiles…but don’t get entangled in the demographics. The demographics are merely a portal into the psychographics of your audience. It is the psychographics that truly matters, so even before you step into the training hall, you should’ve connected with your audience at the psychographic level.

If you steer your preparations in this direction, you will find that the audience is more receptive to what you have to say – for you would see that you begin to select such words and phrases that the audience can better relate to…and you a one-to-one connect with most members in the audience. Now they would be willing to overlook your need to check your notes if required – for the connection would now be P2P (person to person) instead of T2T (trainer to trainee)!

Prepare the Handouts for Active Participation not for Activity:
I am opposed to giving handouts that merely provide direction clues for certain activities or that simply provide information/knowledge (thus, reducing the need to take notes.) If learning is the goal, use handouts (if at all,) to generate participation. Use them for group activities or use them for individual activities culminating into discussions – but use them for “active participation.” An activity that doesn’t have a clear, facilitator-led resolution is a waste of time and effort.

Remember that in classroom trainings, we (the trainer and the trainees) are placed in controlled environments and rigid spaces. Whether or not the participants state it, a lack of physical movement results in lethargy. When we give handouts that lead to minimal physical action, we merely put our stamp on the lethargy. I’ve actively followed a lot of discussion on the pros and cons of using handouts. My experience tells me that the human brain is mighty smart…if it realizes that work isn’t essential to achieve the short-term goal…it reclines and after a while begins to nap!

To make sure that an activity really makes the participants active, give hints; ask questions, ask the participants to put their queries across to you, pose counter-questions to generate discussion…there are innumerable ways to sustain participation provided it’s not aborted by incorrectly designed handouts.

Prepare the Training Halls for Kinesthetics and not for Aesthetics:
You’ve seen the various possible seating arrangements…haven’t you? Whether or not a particular arrangement suits you depends, among many other things, upon your participants’ demographics and the structure of your training programs - right?

I suggest otherwise. Don’t select an arrangement from the ones possible – dream up a completely different one. And to come up with the right arrangement, analyze your audience, their work-areas, the activities that you intend to organize…and above all – whether or not you’d have the access to each participant in the group. If you can’t reach a participant in the group, you’ve lost him or her – well…almost!

Of course, there would be constraints. The room shape and size, the types of tables and chairs available, the media props being used by you…and so on! But if you know of these at least a day in advance, you should be able to plan the best possible arrangement for your set of audiences. Your arrangement should allow a fair amount of movement. Encourage the participants to change seats (either through an activity, or by giving any other reasonable explanation.) A change of seat results in a change of the view and improves attention!

While you design the seating arrangement, be cognizant of the special needs of the participants. It is important that each of the participants is as comfortably seated as possible.

Did you notice that none of the tips given here relates to the trainer’s charisma or personality? Yet they work because the adult learner doesn’t care whether he or she’s mesmerized or not; the adult learner cares only for his or her take-away from the training program, which in most cases is either knowledge or skill! The trainer’s personality may lead to an initial awe, but that’s about it. Beyond that awe, the learners would remember you for what you helped them build – their ability! After some years, the learner would probably not remember what you looked like or how you talked, but they’d still hold dear your gift of learning…and once in a while, they’ll look into their hearts and breath a little note of thanks – and that, my friend, would mean that you had once conducted a great training program!

Author: Shafali R. Anand