The single most common complaint any trainer hears is, “They took the training, but nothing changed!” There are several factors why that is.
Firstly, what were the expectations before the training and how was the training designed to achieve the specific result desired? Were surveys conducted with participants, their managers and the people who work with those sent away for training? If not, then it is obvious why the training failed. If you don’t know what you need, how can you deliver an appropriate message?
Secondly, was there a follow-up system installed to ensure what was covered in the classroom is brought back to the job. Was there a learning contract signed between participants and the trainer? Were supervisors coached about the programme and how to facilitate the trainees’ transference of information back in the workplace? Did the trainer contact the trainees personally in the weeks following the training to ensure the programme’s success and to answer any OJT (on the job training) questions? If not, again, it is obvious why the training failed. Without appropriate follow-up, nothing will succeed.
The third reason why training fails is in the classroom itself. Was the programme engaging? Without engaging training, most of the information is wasted. Engaging training means it entices, entertains and spellbinds the trainees. Psychology has proven over and over, you cannot influence anyone with anything that does not pass through the senses.
Look around you and see something across the room - a lamp, a chair, a plant. You see it. You are aware of it. You can tell someone else about it. At the same time, you are looking at 1,000 other objects and yet you don’t really “see” them since you are not focusing on them. It could be the dirt on the floor, the fly on the wall or the brown spot on the leaf of the plant. All these elements are present but they are not engaging your conscious mind, hence, have no direct impact upon your senses. If the fly on the wall takes off and comes towards you, landing on your lunch, it now engages your attention as you shoo it away.
Likewise in training, the focus, purpose and subject of the training must be more engaging then anything else in the person’s physical or mental sphere of influence. If the training is merely factual, little or perhaps none of it will leave the training room.
Here are five tips to help ensure your training has a greater impact and engages the participant:
1. Fact: If you sit in the front row, you are 35% more likely to walk out with the information. Why? Little to no distraction. Anything said, shown or shared is directly accessible. Being in the back row of a large training session, you have to contend with the guy in front of you scratching his back side, the woman “fluffing” her hair and the “fidgety” guy constantly shifting in your line of sight.
Make every seat a front row seat or as close to it as possible. Set up room width wide, not long and narrow. Stagger seating and allow enough room between seats for people to see transparencies, flip charts and the trainer. Raise flip charts off the floor onto platforms so more of the paper is visible from the back seats. Before the programme starts, sit in every chair and look at the front imagining someone taller than you in the seat in front of you. Is there any way to improve the set-up or remove anything in the way? Give your participants a fighting chance to learn before you get started.
Setting your seats in a curved row brings you more response, compared to arranging chairs in centre aisles and straight rows. The energy is wasted up the middle.
2. Use colour – lots of it: A Dartnell University study commissioned by 3M found participants have a 65% greater chance of retention with the use of coloured visual aids. I’m shocked to still see people using clear acetate transparencies with basic black print or white paper handouts with black type. “But coloured paper cost more money.” No. Taking people out of their work environments, boring them to tears and then yelling at them for not learning anything costs the most money. If you aren’t going to do it right, don’t do it at all.
3. Psychological states: Adults learn best in one of two psychological states - when they are laughing or crying - because both are highly-charged emotional states. Think for a minute about the times in your life you will never forget - a wedding, a death, the betrayal, a discovery or an award. You were laughing, grinning ear to ear, crying or enraged. Now, I found it somewhat negative to have an entire class sobbing or screaming in anger so the best method appears to be laughter.
Make learning a game by using a game board format. Use a cartoon to illustrate a point. Keep lists of “clean” jokes to make learning points stick. Check out books in your local library or buy some in your local bookstore for fun learning ideas. I’d suggest Games Trainers Play by Ed Scannel and his succeeding three volumes.
4. Self discovery is far better than lecture: Any parent will tell you, they told their three-year old kid not to touch a hot stove, a candle flame or pet the neighbour’s pit-bull dog. But what does the kid do? Burns the hand twice or gets bitten by the dog. But the next time they see a cold stove, an unlit candle or a stuffed toy dog, they stay away. Experience is the best teacher.
Likewise, if you tell your adult learners anything, they would doubt, question or ignore it all together because the lecture was passive, not engaging. Instead, have them “discover” the answers via a discussion, simulation, case study, role play or game. When they find out answers
for themselves, they actually absorb the information because of the engagement and involvement.
5. On the job training: To transfer training to the real world, there needs to be OJT. Why teach communications if the examples are not from or relevant to the workplace? Why teach management if the management is not involved in the implementation? Why train anything without the direct involvement of the trainees and their managers? While some things have to be covered in the classroom, there is a need for the participant to make the leap from theory to applying it in the workplace.
Make the leap for them. Make it industrial-strength easy for the average worker to understand how to make the necessary changes. No one should leave the training without their own list of specific commitments as to what they will change, do, develop, learn or modify in their behaviour. Show them how these changes will make their work lives easier. Help them understand how their efforts will make the team grow, improve their own chances of promotion or give them long term work security. Don’t expect them to make the “leap of faith”, instead help them make the “leap of knowledge” for themselves.
Training is never an easy matter. What happens before, during and after a program impacts the effectiveness of the training. Obviously control the before and after training experience, but during training is when the information is passed on. Make all training engaging and your success rate in the effectiveness of training will climb dramatically.
