Interesting, engaging, effective training design and delivery requires a facilitator to constantly ask the question “what is possible”?
I’ve come to believe that training design and delivery is contagious. The standard delivery method – presenting to a group (generally through lecture, perhaps with some Q&A mixed in for “interactivity”) while clicking through bullet-pointed slides is so prevalent because it’s, well, the standard. And if that’s the only type of training people are accustomed to, then it’s also what they’ll design regardless of how brilliant they may be because that is the only thing they see as being possible.
I’ve found it extremely refreshing and professionally advantageous to push myself to go outside of my own circle of colleagues and contacts in order to have coffee with others in the training field – to find out what they’re working on and how they’re planning to design and deliver it.
Once, over coffee, I was talking with another person in the training profession about a project and he showed me a Cosmopolitan-style quiz he had designed to gauge learners’ coaching styles. I immediately borrowed the concept to design a basic eye anatomy course (click here to see the end result of this collaboration). Indeed it was possible to apply Cosmo’s often racy personality quiz format to make basic eye anatomy more memorable, enjoyable and “sticky” for the learners.
Boring training design and delivery eats important content and smart presenters for lunch.
Is there someone out there who can help open your eyes to what’s possible when it comes to training design and delivery?
The Train Like A Champion blog is published on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. These brief “Training Tip” posts are a series of quick reference tips that are published while your beloved Train Like A Champion blogger is currently enjoying a little vacation. The more in-depth posts will resume again in August.
