Training Without Nonsense

Training is a process designed to help people learn to do things.

But, given the fact that there is so much bad training out there, you’d be forgiven for defining it as “A process designed to frustrate people and waste their time”.

Why is there so much bad training out there? I think it’s because many people, including trainers, see training simply as a classroom experience as opposed to a process designed to help people to learn to do things.

When we view it as a classroom experience, everything seems quite straightforward.

We consult our stakeholders and ask them what they expect from the training. They too focus on the classroom experience, pointing out that they’d like it to be engaging, that they’d like certain messages to be delivered and that it should include some practice and case studies.

We design the solution and focus on the timing for the day, the flow of activities, how we’ll frame things and what slides/stories/techniques to include.

We then facilitate the solution, focusing on their needs in that moment. We get great at helping people relax, involving them in the discussion, sharing powerful stories, engaging them in activities and ensuring they have a generally good time.

And then our job is done.

I know what you’re thinking. “Yeah we need follow up, managers need to be involved, the learning needs to be aligned with their KPIs” and so on. But I’m not even implying any of that.

I’m a pragmatist. I recognise the limitations of the corporate training world. For many trainers, our job literally does finish when we step out of the classroom. And to accuse you of being irresponsible because you don’t do follow up is, in my opinion, unfair. Trainers are busy people, with more training to design and deliver. Trainees are busy people too, frequently with not enough time or energy for follow up sessions. And frankly speaking, in many cases, follow up distracts from what’s really missing.

The 5 Elements of Training

Earlier this year, I finally published my book “Shaping Paths - How to Design and Deliver PRACTICAL Training”. I was extremely glad to finish that book, it was a stressful experience that I dedicated 6 years of my life too! I went down many lines of thought as I was writing it, and I deleted tens of thousands of words and wasted a lot of time. But I got to dig deeper into how to help people learn to do things and focus on what was really important and what wasn’t. And eventually, a framework revealed itself to me which I cover in depth in the book. I now use this framework to design all of my training and I find it extremely helpful.

I call this framework The 5 Elements of Training, and this framework helps explain how to banish nonsense from training.

In short, The 5 Elements are:

• Priming - Where we help people get into the right frame of mind to learn
• Guiding - Where we help people get ready to practice
• Practicing - Where we help people experiment and master new skills
• Reflecting - Where we help people adjust their mindset
• Committing - Where we help people create the right conditions to help them continue learning by themselves

These elements don’t have to appear in any particular order. They don’t even need to all appear in the same solution. Sometimes one element is enough to help people learn to do things.

But if we want to design a no-nonsense training solution, we need to consider how to achieve each necessary element’s objective in the most efficient manner. So, let’s have a look at how to do that.

Priming

If people aren’t primed to learn from the training, then the training is going to be a load of nonsense.

People learn because they have a need to learn, not because someone told them to. Generally speaking, people learn because they want to achieve a goal, or solve a problem.

Sally wants to get a promotion whilst simultaneously reducing her workload, so she can get more meaning from her work, a higher income and spend more time with her family. The first step to priming Sally to learn from our training is to make sure our training will actually help her do those things.

But beyond aligning our training with what she cares about, we also need to do a few other things.

We need to let her see how the training can help her. We need to market the training to her. We need to let her have a say in how she will participate in this process.

And whatever the process, be it a classroom training, an e-learning solution, or even coaching, we need to design it to align with her needs. The most basic of those needs is to feel comfortable with the training process, not frustrated by it, and not feel it’s a distraction from other more important things she needs to do. She would also need to trust the process, as well as the facilitator of the process.

If we were to run a classroom training that would help Sally, it would be a good idea to at least let Sally know the benefits beforehand. At the very least, send her a message letting her know how this training will help her with the things she cares about. Even better would be to get her input beforehand and design the training according to her input. And at the beginning of the classroom training, the facilitator should show Sally why she should trust them, they should also do everything they can to let Sally feel comfortable with the process, as well as feel comfortable with the group of people she’s going through this process with.

Only when Sally is primed to learn from this training can the learning begin.

