A new mantra that everyone who wants to make sure their training sticks should be bellowing is, “telling is not training”. There is absolutely no point in wasting your time, energy and money training people if you are just going to lecture at them or read off of the color copies you made of your PowerPoint slides. The truth is, that stuff does not work, and will not create the behavioral changes you need. So repeat after me, “Telling is not training”. TELLING IS NOT TRAINING! Instead implement some of these quick techniques to make your training worthwhile.
1. Stick to Three Key Points
You only have the ability to get people to remember and act on three key points throughout the entire training. THREE, not thirty! No matter how much pressure you are getting from management, other groups in the organization or even the trainees themselves, brain science cannot be altered. Putting more information on the PowerPoint slide or making the training session or manual longer, will not improve your chances of getting people to learn more information in a shorter period of time, but it will bore them to tears and earn you the “worst trainer of the year” award at the company banquet.
Keep Your Training Content to Three Key Points, Which Learners have to remember and Act On.
2. Include Interaction
Passive learning does not really exist. For people to really learn something they have to interact with it. Although, we all think that if you make the lecture interesting enough, throw in a few jokes to keep it light and maybe even dance a jig, (put away those tap shoes you were polishing) that people will find it memorable and remember what you had to said. Sadly this effort really just goes to waste. Although entertaining, the human brain requires active interaction with information to actually learn it. Instead of the jig you were going to dance, how about a Virginia Reel that the whole group can dance together?
Make Your Training Interactive. Get Learners Involved, by Discussing, Questioning, and Taking Part In Exercises.
3. Make Sure People Have an Opportunity to Test Their Skills
Here’s another simple truth for you. If you do not provide an opportunity for people to try out the new things they are learning in your training session, they are forced to try them out later on their own. This often occurs to dismal effect on the job or in the most in opportune places. Make your training session a safe haven and provide learners an opportunity to try the new skill and fail at it a few times. Think of it as providing the water wings they need to learn how to swim. It will increase their retention and make them more likely to use the skill or information later.
Give Learners a Chance to Practice During the Training Session.
4. Keep It Simple
We already discussed the three key points rule, but you also need to make sure that you keep your content simple and easy to understand. Remember KISS? Keep It Simple, Stupid! Keep away from jargon or acronyms. (Whoops, KISS is an acronym!) Leave out the million dollar vocabulary words.
Teach to an eighth grade comprehension level, in order to be understood by most adult audiences.
5. Use Repetition
Repeat each of your key points at least three times, throughout your training. You don’t want to do back to back repetition, but weave the repetition throughout the presentation. At the risk of sounding repetitious, may I remind you to REPEAT YOURSELF? This helps the leaner’s brains start to create memory cues that will serve them later, when they want to recall the information you presented.
Repeat Key Point At Least Three Times.
6. Master the Art of Asking Questions
Questions are a huge benefit to skilled trainers. They allow you to get a sense of what the audience understands, so you can adjust your delivery on the fly. They provide clarification to learners, who may be struggling with a concept or skill. They serve as a leaning tool to increase the speed at which people learn.
Ask Questions and Answer Questions.
7. Make Learners Work to Find the Answers
As my final tip, I am going to tell you something you may find odd. It is not your job as the trainer to provide the answers, shocking but true! Your job is to set up the situations in which learners can discover the answers for themselves. If you tell them all of the answers, then they will probably work very hard to memorize them, but they will never be able to internalize them until they discover them for themselves.
Force Learners to Discover the Answers on Their Own.
Seven Things to Do To Make Your Training Great!
1.Keep Your Training Content To Three Key Points, That Learners have to Remember and Act On.
2.Make Your Training Interactive. Get Learners Involved, by Discussing, Questioning, and Taking Part In Exercises.
3.Give Learners a Chance to Practice During the Training Session.
4.Teach to an eighth grade comprehension level, in order to be understood by most adult audiences.
5.Repeat Key Point At Least Three Times.
6.Ask Questions and Answer Questions.
7.Force Learners to Discover the Answers on Their Own.