You're leading a large group training session. How can you engage everyone without singling out individuals?

Here's my style: "I don't discriminate. I accommodate everyone irrespective of color, language, educational background, gender and age - everyone is important. I practice inclusion and equity. However, I group the participants into teams to foster collaboration, team work and networking. I use interactive sessions and icebreakers to get the best out of the participants. I use songs, videos, games and puzzles to calm the participants from long and draining sessions. I provide constructive feedback and motivation in terms of gifts or compensation to appreciate their efforts.

One thing I have found helpful here, at the beginning of the training in the day, I rotate the members to sit with a different participant. This allows equal participation and interaction. Another thing that I have adopted from experience is allowing of my participants to lead some feedback sessions. This is intended to build their leadership, presentation and communication skills. From experience, I have incorporated competitions. This type of competition is to bring the best out of those that seem to be reserved and timid. I allow them to lead, contribute and venture into new task or puzzle representing their groups. Whenever I use songs and videos to motivate my participants, I could see them resonate to the lyrics of the songs.

In my experience, I am an advocate of visual aids. I have a catalogue of songs, videos and infographics that address each session and at the same time make my work very easy. The participants see, hear and feal the tone of the message via the aids. One time at work, I got huge recommendations from my participants referencing the last training sessions I anchored. They were making reference to a particular video I played on "I'm unstoppable." I could feel and see the joy in them how the lyrics of the video touched them, literally. And one thing I have found helpful is, after using any visual aids like songs and/or videos, I ask them to address the video and share the messages in the videos so we could discuss more. And it has helped much.

En mi experiencia, el uso de símbolos ayudan a expresar aquello que no es fácil de hablar en público. Sugiero usar una infografia o construir una con los participantes para asignar significado y valor a los símbolos seleccionados de acuerdo al tema a tratar y usar estos símbolos en cada dinámica.

In my experience, I engage the minds of my trainees with open-ended questions, puzzles and critical thinking questions. I even go a step further by asking them to work in group so they could solve or find answers to the questions. Building team work is an essential part of my training. Also, one thing I've found helpful is allowing my participants to ask anonymous questions in a sheet of paper or use the question as an analogy. I could that they tend to be free to speak and collaborate with others. One time at work, someone wanted to ask question and he didn't want to sound direct, I just told him say "a friend of mine is needs answers to these questions..." And a time, I tell them, drop a note on my table during break or before I arrive

Cuando responder es voluntario es posible que la participación sea poca o nula, en este caso recomiendo establecer la regla de que todos respondan una buena oportunidad es usando un bolsa de preguntas para que todos respondan al azar.

In my work, I am an advocate of feedback. I use open surveys, questionnaires and Google forms. On every close-ended question, there's an open-ended answers. Participants get to tell their story or pour their hearts in response to the surveys. One thing I've found helpful is treating their responses. I don't just take feedback, I attend to them, analyze and revert to the participants. This gives them the mindset that we are teachable and also reading their feedback. I remember one time at work, one of my colleagues came to me to comment and request a particular session of the training should have been done better. So, I ensure this person's input is valued and addressed by working on the feedback, took responsibility and made improvement.

Si la sesión es corta con muchos participantes una forma visual de hacer la retroalimentación es usando un tablero que muestre: los pensamientos con los que lleguamos y al finalizar la sesión los pensamientos/conocimientos con los que nos vamos. Hacer una comparación con el grupo y asi consolidar aquello que se trabajó.

Es importante tener claro el objetivo de la sesión, para prevenir la desvalorización del aprendizaje, si es necesario alargar una actividad para consolidar el conocimiento hágalo, es mejor reducir actividades que perder el enfoque.