A friend of mine is a highly experienced coach, trainer, and facilitator. He is ex-military and previously held a senior coaching role in UK sport. Recently he shared some important insights with me. He said, that achieving in a high-performance environment requires constant training. And that one of the most striking things he found about working with businesses was that training is not regarded in the same way. More money is spent on recruitment than training, and training is often approached in a rather tick-box manner. At the same time business leaders often complain about a lack of engagement in training by participants. Training is often done ‘on-the-job’, and it is expected to work by some magical process of osmosis. The other insight he shared with me was that most businesses aren’t looking for high performance, they just want something that’s good enough. All of this shouldn’t really be that surprising. Unlike the military or sports the raison d’etre of a business is to make money, and the way the business world operates, like it or not, is focused on the short term. It is easy for a finance manager to see training simply as a cost, without being able to imagine the benefits accrued from the training. This is just the way the business world operates. No training provider is ever going to change these inherent business dynamics. All a training provider can do is to make sure that they do engage participants, and that the training is as effective as possible, thereby maximising the effectiveness of a limited budget. So how do you do that?
There is a clue for us from the title of Simon Sinek’s best-selling leadership book, Start With Why. You are reading this article for a reason; can you get in touch with that reason? If you can, can you get in touch with the reason behind that reason? And even the reason behind the reason, behind that reason? Why is about engaging people in the idea of, what’s in it for them. As a trainer you need to activate the participants’ motivation. Motivation is most effective when it is expressed towards what someone wants, like doing a good job, being the best they can be, getting promoted. This is why companies like to employ self-motivated people, because they will naturally find positive reasons to do things. At the same time some people are only motivated to act when they are moving away from something. Like focusing on the negative consequences of not acting. This isn’t as good, because it uses negative emotions for motivation, and once someone has moved away from the thing they don’t want, they stop taking anymore action. Nevertheless, sometimes an away from motivation will get someone who isn’t moving, to move. So, help people to find their motivation, ideally in a positive towards sense. Do this for the training as a whole and for each segment.
Once people have connected with sufficient motivation you then want to utilise this engagement to maximise the learning opportunity. There are several ways to do this –
- Use the sense. People are engaged and absorb information through their senses. They need to see visual representations and demonstrations. They need to hear content and ideas. They like to do activities and to think about and processes information.
- Teach both their conscious and their unconscious minds. This means giving content and structure, demonstrate what you want your students to do, have them do exercises, and use positive suggestions. Also, the unconscious mind likes repetition, this is why high performers train constantly. Find a way to embed the learning by repetition, where you can.
- Use stories. People retain information best when it is delivered in a story structure. The social and cultural fabric of ancient societies was passed down over many generations orally, through stories. Story structure is a human architype.
- People learn best when they are in a positive state. Make the learning environment as fun as possible, but not so as to make fun the focus of the event. Find the right balance.
- Deliver your information in a logical structure. This might seem somewhat obvious, but don’t overlook the need for it. Generally, this means that content is delivered through Why (motivation to learn), What (what is this), How (how do you do it), and What If (integration and consideration of new possibilities with the acquired learning). All done from big picture to detail.
When this is done well people will learn and enjoy their training experience. Unless you knew what the trainer was doing, you wouldn’t notice the layers that a skilled trainer weaves together in their delivery. Or to put that another way, when you do it right people won’t think you did anything at all.
“I am always ready to learn although I do not always like to be taught.” Winston Churchill
