Speaking Of...

How do audiences learn best? Having spoken with and trained many people over the course of my career, and listened to their feedback, here's my take on what makes training effective.

First, inundating folk with information is not training. Here's a useful, short definition of training.

"training - activity leading to skilled behavior"

To learn any skill requires lots of practice. You didn't learn anything permanently in just one shot, e.g. driving, hitting a baseball, swimming, a foreign language, and the list goes on. The temptation today, especially in a business setting, is to equate presenting a lot of bullet points and expecting them to be cemented into the brains of trainees.

The brain works differently--and uniquely--in each of us. Without association, the points rarely stick, and retraining might be needed, again and again. Costly errors happen because of this.

Second, adults are not blank slates. They come to you with years, often many years, of life and work experience, and may know your subject, or aspects of it, even better than you do. Your job as a speaker/trainer, is to mine that knowledge and experience to the best advantage of every audience member, remembering that often people learn best from each other, and not you, the speaker.

Third, there is a direct relationship between how long you can go on speaking for learning to take hold. One-way speaking is just that, and sticks a lot less securely than interaction between the trainer and the audience. Lecture is only as spellbinding as the ideas coming from the podium.

Points to consider when you plan your next training session.

|  Add to del.icio.us |  digg this