How do you plan and prepare for your training facilitation sessions?

A structured approach ensures effectiveness & engagement. Thoroughly understand the training objectives & audience needs. This helps design relevant content & activities. Create a detailed session plan, including a clear agenda, learning outcomes, & interactive elements. Gathering & organizing necessary materials & resources is essential. Challenges I have encountered include diverse participant backgrounds and varying levels of knowledge. To address this, incorporate different learning styles, provide supplementary resources, and encourage peer collaboration. Technical issues or limited connectivity can disrupt virtual sessions, so I always have backup plans in place and perform technical checks before the session starts.

Session preparedness is essential. I start by: - Recognizing my own facilitation style and how I present myself during sessions -Understanding and mapping the thinking style of my audience This approach significantly reduces my pre-session anxiety because it allows me to: -Anticipate potential challenges - be ready even before entering the room to address challenges more effectively The result: - Boosted engagement and participation -Fostered a sense of psychological safety, making everyone feel valued and acknowledged I achieve all of this through a straightforward and efficient tool.

When planning and preparing for training facilitation sessions, I start by clearly defining the objectives and outcomes I want participants to achieve. I then develop a structured agenda, selecting the most appropriate materials, activities, and tools to engage learners and meet those objectives. Additionally, I anticipate potential challenges or questions and prepare strategies to address them. Finally, I ensure that the learning environment, whether physical or virtual, is set up to support active participation and interaction.

Habit 2?? Begin with the End in Mind Steven Covey. Q. WHAT - audience challenges is your session addressing? - technique/strategies do they want to learn/remember - will they leave your session telling others they gained from it? Research, experience and conversations will help you find answers to the above questions which will become the foundation for your session.

Particularly, when dealing with new hire onboarding, it is very important to use multiple delivery methods that cover all learning styles. It can be very difficult to know your audience when it is day one and you have never met them before. But with meticulous planning, incorporating methods that meet the needs of various learning styles, and conducting ice breaker sessions to get to know your audience on the fly, you can successfully deliver engaging content to a variety of learners.

??Learning Outcomes. What 3 things will attendees take away from your session both in terms of strategies, tools and techniques but also the transformation your session is facilitating. ? People who attend sessions I deliver leave with a new perspective of Time and tips, tools strategies they can implement to find more, do more and be more productive without compromising their wellbeing.

If the participants have time and interest I would like to have preliminary session with them like online or through email to know their expectations which will help me design the right content but if I can not do this then I will try making the session interactive and informative based on their experiences, job descriptions and place of work

This is very important as you want to be sure you’ve met the needs of your audience and setting clear learning or session objectives that are both actionable and measurable will help you get there. Use action verbs in writing clear session goals which you can assess either as the session is ongoing or at the end.

In my experience depending on the work and their experiences along with the type of event the sessions of training could only be made worthy of learning by including material that is immersive and event appropriate. Also the user should be user friendly.

?? In Person ???? Online This will dictate the methods and techniques you use for breakouts and learning moments. 3?? Tie each exercise back to one of your main learning points to giving your audience time to integrate the lesson with a neurodivergent approach using all the senses.

In my experience, an understanding of your audience and their needs make this step somewhat easy because you can gauge what will be most useful for them.

I am often surprised that facilitators don’t incorporate the polling feature?! It is such an incredible way to gain engagement and to get a sense of the temperature of your audience. Polling all allows us the ability to check for understanding, to get a sense of sentiment, and it can be a fun way to guide the direction of the session as well.

?? Could someone else deliver your session? ?? Simplicity is the key to successful transformations ?? If someone else could deliver your session with your materials that’s a good sign! ??Obviously they won’t have your stories or experience which is the secret sauce, but using this technique will help you to ensure your audiences get the best possible learning experience and then some!!!

One thing I’ve found helpful is to use tools and methods that activate your audience. Something as simple as a worksheet or something more technical like a guided software walkthrough can be beneficial. I aim for my audience to feel engaged and leave with a feeling of understanding and confidence.

I love, love, love, an agenda! Every time I facilitate to a group, I make sure they understand what they can expect during our time together. These can act as guard rails and I certainly understand they’re not concrete often.. sometimes we have to go with the flow during our sessions and try to adhere to the agenda as much as possible.. I appreciate a facilitator who lets us know what we can expect during the meeting!

?????? Preparation = Confidence ????ONLINE ?practice lights, camera & angles ?create a checklist to avoid mistakes on the day ?don’t use new tech without checking the set up beforehand ?give yourself time on the day to get set up and ready for go live ??IN PERSON ?make a tech bag of any cables, clickers, pens, lights, presentation on USB you want ?tech check the day before do an on stage run through ?get there ahead of time on the day ?? Consider pre session audience surveys if you can. ?? Start your session with an audience question. ??♀? I’d say something like, let me know in the chat box or raise your hand and tell me what your biggest Time Management challenge is right now?

Has anyone ever had to present from different locations before? I have ??and checking your environment is critical! Whether you are working from a single laptop or you’re in your home studio with 3 screens, testing your set up and on screen presence is going to make you feel much more confident when you have to present whether you’re on the go or at your office. If it’s an in person facilitation, NO QUESTION, rehearse in the space-click through slides, walk the room, and get familiar.

??Structure your session around the hero’s journey. Your session is taking your audience on a trip with you to possibility island ??? Use your learning points as stepping stones 1??2??3?? from where they are to where they could be and conclude with a call to action. ? ??♀? Raise your hand or let us know in the chat box what you are taking away from this session to try out in your career/business or life today? FINALLY enjoy the performance ?? speaking, facilitating, teaching, training is a privilege. ?? ?? We have the opportunity to create change, change lives and evolve humanity!!

For virtual facilitation, I like to take advantage of having multiple screens. Sometimes we’re able to layer information and use it to further drive engagement during our sessions by utilizing multiple screens. We can also pull resources that we can refer to or reference. It may look like having a browser window open to capture questions in real time to answer them. ??Either way, the ability to process different streams of information by simply layering windows or spreading them out across multiple screens can give you a true authority when facilitating virtually.