Issue: Some parts of training feel awkward, or just not like me.
Solution: Change those parts and capitalize on your strengths
Just last week, I delivered a session on short and long-term memory. Virtual. The producer asked me for the slides. I said: “there are no slides, I don’t like slides very much”. He was very surprised. “Everybody always uses slides” he said. Instead, I created a job aid with 8 practical strategies that people could print, post at their work stations, and consult every time they needed to do their job.
This week I celebrated my birthday and a good thing about the 4th decade of life is that we are a lot more comfortable in our own skin. We know what we are made of, we have a better idea what we like, what we can compromise on, and what are our no-no.
Put yourself first
In training, the first step is usually the ANALYSIS of the audience, the resources, the needs… but nobody talks about analysis of the trainer. I guess it is mostly implicit, but today I want to make it explicit.
Hands up if you:
- love sharing your zone of genius with others but dread presenting in front of an audience
- need to connect at the human level with your audience before putting on your trainer hat
- find evaluation surveys boring and impersonal
- know your audience is suffering of virtual-fatigue and so are you
I have been through all of those points above at different times of my career.
At the beginning I though it was the way it was, and sucked it up.
But as time passed (with age as the saying goes), I learned to capitalize on my strengths by changing things to fit them and fit my preferences.
Do an inventory of yourself
Make an inventory of your strengths: what excites you? what are you often praised for? what do people ask you questions about all the time? what energizes you? what would you do all the time if it was your choice? what would you like to learn more about?
Clue: Pay attention to your emotions. Yes, they have a lot to do with training.
Do more of what you like: because you will enjoy it more and it will show.
Ask yourself:
- Does it really need to be a presentation? Can it not be a guided personal reading with a 1 hour Q&A with you at the end? or a job aid with a 15 mins discussion around it?
- Do I need to send an evaluation survey? Can I not interview a sample of participants at the end? or ask them for an email with their feedback?
- Can I ask the audience to ONLY use the chat for questions or specific interactions? (Answer: yes you can, if its your class. If it is not only your class, suggest it to the co-presenter. Or ask to be them the chat monitors)
Take Action:
CHALLENGE THE STATUS QUO to reflect on the strengths and brilliance that you have come up with throughout the years and capitalize on it. I challenge you to change the practices that might feel routine, tradition or procedural… you know “the way it is”, for “the way you want it to be”.
The way that serves you best.
Because if you work the way that serves you best as a trainer, the results will be superior. And your audience deserves that.
But overall, YOU deserve that. We all deserve to enjoy our work.
Back to the no-slides presentation from last week, this morning I received an email thanking me for the job aid: “Its so useful, I had forwarded it to all our team for their reference”. People rarely share slides. And I didn’t have to make any because visual design is not my strength – I really enjoyed more a discussion about the points of the learning aid, which at the end covered the content and that is what matters.