Level Up your Trainings

Trainings are important and integral part of setting up and improving the expertise of team in any organization. Technologies and organizations evolve continuously and effective trainings are critical in building an able workforce to deliver products with expected quality and cost. A significant percentage of effort is allocated and spent for the trainings invariably in every organization.

The trainings are often conducted by a fellow team member who is a senior or an expert in the particular topic of interest. But they may not be an expert trainer. Unfortunately this is true in most cases and they fail short of driving across the content.

The result over time is a team with knowledge gaps and issues crop up in every turn of the road. The quality and cost of the product are impacted.

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Throughout my career I have given hundreds of training sessions. Trainings are my favorite activity at workplace and it is something I constantly strive to improve.

Here are some principles and tactics, I have learnt and used over the years to make my trainings effective.

1. Know your Audience

Conducting an Audience Analysis helps understand the audience's level of expertise relevant to the topic. Taking an audience-centered approach shall improve a trainer's effectiveness in preparing and delivering content effectively.

2. Inform the pre-requisites

Identifying and communicating pre-requisites well in prior helps the audience to begin training the with enough context and make them feel comfortable. Audience with no context give up attention very early into the training.

3. Understand the assignment

Structure the session and choose the tools based on if its a Seminar, Workshop, Tutorial or just a Tech-Talk. Audience come with an expectation and the trainer must cater to it. "Never mislead your audience" is Story-telling 101; same applies here.

4. Build right content

Prepare the right content in the right format to deliver the content (presentation, video or Exercises). No matter how much expertise you have, prepare your presentation. The content is for the audience, not the trainer.

5. Set an agenda; stick to it

Setting an agenda gives you a roadmap and helps realize if you digress. For the audience, it gives an idea of what to expect and focus on parts important for them. Do not setup or start a training without an informed agenda.

6. Trim the scope

Prepare the content and practice the delivery to fit the duration of the training. Often trainers miss to assess the size of content or the pace of delivery and end up short. Audience lose interest on sessions that overrun or are incomplete.

7. Begin with the WHY

A trainer must create interest and infuse motivation. Understanding the purpose gives motivation to be attentive. Before you get to the WHAT and HOW of a topic, begin with the WHY.

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In my sessions, I use questions to introduce the WHY and break the ice. Works every time.

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8. Flash the Big Picture

Early into the training spend a few minutes on the big picture, before getting to the specifics. Explain your audience how the different items fit together in the overall scheme of things.

9. Lead your audience

Start from the level of knowledge they audience are in and lead them to where they need to be. If the training is about a new tool or technology, start with or use examples about another familiar tool or technology.

10. Deliver Insights; not Data

Audience have a limited mental space and flooding them with so much data is a wasted effort and time. Focus on delivering insights which isn't readily available; Use additional handouts for sharing detailed information and data.

11. Stop Proofreading

Delivering content should not be just reading every word in your presentation.

Presentation must be used only as a visual guidance; for the audience, not the trainer.

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Now, this list is neither exhaustive nor the set of top most. But I believe you may have some takeaway to level-up your trainings.

Cheers !