Making Training More Practical
I was recently delivering a training to a group of managers. Many of them said something similar to the following:
Thank you for taking the time to talk with me and find out about my needs. This is the first training I’ve had where someone did that with me.
Whoa! Seriously?!?
Jean Piaget, the French psychologist, did some experiments with children. He took 2 identical beakers filled with the same amount of liquid and asked the children, “Which beaker has more liquid?” When he asked 5–7 year olds, they, unsurprisingly, said, “They have the same.”
Then, while the child watched, they poured the liquid from the 2 containers into 2 differently shaped containers, 1 short and fat, the other tall and thin. When he asked the children 5–7 now which container has more liquid, they all said, “The tall thin beaker.”
Piaget repeated the experiment with older children 9–12. Like the younger children, when asked which has more liquid, they replied, “They have the same.” However, after pouring the liquid into 2 different containers (again, while the children watched), and he asked, “Now, which one has more?” the 9–12 year olds looked at him, like, “Are you dumb? You had 2 flasks, they had the same amount, you poured the 2 flasks into these other 2 flasks…so the short-fat and tall-thin beakers have the same amount of liquid, because it was the same amount of liquid before.”
Piaget called this concept “conservation across barriers.” In other words, the ability see something in 1 context and to be able to transfer it to another context.
And this is where many training programs fail. During the training we learn about problem solving or critical thinking (or even running meetings or writing an email), but then we find it difficult to apply what we’ve learned to our actual process. And unless we use what we’ve learned, repeatedly, then it will slowly atrophy and die away.
So, if you’re a trainer, you need to focus all the resources you can on gathering information from your participants to help them apply what they learn from your training in a practical manner. And sometimes, just the process of gathering information is valuable.
In our course regarding emails, we gather sample emails from everyone in the group before the training. Then we take 1 email from each participant and turn it into a handout that we look at during the training. In this way, when we go over this exercise, nobody can say, “Well, I don’t do that!” And the trainer can say, “Umm, yes. Well, this exercise is made of all of your emails. So, yes, actually you do, do that.”
In another course that we run, we have done so many editions of the course in so many different companies that the answer to the question, “What is your greatest challenge in applying this skill in your work?” elicits the same answers. So, what’s the point in asking the question any more? Well, when we put the answers to this question up on the screen, everyone sees their answer and becomes emotionally engaged in the course.
And for me, I find that having read these answers and having put them into the slide deck to discuss, I automatically focus the training on these issues. Finally, when the training comes to an end and we evaluate the “success” of the training, we can go through this list and people can say “Oh, yes. I got an answer to that question.”
I understand that some trainers get this list of challenges from the participants at the beginning of the training. For me, I find that a waste of precious time that could be used to give the participants answers to their questions rather than soliciting these questions at the beginning of the training. And this gives the participants the sense that you’ve prepared for them, what you have is tailored to their needs (which is true) and that this training will help them. Above all, it creates more energy at the beginning of the training as you move quickly to providing content.
So, to sum up, take a little more time before the training to get to know the needs of your participants. Then, during the training, work on their actual cases and help them answer their questions and solve their problems. It will make the training stick in their minds better and will help them more easily apply what they learn in their daily work and lives.
Written by John Held