7 ingredients of an impactful training program

I was invited to do the NSBM IEEE Volunteers Training 2022, which was one of the memorable ones for me because of the process and the impact of it. So let me take through the major ingredients of an effective training program through the story of this event.

1. Understanding the audience, objectives and expected outcome of the client.

When a set of senior members of NSBM IEEE team came to meet me to invite for the above said program, I wanted them to sit with me for a discussion to understand the audience, objectives and expected outcome of them. We had two rounds of such discussions.

Audience:

Current seniors were not so satisfied with the passion and the leadership qualities of the next generation who will take the responsibilities of the organization in the coming years. They gave me different examples of disengaged volunteers and poor leadership approaches of some of the department leaders.

Objectives:

A) Embed the team spirit to the newly joined volunteers

B) Make the department leaders think more about thier team mates

Expected Outcome:

A motivated team who can do a great job to successfully conduct the upcoming IEEE Day 2022 celebration — the only University level IEEE Day organized in 2022.

2. Creating an impactful learning experience plan to meet the objectives

After understanding the objectives and expected outcome. I drafted 2 separate learning experience pathways for both the audiences.

This included Ice Breaker activities, Slides with impactful messages, Videos, and Group Activities.

After designing the program i briefed the organizers and got their alignment on how this is going to be implemented to meet their objectives.

3. Having a Catchy Title, an Attractive 1st slide, and a memorable Ice Breaker.

Your 1st slide will set the audience mentality on what is about to come.

Since the audience is from a tech background I wanted to give a tech touch to the name to connect them easily. Therefore, I went for an innovative title for the session as?“EEE-4-IEEE”?along with the tag line?“Secret Code for creating exceptional teams”

These E’s represented 3 key behaviors expected from the 3 layers of people the organization to make it a great team.

Enthusiasm: for Volunteers

Empathy: for Department Leaders

Envision: for Organizing Team

For designing, I went for an electronic font and background and added the topic inside a box making it look like a “Password” and used an image with secret codes which looks like the wallpaper of a hacker.

As usual I took 30 mins to fully complete the 1st slide.?(Yes, 30 mins is needed to finalize a catchy name, a proper font, and proper images)

As the Ice breaker, I broke their silence by showing the “Smarties” I brought and kept in front of them and then asked questions for them to answer to get the chocolates. As it happens most of the time, not all the questions were answered by the audience and I enjoyed one packet of smarties of in front of the audience ;).

4. Perfect Planning of Training Delivery

The day before the event I made sure to walk and see the hall allocated to me. It was the Network Laboratory of the Faculty of Computing. After looking at the space and types of chairs available I had to tweak some of my planned activities. Then I suggested to change the orientation of chairs from typical class room type to make it as circles.

That day, I made sure to check whether the computer given to me has all the fonts I have and the screen dimensions of it compared to my laptop where I make the presentation.

Finally, on the event day I arrived 30 min before the starting time to make sure the training area was changed as I wanted and there are no technical errors to start the slideshow.

There was an issue with the sounds, and since I arrived earlier we had time to fix it and start training on time.

5. Proper support from organizers to execute the plan

When you design a learning experience, it cannot be executed without the support of the organizing committee. I had a set of materials and instructions to be given in a planned order to the audience to make the impact i was aiming.

So I got the organizing committee fully aligned with my delivery plan and assigned them roles to do at different stages of the training process. Some of them were hidden agendas too.

6. Enthusiasm from the audience for feedback

When a training has made an impact on the audience, it will have people coming voluntarily to provide feedback.

At the end of the event, a few students came forward voluntarily to provide verbal feedback while others were enthusiastic in filling the online feedback link. The overwhelming positive feedback received by the audience made me and the organizing team feel better about the pre-planning.

7. Post event review

The main part was this. After a few days, I met the organizing team and discussed how the program was impactful and checked whether the objectives they had was met by me via the program. The organizers were happy about the delivery and shared stories of changed behavior of volunteers.

Above 7 are things I see as important ingredients for a successful modern day training program.

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Post event moment 1

The organizers had an amazing thing planned at the end of the program, which was to have a small musical gathering. And it was the best part for me after a tiring session of 3 hours. So I also jumped in to sing a favorite song of mine together with the students.

Post event moment 2

The objectives of the organizers were to see a successful IEEE Day after the training program. So, I was lucky to be available to witness the expected outcome of a training. Since I remain inside NSBM even after the training program, I got the opportunity to witness the impact of the training program on the audience, which is a rare experience for a trainer.

IEEE 2022 event was successfully unfolded in front of students from other universities too.

And I had the pleasure of feeling satisfied that I have played a part in this success too.

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Post event moment 3

And the other important thing in the story is that, the people who were the back bone to identify the need of such program to groom the next generation, got the opportunity to take up leadership roles in IEEE NSBM Branch as well as in national level IEEE events, giving a good example for “Lead without titles”

I take this moment to wish all the very best to that core team who are one set of very passionate volunteers I have ever met.

Isura, Dasanjith, Senith, Nirasha, Dewmi & IEEE of NSBM,

Keep doing great works and looking forward to meeting you all in the volunteering space again as?SL Inspire Volunteers