In my last blog post I briefly mentioned my training experiences and thought that this might make for a blog all on its own. For clarity, I spent three years working in a sales training role, although my job title at the time was the somewhat ambiguous “Instructional Designer”.
In this role I was responsible for creating, distributing and presenting training content to ensure that the sales team were able to effectively sell the products and solutions that the company produced. This was really a role of two halves, due in the most part to our friend COVID 19. In the first half of the role, I did a fair amount of good old fashioned “instructor-led” training, particularly at regional and international sales meetings. You know how this works, I’d stand at the front of the room and try my best to keep a room full of (often hungover) sales reps interested in a Power Point presentation about how to sell the latest widget.
Part two, the pandemic part, was entirely remote training. You’d think this would be the same as the in-person training, but with the additional level of complexity of trying to do it via MS Teams. In some cases this was true, but these days a lot of training content has migrated to online training, also known as eLearning. More on this later…
I’m somewhat old fashioned (well, maybe just old), and I quite like instructor-led training. I’d rather be the trainer than a trainee, which probably says something about how much I like the sound of my own voice. I’ve always taken it very seriously and wouldn’t dare to stand up in front of a room full of people unless I’ve rehearsed (and just as importantly, understood) the content I’m about to give. In my opinion, taking training very seriously is the key to unlocking a good performance. Many trainers, even experienced ones, are nervous in front of a large audience, particularly where that audience could be a bit “judgey”.
For me, those nerves are mostly due to a lack of confidence, either in myself or in my ability to present the content. So, rehearsal is your best friend. I live by the mantra of “practice, practice, practice”, and I apply this to all manner of public speaking, not just training. Millions of pages have been written about how to give a better presentation, my own recommendation would be the book “Talk like TED” by Carmine Gallo, which as you may surmise, is a close look at the techniques that TED speakers use to polish their presentations that may be watched online by millions.
Obviously, the content in your slides is important as well (I’m old fashioned remember, so let’s just go with the assumption that you use PPT slides). The content contained in the slides is just as important for a training course as it is to a sales pitch presentation or speaking slot at an academic conference. Here I would say my guiding light is slide content that is clear, succinct and relevant. That’s way way harder than it should be. I used to teach a course on slide design, and it’s eye opening just how bad some slides can be. If you ever find yourself saying “sorry, you probably can’t read this at the back, but what this slide is saying….” then you need a slide design course!
If your training is comprehensive, it’s good to break up the monotony of a single speaker, and of course it is good to test your audience. In my training role I occasionally relied on doing role-plays. Mention of this to a room full of people has an amazing effect, instantly every eye avoids yours, even the most seasoned sales professionals dislike being dragged on the stage to be involved in a situational role play. And yet, they do work very well due to the fact that you’re forced to recall the information and tactics you were being trained in.
Now back to online training, or rather, eLearning. Most working people are familiar with these, usually in terms of health and safety training, or perhaps training to use certain business systems. These ones are almost universally disliked – there seems to be an innate human resistance to learning via a computer screen that you cannot interact with. And yet, company training departments use them because they are efficient, cost-effective, and it is easy to track which of your staff have taken the training in question.
During the pandemic days, they also had the huge advantage of not requiring any face-to-face interaction, so the team I worked in was working flat out to produce eLearning. I quite enjoyed making this type of content, the software I used allowed a fair amount of creativity, and you could up the interactivity by adding in puzzles, questions, and other opportunities for the learner to engage with. I also had access to software that allowed me to make interactive videos. This was fun. I remember one of my kids watching me making one of these videos and saying to me: “Daddy, are you at work at the moment or just playing?!
I always tried to keep in mind the general opinions about eLearning so really pushed to make my courses as entertaining as possible, but it’s hard to battle against the in-build prejudices against it. During my time working in training, I would occasionally attend conferences about adult learning, and there seemed to be a feeling amongst the trainers that eLearning would eventually replace instructor-led training. But I never really believed that, and I think that post-pandemic there has been a gradual move back to the classroom. I do remember asking a (distant) colleague during lockdown if they had watched my latest eLearning course, and was told “Sure, I just turned the sound off so I could get on with some work at the same time.”
These days I do still do some in-person training, and thoroughly enjoy it. I relish the chance to be at the front of a room, hopefully knowing I have rehearsed the content sufficiently, and ideally with a room full of happy shining facing keen to learn from the old hand. If you’re a trainer yourself, I’d be happy to swap tips and stories. If you create eLearning, good luck!
That’s all for this month, but if you’ve got any comments or thoughts about training, either in-person or online, then please let me know, I’d be keen to hear (Stephen.guilfoyle@isotopx.com). More next time!
