How do you make your training methods memorable?

Tap the participants experience post telling a story, they will be willing to relate & share one or two real life stories of their own, this helps involvement and the group becomes attentive right at the start.

I love to tell people what they do when they don’t know the best technique to accomplish a task. This helps them understand not only what I’m teaching but when to apply it.

When I'm dealing with someone that has an issue they can't seem to overcome, I will just walk up to them and start talking about a time where I'd been having an issue. It didn't matter what. Sharing the moment of weakness and reminding us that we are all just people. It helps calm the trainee down. This allows them to look at the problem with less frustration and more confidence.

Ensure you are not oversharing, creating self or transferred trauma if speaking about difficult situations, incidents and examples. Ensure you are comfortable. Also ONLY tell your stories not anyone else's stories - they are not your to tell

One of my favourite training courses started with a very personal and fun story from the trainer. I remember sitting there and thinking "this person is so cool I want to become a trainer like her". I was a very junior trainer back then. It's been three years ago and I can still remember my engagement on the whole session. I start my training sessions with a personal (and hopefully fun :)) intro since then.

We design our examples and materials where we can implement the techniques in other places. It is a layered approach. This allows them to apply a technique multiple times.

Sometimes, expecting students to retain subtle nuance is unreasonable, this is where a quick guide or matrix is critical. In these situations I back away from repetition of the explanation and lean in on repeated reference to the guide. Often this can be done with humor and fun interaction. The guide will continue to repeat for you when they return to their desks.

In my experience as a previous trainer it makes a great discussion point, visuals capture the audience. In one of my slides I used the pride colours to demonstrate equality and diversity and inclusion, this was well received and appreciated.

Start the learning experience with action. Make the learner do something right away like answer a question, make a decision, play a game, choose a team, solve a mystery, escape a room. This techniques and others immediately pull the learner into the instruction and gets them involved. I call this action-first learning and it creates motivation, engagement and, most importantly, meaningful learning experiences.

Yes, active learning. And when utilizing someone to guide the LX journey, a blended active learning facilitator— a unique set of skills, tactics and techniques that supports the learner.

Active learning provides a variety of teaching strategies that allow learners to be more actively engaged in their studies. Active learning and “student-centered” go together and caught the interest of educators/trainers during the early 1980s. Educators, instructional designers, and educational researchers have developed an interest in evaluating models of teaching and learning that would allow learners to take part in, explore, and collaborate in an online course. Learners must be engaged and actively involved in higher-order thinking tasks (Bloom’s Taxonomy). Numerous cognitive studies have shown that many individuals learn better when additional learning activities are presented other than lecturing.

In my PoV, learner engagement and co-creation of learning experience are the life-blood of making training memorable. Devising means that appeal and apply to as many senses of learners as possible is a sure way to score high. Be bold and creative beyond the run-of-the-mill activities will be appreciated by your participants. I often ask my learners to create short videos on the given subject as means of Co-creation.

In my experience, I have found that when you can connect on an emotional level with your employees, it solidifies your commitment to genuinely care about their wellbeing, and their professional development. This can be used at crucial times during training when the employee may make an error, and your corrective response, can now be tailored to best benefit the employee’s emotional response and retention of the correction.

As former Trainer, it is important to lead with empathy and genuine care for your employees. As a human, all employees want to feel appreciated, cared for, and supported. Life doesn't begin with your Employer. Life begins with passions, hobbies, and family. You cannot have successful, hard working employees if you do not care for them as a person first.

It’s important to keep in mind that colors can effect or trigger emotions also. Be careful with your color selections and remember that different cultures can respond differently to the same colors.

Use of emotional pivots in designing and delivering of training programs is a great way to stay longer in their mind and heart. Right mix of positive and challenging emotions can work wonders. I find appealing to the higher purposes of my learner’s evoking greater commitment towards skills and coaching follow-through.

This activity can actually be performed after course completion using periodic projects or surveys ensure the learning remains fresh.

In my signature negotiation skills programs, one participating manager had an appointment with their customer after the first day of the workshop in the late evening. He was excited with some of the newer tools he learned during the day and was so encouraged to use his ‘mirroring’ skills in his entire length of the dinner meeting which worked well beautifully. The customer who wasn’t ready to listen negotiation pitch earlier was in rapt attention and asked lot of queries to clarify the details. This progressed their negotiation step that day beyond the manager’s expectations. The next morning, he was all set to share his experience of the last night with the rest of the group. This helped many in the team to adopt these NLP techniques

Add humour Humor is a mark of involvement and intelligence. It keeps participants interested. Anecdotes, on the spot addition, stories, sharing about self can add smiles and humour. It connects us to each other.

There are some elements you should consider in your story? Which could be represented in 5C's: 1.Circumstance - The 1st stage of storytelling where you build the scene and context of your story. 2.Curiosity - This is step is very important, it's where you hook your audience attention. 3.Characters - Your characters should be relatable to the audience, the power of connection has a huge impact on your story. 4.Conversations - Your story should engage emotions and be worthy of sharing so that it would strike conversations. 5.Conflicts - The most compelling stories include conflicts that characters struggle to overcome. By using those elements you'd make sure that your story is compelling and serves your training objectives.

To be effective in training,trainers need to ensure that their approach accommodates all learning principles There are different types of learners,Activists,Reflectors,Theorists and Pragmatists. As a trainer you should appeal to all learners using different learning styles. Activists like doing things and experiencing something Reflectors like to observe and meditate on what they see being done Theorists enjoy developing frameworks,drawing conclusions,from what has been done Pragmatists want to apply the framework and conclusions to a real life situation for them to take learning as important and useful.

Add experiential learning, games, and simulations. Learning by doing is always more effective than other methods. And such experiences are often more personalized. Collectively, this makes experiences more memorable.

Ensure that your training is diverse and inclusive for example: - Include diverse personal imagery - those of different shades, sizes, race, gender, and those with disabilities. - Use gender neutral words and avoid gender and racial stereotypes. - Ensure accessibility and embed elements to encourage neurodiverse learning styles.