Be The Trainer

Be the trainer

Every time I walk into the training room, I get the butterflies fluttering their wings frantically as I prepare myself to help my group learn something new. Something useful. The same feeling I had, the first time I trained any group. Initially, I thought this will be gone after the first few session. Now this makes sure that I have prepared well, every time.

So what really prepares you to deliver a good training? How do we really get people involved? What makes it really worth listening to?

It all boils down to how well you connect with your group. Each person is unique. And as a trainer, you need to be able to identify the type of person and connect with them in their own little unique way.

There are a number of tools that you have at your disposal. Discussions, videos, inspiration stories, team games, story building, personal experiences etc. And while using your tools, be sure to add a few jokes here and there to make sure that your group is awake. Afterall, for most of the people, it must have been ages since they sat on a day long sessions.

In any group, there will be a few who open up quickly and share experiences. When the team themselves open up, it really help others to connect and become part of a live and interesting sessions.

There will be people who are little reserved, who needs a little push to get them involved. An activity or a game are usually the best tool that I use here. Where I don’t single them out, but help them come out as a group and break the ice.

Then again, there are people who are still immersed in their office work and are sitting here due to mandatory office training requirements. Now, these are the tricky ones. If they show the confidence to speak out, give them the opportunity. Prompt them to contribute to the story that you are building up. Or may be ask them to share the experience that they had in office. This will help the rest of the team gain from their experience as well as excite them to participate more as a group.

A good trainer always gets the class to participate and guide them to come to a conclusion from the group. A conclusion that the trainer wanted, but was derived and delivered by the group. This way, this will be imbibed in the class and hopefully some of them will make use of it in their daily life.

And once the session is over, it is critical that you analyse the class, to understand, how you could have delivered better. Feedbacks, if the session is recorded, watch the session yourself to see where you faltered and learn. If we, the trainer do not put in the effort to learn, how can we expect our group to learn.

To a better tomorrow … Keep learning.

-Ruby