Types of Training Activities: 16. Sampling Exercise

A Sampling Exercise involves a collection of examples of different objects (such as e-mail subject lines, conference session descriptions, lead paragraphs of articles, or book titles.) The participants analyze the examples, identify key features, and list quality standards. Later, they apply their discoveries to create new examples that meet their needs.

Examples of Sampling Exercises

Here are six examples of sampling exercises:

Abusive Customer

The purpose of this sampling exercise is to handle an abusive customer. The facilitator asks the participants to listen carefully to a series of short audio recordings of telephone conversations between an abusive customer and an empathetic customer-service representative. The participants identify effective techniques used by the representative to defuse the confrontation. They also prepare a checklist of dos and don’ts for handling the abusive customer. Later, a participant plays the role of a customer-service representative while the facilitator plays the role of an abusive customer. Several roleplays are conducted with different volunteers.

Key Words

The purpose of this sampling exercise is to generate a mission statement for their organization. The facilitator distributes a collection of mission statements from different organizations and asks the participants to independently select keywords and list them on a flipchart paper in an alphabetical order. Later, the participants review the lists and write a mission statement incorporating selected key words. Finally, teams of participants consolidate their mission statements into a meaningful and memorable version.

One-Liners

The purpose of this sampling exercise it to generate one-line jokes. The facilitator tells a short joke and explores its structure. (Example: I don’t believe in reincarnation but in my previous life I used to believe in it. The structure is a self-contradictory statement.) More examples of this type of joke (example: Honk if you hate noise pollution) are explored. The participants to write their own versions of one-liners. A poll is conducted to select the funniest joke.

Session Descriptions

The purpose of this sampling exercise is to write concise descriptions of professional presentations. The facilitator provides a link for conference programs that contain different session descriptions. The participants spend 30-minutes to explore and analyze the samples in web sites. Each participant writes a description of a session they plan to present. The participants read their descriptions and receive constructive feedback from the other participants.

Subject

The purpose of this sampling exercise is to write email subject lines with an immediate call to action. The facilitator displays a series of email subject lines on the screen and leaves them in the background (examples: Don’t open this email. Get priority access. Plagiarize my designs.) The participants discover features of effective subject-line statements. Working in teams, they share the motivating factors and attention-getting words. As a final activity, the facilitator presents a bland subject line and invites the teams to convert it into an enticing version.

What Do You Do?

The purpose of this sampling exercise is to explain one’s job in a memorable fashion. The facilitator begins by suggesting that when people ask a trainer, “What do you do?”, they answer something likr, “I am a genie who helps people reach the three wishes for improving their knowledge, their skill, and their attitude.” The facilitator continues with half-a-dozen alternative statements that describes the impact of the trainer’s job. The participants are invited to generate other startling ways of describing what they do as a trainer.

Detailed instructions for conducting each of these exercises will be provided in our forthcoming book.