| Tips for Making Your Next Training a Success |
Tip No. 1: Allow enough time to train.
Training that is ineffective due to being too brief is actually far worse than conducting no training
at all. It will send the message that change isn't that important. If it were, "certainly the training
would not have seemed so rushed and crammed into a ninety-minute window."
Tip No. 2: Role play assessments vs. practice time.
One of the best ways to evaluate skills-based courses is by conducting thorough and
comprehensive role play activities for the participants. Initially you may hear some push-back
about the idea, but there is no substitution for having participants demonstrate the skills while in
class.
Many courses that we have seen offer "practice time." During this time participants are
encouraged to get into groups and do some practice of the skills. Unfortunately, the groups often
have little structure and the exercise becomes useless. For better results make your role play
times more structured and require everyone to participate, even if you have to get the vice
president's permission to do so.
Tip No. 3: Have professional-looking media.
If you have been asked to put together a presentation in one hour, most people would cut you
some slack if your materials were not beautiful. They know that professional media, slides, flip
charts or overheads, take time to create. In general, however, most trainers have the time, but
put off creating the media until the very end. This is not a good idea. Include time in your project
management plan for creating media. Each PowerPoint slide takes between 10-20 minutes to
make them look great.
Flip charts can distinguish your training from all others, but each one takes about 15 minutes to
make. We also don't recommend just taking the slides that you have created and turning them
into a black-and-white participant guide by making copies of the slides. If you are training a
course that will be around for a while we strongly recommend creating a real participants' guide
that allows for various exercises and activities. When participants see professional-looking
media they connect it to the trainer or the training team. They automatically become more patient
and willing to learn during the training.
Tip No. 4: Use a VARIETY of Media
Have you ever been to a training course that had beautiful PowerPoint slides and the right
lighting and yet it still got a little boring? Besides making your media professional-looking, you
should always have at least two types of prepared media while training. For one module you
might have a few flip charts and some slides. For another you might use a few handouts and
several overheads. For another you might use slides and a couple of diagrams on a white
board. By mixing it up you keep everyone's attention.
Various studies indicate that a participant in a training class can pay attention for no longer than
8-10 minutes. Others say that you must take a break every ninety minutes at the most. By varying
the media you greatly extend these times because each new medium used seems fresh and
new, even if you used that same medium twenty minutes ago.
Tip No. 5: Make it look like a training room.
Some trainers use training rooms that substitute for storage rooms. Even though it may seem
like there is no way to remove the clutter, it is important to do so. I you are training in a room that
has boxes everywhere and twenty extra seats that are not holding people, the room will be
visually taxing on your participants. That will make them tired and will certainly not encourage
them to embrace the material. At the very least, the front of the training room (the area where you
stand and the view behind you from a participant's perspective) should be free of all clutter and
neat.
The media should be organized so that it makes sense to people looking at it. If the room is a
little small, try to be creative by making more effective use of the media and getting out of the
room for occasional activities that don't require being in the training room.
Tip No. 6: Top-priority training should be kicked off by senior management.
One of the best ways to get senior management involved in the training that you are delivering is
to have them kick it off on the first morning. Courses like sales and sales management should
be considered top priorities by senior management. They will likely welcome the opportunity to
come in and say a few words. This will also verbally commit them to standing by the training in
the future.
Tip No. 7: Get involvement early and keep everyone involved throughout the session.
The best way we know to make sure participants are learning is to make sure that they are
paying attention. Since overloading on authority and control will only give you forced attention, not
true focus, we recommend other methods. Asking questions, involving individuals in quick
scenarios, having participants draw diagrams or demonstrate skills are all great ways to keep
them involved and learning. The only other alternative is to conduct straight lectures, and this is
never the best approach. Even for technical training, involvement - from beginning to end - will
win the day.
Tip No. 8: Use Job Aids
Include lots of job aids in your training. Job Aids are tools that participants take away with them
and can keep with them as they perform their new skills. One example of a Job Aid is a
laminated sheet that illustrates the steps of a particular sales skill. Even if these skills can be
accessed through a help screen, there is no substitute for seeing it on your wall when you need
it.
Tip No. 9: Make sure that at least one of your trainers is also a subject matter expert.
This Tip is really two rules in one. Make sure your "subject matter experts" are proficient trainers
and make certain that your trainers are either experts or accompanied by experts. Note: If an
SME is going to be involved in training for any duration, it is critical to send that person to a
thorough trainer-training course before putting him/her out in front of participants.
Often management makes the mistake of thinking that an SME is ready to train because he/she
has worked one on one with people in an instructional role. That is very different and doesn't
prepare the SME for the role of standup delivery. Additionally, if your trainers are not experts in
the topic and you have little choice on who trains, recommend that trainers get some field time.
Trainers can learn a whole lot in two or three days of observing people at work and seeing the
skills at work that they will be training.
Tip No. 10: Measure learning on at least two fronts.
First, offer some sort of pre-course evaluation. This can be done in the form of a questionnaire,
customer-service survey or other metrics tracking method.
Second, use proper instructional objectives in training so that people actually have to
demonstrate what they have learned by the end of the module or the course itself. Make the
learning evaluation as close to real-world as possible. If you are measuring sales skills, don't
give a written quiz. Conduct a role play with success criteria. The better your instructional
objectives - built in learning evaluations - the more learning that will take place.
Third, conduct post-course evaluations similar to the pre-course evaluations. By measuring one
against the other it is easy to see the learning that has taken place. Finally, interview participants
three-six months after completion of the course. Ask them about specific changes they have
made in their performance and skill sets based on having participated in the course. There
changes will be evidence of the learning that took place in the workshop.
Click More to Learn more about how you can teach your Trainers how to Train with Impact
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