Guiding

Abuse of this element is where training gets its bad reputation from. It's where we help people get ready to practice by sharing with them everything they need to know in order to practice.

This is the knowledge part of training. This is unfortunately where bad trainers over-lecture, depend on text-heavy slides, and unleash a barrage of personal war stories on an impatient audience. This is not how guiding should be done.

I define knowledge as information used to complete a task. If I wanted to take the subway from A to B, I wouldn’t need to read through a PowerPoint deck that started with the history of subway systems and blah blah blah. I’d just look at a map, and within about 2 seconds I’d have gained all the knowledge I needed to complete my task.

When knowledge is the only thing required to enable people to do things, then using training to “deliver” this knowledge is pure nonsense. It would be far more efficient to put this knowledge into an accessible format that they can access when they need to do that thing. For example, if I wanted to learn how to upgrade the RAM on my computer, I could simply Google that information on my phone and follow it step by step.

Knowledge, generally speaking, doesn’t belong in the classroom. Generally speaking, it belongs on a smartphone, or any other device that can fit into someone’s pocket and be with them 24/7.

But there is a certain context where knowledge in training does not lead to nonsense. When people need to master skills (and I define skill as being able to perform a certain action, or set of actions, consistently to a certain standard), then they need just enough knowledge to be able to start practicing those skills.

In order to provide just enough knowledge to start practicing, people need answers to 4 questions:

• What should I do?
• Why should I do that?
• When should I do that?
• How should I do that?

For example, as part of Sally’s attempt to get a promotion, she realises she needs to be able to coach people. Coaching is a skill with many, many actions. One of those actions is paraphrasing. And if we were to focus on practicing paraphrasing then we would want to first answer the 4 questions. We could do so by explaining the following:

• What - We should use paraphrasing to frame what the other person just said in our own words to show that we are listening and processing what they say.
• Why - Because it helps us check if our understanding is correct, and lets them feel they are being listened to, which in turn also encourages them to continue the dialogue.
• When - We should do it after they’ve finished talking. We can also do it when they’ve just shared a lot of information and we want to better manage the pace of the dialogue.
• How - Repeat what they say but use your own words. Here is an example…

We can answer these 4 questions through a variety of means. We can use lectures, we can use slide shows, we can tell stories, we can use examples, we can demonstrate the answers in action, we could even use an experiential activity and get them to share the answers to these questions during the debrief.

But guiding, in my opinion, should not take a very long time.

For example, experiential learning activities are quite popular because they’re fun, really engaging and you can really get a lot of insights from them. I believe they can be great for Practicing and Reflecting (which I’ll get to shortly), but as a tool for Guiding people they are extremely inefficient (again, in my opinion).

If I wanted to use an experiential activity to help Sally answer the 4 questions about paraphrasing, then I could design an activity where she experienced both good and bad paraphrasing in a role-play with a partner who was instructed to use both good and bad paraphrasing. Then as part of the debrief I could get Sally to reflect on the What, Why, When and How of paraphrasing and answer those questions in her own words. That seems like a great learning experience, but…

That would take a long time. The goal of guiding is to get people to practice as fast as possible (because generally speaking, there isn’t a lot of time for training). The real learning doesn’t happen until they’ve practiced and reflected. By indulging in an engaging activity just to answer those 4 questions, we’ve prolonged Sally’s learning and made our training (very fun and engaging) nonsense.

For Sally to truly absorb the answers to those questions, she needs to practice doing those actions, and reflect on each of those questions in depth. So rather than get her to reflect on her experience of someone showing her good and bad paraphrasing, we would want to get her to reflect as quickly as possible on her own experience of using paraphrasing.

Generally speaking, anytime we are guiding someone, it should only be focused on answering those 4 questions, should not take longer than 10 minutes, and should immediately lead to practicing.

And it doesn’t have to happen in the training room, or even with a coach. It can happen using instructional aids that Sally access herself. But wherever or whenever it happens, it must happen before practice, and ideally just before practice.

Practicing

Practice is a process designed to allow someone to focus on doing a certain action, to a certain standard, under certain conditions.

