How can humor make hands-on training more effective?

1 Design with humor

Using humor in hands-on training starts with designing activities with humor in mind. It can make your activities more relevant, memorable, and enjoyable for your learners. To achieve this, you can create scenarios or problems that are realistic but also exaggerated, absurd, or unexpected. Incorporate elements of surprise, contrast, or irony into your activities. Utilize playful language, metaphors, or analogies to explain concepts or instructions. For instance, if teaching customer service skills you can create a scenario where the customer is a talking cat or a celebrity. If teaching software skills you can use a retro interface or a glitchy simulation. When teaching project management skills you can compare the project phases to cooking a pizza or building a Lego tower.

2 Deliver with humor

The second step to use humor in hands-on training is to deliver your activities with humor. Humor can make your delivery more engaging, interactive, and supportive for your learners. To start, you can break the ice and warm up your learners at the beginning of the session with jokes, stories, or games that relate to the topic or the learners' backgrounds. During the session, you can use quizzes, polls, or challenges that reward correct or creative answers with humor to encourage participation and feedback. Humor can also be used to acknowledge and praise your learners' efforts or achievements. Additionally, humor can be used to manage the pace and energy of the session by transitioning between activities, summarizing key points, or re-energizing your learners. It is also useful for coping with mistakes, technical issues, or difficult situations.

3 Feedback with humor

The third step to use humor in hands-on training is to feedback your learners with humor. Humor can make your feedback more constructive, positive, and meaningful for your learners. For instance, you can use humor to give feedback that is specific, actionable, and balanced, highlighting strengths and areas for improvement without being harsh or vague. Additionally, you can use humor to receive feedback that is honest, respectful, and helpful. Moreover, you can use humor to follow up on feedback that is consistent, timely, and relevant, reminding and motivating your learners to apply what they learned and improve their performance. Finally, you can use humor to show empathy and understanding of your learners' challenges or emotions as well as appreciation and openness to learning from your learners.

4 Follow up with humor

The fourth and final step to use humor in hands-on training is to follow up with your learners with humor. Humor can make your follow-up more effective, memorable, and engaging for your learners. You can use humor to review and reinforce the main concepts or skills learned, provide additional resources or tips, keep in touch and build rapport, inspire continuous learning and development, recognize and reward achievements, and share updates or stories related to the topic. Humor is a powerful tool that can make hands-on training more effective and enjoyable for both you and your learners. By using humor in design, delivery, feedback, and follow-up, you can boost motivation, retention, creativity, and collaboration in hands-on training. Try it out and see the difference humor can make in your hands-on training sessions.

5 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?