Skip to main content

Live Training

Five days of live training - and then you realise why an e-learning done in the way e-learnings are traditionally done just doesnt cut it.

No, it is not about interaction, engagement and all that - while that exists. It is also not about jazzy content. It is not about making people do unintellectual activities in the name of engaging the audience.

And all these 5 days, there were none of those irritating energizers, no bullshit.

So what makes a great live training? These are my observations:

Dont get me a trainer - get me a person who has been there done that, or done research into what she has come to talk to me about. So, I get real answers, not hypothetical.

Build on my knowledge - you may be an expert trainer, but do not underestimate what I bring to the table. Get groups to work, bring out collective knowledge. Use what I know and build on it.

Show me something I have not seen despite all that I know - you may be an expert, but you still need to make me think and make me do and then show me an outcome. Let me come up with an insight.


Give- give your assets, give them something to work on , give them something to carry back (not useless workbooks though), give them something to mull over.

Technology does not matter - Jazzy presentations do not matter. What matters is just value addition. I got back thinking, yes, I learnt something here.

Elicit learning - make them think, ask questions, probe, prod, push and let them get the answers...

Come with more than your slides - meaning, if all you know is in those slides, it is a disaster. Your slides are a small sliver of your knowledge - feel free to use it when those unprecedented questions hit you.

In summary, Great Knowledge and great facilitation - it is not so much about facilitation or about knowledge, but a real interaction of both. One without the other is useless.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Be Civil. Make nice!

Popular posts from this blog

The man who saved Pumpelsdrop

This was a story we had in college if I am not mistaken. Perhaps it was in school, but a delightful story it was. The story goes somewhat like this ( reproduced from here ), but the college version we had was slightly different from this.  I t was a dull, gloomy and a depressing morning in a town named Pumpelsdrop in northern England. The Great Depression had brought all the businesses to a standstill. The bored automobile dealer was spending time alone, as usual. But, this seems to be an unusual morning as an odd entity (customer) appeared on the horizon. A man in a bright suit walks up to the dealer and says, "I need to buy a Rolls Royce Phantom II. We have a business conference coming up and I need to impress my customers". Then proceeds to pay 10% of the deal with a single check for 2000 pounds. The rest he says will pay when he takes the delivery.   The auto dealer was stunned. He was delighted to hear that someone is holding a business conference of some kind and
Post a Comment
Read more

The Mintzberg triangle

At a recent training, someone spoke about the Mintzberg triangle. I located it here . Image from that page reproduced here. The page linked above has a better explanation of diagram above, but what intrigued me was that the triangle exists for practically anything. The facilitator referred to this in the context of facilitation. Of how facilitation has science, craft and art to it. That is so true,  I thought. Worth a thought! Need to read of Mintzberg though...
Post a Comment
Read more

Waigaya and Sangen Shugi - Honda

Two big takeaways from Driving Honda were Waigaya and Sangen Shugi. A few days ago, we were working on a strategy module for a company. As we leafed through old and new theories and books around the same - one comment which caught my eye was Henry Mintzbergs comment where he says "Strategy is like weeds, it has to grow all around your company" A lot of times organisations dip into their pool of employees (and sometimes customers) and solicit ideas from them. This happens either at an offsite or a meeting or some quarterly review and the ideas pile up. Most companies today have an innovation program that encourages bottom up ideation. Many of these ideas are future strategy - provided someone is listening. Sometimes these ideas are not immediately implementable - but if one keeps looking, there might be valuable stuff in there. And if (post such programs) ideas die very often, the motivation of someone to keep doing it will also diminish. Waigaya is what Honda call
Post a Comment
Read more