In guiding, we’ve explained the actions, the standards and the conditions, so now it’s time to start turning that knowledge into action.

Designing practice activities is really very simple. All we need to do is define the objective of the practice.

The objective is what we need Sally to do (paraphrase), to what standard (using her own words to rephrase what the other person just said) under what conditions (during a role play activity with a partner who has just described a problem they have).

We would then set up a role play activity with a partner where they describe a problem they’ve had, and then ask Sally to paraphrase them. Bam. It’s literally that simple.

But, in order for practice to be effective, it must come with evaluation, otherwise it's more nonsense.

With evaluation, we compare what Sally just did against the standards. Did she use her own words to rephrase what the other person just said? If yes, great, if no then we need to correct.

And correcting is the other important part of practice. This is where feedforward comes in (not feedback). With feedforward, we tell Sally what she needs to do next time in order to hit the standards. This includes what she should continue doing, and what she needs to start doing.

For example, if Sally missed out on a few details that the other person said but for what she did repeat she showed a good use of framing things in her own words, then we would tell Sally that she should continue to frame things in her own words like she did just now, but next time check with the other person if she’s missed anything before finishing.

So, there are 4 components to effective practice; an objective, an activity, evaluation and feedforward.

Do these require classroom training, or even a facilitator or coach? Not always. In fact, the training would be great if it didn't require any of those.

If Sally has a worksheet that answers the 4 questions about paraphrasing, and explains the activity to practice it, as well as the standards to evaluate herself against, then in theory, she can practice on her own.

In reality though, where facilitators and coaches add value is where we prime Sally to really focus on that practice. If we just left her completely to her own devices, she might not take the practice that seriously and she might not recognise the need to practice this. And another area where facilitators and coaches add value is in evaluating and giving feedforward. Sally could do those things by herself in theory, but she might make mistakes and overlook important factors.

My belief though, is that if we are doing a 1- or 2-day workshop, then we should use that as an opportunity to train Sally on how to practice by herself, and how to incorporate the practice into her daily work, and what opportunities she could use to evaluate her effectiveness by herself.

Reflection

So, Sally’s now practiced, training over, right? No.

Once she’s practiced, she’s going to have a lot of things going on in her head. Feelings, insights and questions. These are important parts of learning to do things that we need to address.

For example, maybe she felt that paraphrasing was a bit weird, and she could already spot the other person’s problem and felt the need to point out a solution straight away. Well, let’s surface that feeling, and discuss it. Let’s ask her to reflect on when she should use paraphrasing and when it’s OK to straight away give her advice to the other person. We could invite other people into this reflection to share their experience as well and let Sally ask questions about it.

Feelings can be inhibitors or enablers to action. If we don’t address, her feelings then we risk rendering all of our efforts so far complete nonsense.

She might have unique insights as well. She may have realised that using paraphrasing too often could be robotic and weird and even break rapport with the other person. That’s a great insight, so we can ask her how often is too often? What could she do instead? When could she do that? When is it OK to paraphrase? When is it not OK?

In my opinion, these insights are some of the most valuable things to come out of training. They’re keys that unlock new possibilities for people. They’re also clues to underlying issues people need to address. Maybe she thinks paraphrasing is weird because when someone else used it with her they did it in a weird way and made her feel uncomfortable. So, does that mean it’s always going to be weird? Or was that person doing it wrong? What did they do wrong exactly? How could you avoid making the same mistakes as them?

She probably has a lot of questions too. Maybe she struggles to remember everything the other person said. This then reveals a part of the skill that we overlooked in our training design. Maybe it’s something even we as experts have no awareness of. As experts, we don’t know a hell of a lot about all the individual steps we do, we just do them. What a great opportunity to remind ourselves of the subtleties of these skills. And what a great opportunity to open the discussion up to other people and hear their own experiences? There’s always so much more for us to learn.

If we don’t help Sally reflect, then she could finish the practice feeling uninterested, and decide not to practice this any further. She could finish with more questions than she started with. She could finish with less confidence than she had before. Reflection is the step that helps address important mindset factors to help Sally continue her learning journey.

