For more than 20 years, I’ve been talking about the importance of training being fun, engaging and experiential. I don’t believe that giving people information does much, on the whole, to change their behaviour, which is why I have little patience for the current craze for, what I call, tick box training.
It might be cheap, but it’s not cost effective, since, on the whole, it doesn’t achieve the key purpose of training, which should be to change behaviours and release people’s incredible potential.
In my view, if we want training to result in real change, we have to make sure people retain the learning and are inspired to do something with it. And we need to focus on giving them experiences; not knowledge. That’s why, alongside practical work-based activities, case studies and other tools, we’ve always designed training activities that focus on behaviours, rather than situations. That’s allowed us to create extremely powerful learning activities for Trainer’s Library that participants will always remember.
Here’s a few, examples from the hundreds we have:
Island of Opportunity, where participants have to decide how to divide our island so that the needs of all newcomers are met.
Jack Fruggle’s Treasure, where participants need to tap into all the skills within their team to achieve a successful outcome.
One Hump or Two?, which introduces and illustrates the importance of continuous improvement.
The Wheel, a quick icebreaker and review exercise, which quickly shows the value of teamwork and dangers of a silo mentality.
Our training activities will be remembered because our brains are designed to remember things that are different from the norm, and they’ll inspire learners to change because we show you how to transfer the learning back to the practicalities of their roles.
But, what if you’re faced with a ‘conservative’ audience? How do you ensure your participants (and trainers) will be open minded to this type of learning in the first place?
I’ll let one of our customers answer that, courtesy of some lovely feedback I received following last week’s Tuesday Insight:
“I just wanted to thank you for your lovely blog - a really great example that resonates on many levels. I’ve had a few issues recently with learners not wanting to engage with activities that ‘aren’t like the real world’ or ‘don’t reflect the day job.’ We’ve all come across that barrier and managed to overcome it, but I found that I was becoming less convincing. And then I was running a problem solving session and we used the ‘Reframe’ activity from Trainers’ Library, and the delegates loved it as they always do. And, suddenly, it all made sense! So, now I refer to other Glasstap activities as a reframe…trying something in a different context so that we generate ideas for our own good – and suddenly everyone is happy. Even very senior people arguing about Islands of Opportunity!”
So, there you have it – the secret to our success. By focusing on behaviours, rather than situations, and putting those behaviours into a different frame, we create learning that’s both memorable and inspiring.