Table of Contents

What happens after a training session?

It's nice when a participant compliments you on an amazing session. It's even better when they put your lessons into action.

A participant walks up to you after your training session, smiles, and says: “Thank you. That was by far the best training session I’ve ever been to. I have to tell you, I’ve been to a lot of these sessions and I didn’t have high hopes for this session, but my boss told me I had to be here. I wasn’t looking forward to it. But now I’m so glad I came.”

As long as you’ve made your content relevant for your audience and have designed opportunities for engagement, a comment like this may not be uncommon.

But what happens next?

Two people I respect very much in the learning and development space, Nancy Bacon and Mark Nilles, recently published a short eBook for conference planners on how to design a more effective conference. I think there are some key lessons in there for anyone who works in the training space. 

I was particularly drawn to Chapter 4: Make it stick: Post-conference activities. What struck me most was how you can replace the word “conference” with “training session” and most of the ideas hold true.

In this chapter, Nancy and Mark describe three activities you can take to reinforce the learning after the event:

  1. Implement a booster program
  2. Offer post-conference discussion groups
  3. Incentivize blogging by participants

I’ve long-maintained that training should be a process, not an event. By engaging any of the activities that Nancy and Mark describe in this chapter (and selecting the appropriate approach depends on both your audience as well as your available bandwidth to continue engaging your participants after the event), your participants have access to post-event support to put their new learnings into action. Without this support, the odds that key learnings are effectively put into action decrease dramatically.

Whether you’re a training designer or a conference planner, I recommend giving Nancy and Mark’s eBook a read. It’s short (only about 30 pages). Then come back here and let me know what you think and how you think it might be applied to your world.

Articles Similar to What happens after a training session?

L&D Team Book Club: “Map It” by Cathy Moore

L&D professionals may be responsible for always helping others to learn, but we don’t have tons of time for our own development. Over the past month, my entire team made time to read and discuss Cathy Moore’s “Map It”. These were our takeaways.

Hybrid Learning: When to use it

Recently I had an opportunity to talk with the folks at Mimeo about hybrid learning and when to use it. In today’s post, I share a link to that podcast, which is one in a series of podcasts they did with industry leaders on hybrid learning strategies.

Does training actually change behavior?

Does training actually change behavior? It’s a question we should be able to answer honestly. (And the answer is: No, not 100%… and yes, but seriously, not 100%)

How to create a training plan in under 10 minutes

Using a lesson plan template (which is the most downloaded resource from this blog) can help give you structure. Using Soapbox can save you all sorts of time (and still give your presentation some structure)!

Subscribe to Get Updates from Endurance Learning

Brian Washburn, Author

Brian Washburn
CEO & Chief Ideas Guy

Enter your information below and we’ll send you the latest updates from our blog. Thanks for following!

activities cookbook

Download the Training Activity Cookbook

Enter your email below and we’ll send you the PDF of the Endurance Learning Activity Cookbook.

Let's Talk Training!

Brian Washburn

Brian Washburn
CEO & Chief Ideas Guy

Enter your information below and we’ll get back to you soon.

Download the Feedback Lesson Plan

Enter your email below and we’ll send you the lesson plan as a PDF.

feedback lesson plan
MS Word Job Aid Template

Download the Microsoft Word Job Aid Template

Enter your email below and we’ll send you the Word version of this template.

Download the Free Lesson Plan Template!

Enter your email below and we’ll send you a Word document that you can start using today!

training materials checklist

Download the Training Materials Checklist

Enter your email below and we’ll send you the PDF of the Training Materials Checklist.

Subscribe to Endurance Learning for updates

Get regular updates from the Endurance Learning team.