In theory, we could let Sally reflect on her own. Some people are great at reflecting on their own. But others prefer to reflect through dialogue with others. Others need answers to their questions to help them reflect more thoroughly.

A facilitator, or coach, can help structure the reflection to suit Sally’s needs. They can help Sally surface the feelings, insights and questions she has. They can answer her questions or help her find answers to her questions. They can help her develop more mental enablers, and overcome the mental inhibitors, that she might not have achieved by herself, to enable her to continue her learning journey.

Going back to experiential learning activities, I think they are fantastic tools for stimulating reflection. There are many types of training solutions out there that don't include focused practice (as described previously) or much guiding, and instead are pure activities and simulations. From the outset, that can sound just like getting a bunch of people together to play some games, and if the experiential activity does not include a decent debriefing process to help people reflect on what they learnt from it, then it is basically just playing games. But when there is a decent debrief following the activity then these experiences can generate some really valuable insights.

Experiential activities can be great for letting people try new things in familiar scenarios, or exploring how they react to certain situations. With a great debrief, we can then help draw out all the valuable insights they got from these activities, and give them a chance to rewire their mind to help them face their working challenges with a different attitude in the future.

Committing

It’s now time to part ways. The training is over, the facilitator or coach will walk out one door whilst Sally walks out the other. We’re about to find out if this training worked or not. It’s time for Sally to commit to using what she learnt.

People, in general, suck at making commitments. Disagree? Well, how many times have you failed at your New Year’s Resolutions? There. See! You suck.

We tend to over commit. We underestimate our laziness. We over estimate our super powers. Sally is probably no different.

As trainers, facilitators, coaches etc., we should be experts on behaviour change. And there is one thing any expert on behaviour change will agree on; we are lazy.

At the end of the training, we should spend a bit of time asking Sally what she plans to continue using on her own. We should first remind her of her goals and challenges (getting a promotion, reducing her workload etc.) and ask her to reflect on what she learnt from the training that will help with that. We should ask her how and when she could do those actions that she learnt from the training to help her achieve those.

But more importantly, we should ask her how she could make those actions even easier. We should ask her to think about what barriers she will experience, and how to overcome those barriers. We can ask her what tools and support will help her apply her learning back to work.

But if she’s primed to learn from this training, and the training is relevant to her needs, then surely her commitment won’t be a problem? Surely, because we’ve designed such a great training solution, she’ll just use it?

Well unfortunately most training is not that simple. Most training is designed to target the general needs of many people, which means that some of it will be relevant to Sally’s needs, but not all of it. Furthermore, even if we design a solution that is specifically for Sally, there is still a chance that we overlooked some things or included some irrelevant things.

Let’s be honest. Training isn’t perfect. It’s important to spend time filtering through the stuff that she didn’t find helpful, so she can focus her energy on the stuff that was helpful. Pretending our training is a perfect solution is also, pure nonsense.

But surely, we should also be ensuring her supervisor will be holding her accountable to applying her learning back to work? If that’s possible then great. But let’s be honest, how often does this happen in real life? I believe it’s better to assume this won’t happen and that application is 100% dependant on Sally’s commitment. Better to coach out her real commitment, then leave it all to chance.

Training Is Not Perfect

I’ll be the first to admit this. We design a process to help people learn to do things. But even with this process designed as efficiently as possible, there are still parts that will be wasted.

But a good trainer will review those wasted parts, reflect on why there was waste, and do their best to reduce waste in future trainings. It’s a continuous process of hit and miss, design and refine.

Training is a lot like fishing. We can find the perfect spot, at the perfect time, with the perfect bait, but it doesn’t guarantee that we’ll catch a fish.

Instead, we can just make sure we use a rod that won’t break, with bait that’s not rotten, in water that definitely has fish. Then maybe, just maybe, we’ll catch some fish.

Thank You For Reading

Wow! That was a long read. I hope you enjoyed this article and found it useful. If you’re interested in learning more about The 5 Elements of Training, then take a look at my book on Amazon.