Ask, Not Tell

I have had a few great learning experiences in Feb.   First, I facilitated a one-day planning workshop in Shanghai for the HR team in Mainland China.   Then, I attended a TTT class for a managerial course in Singapore.   Right before the Chinese New Year, I facilitated an offsite meeting in Hong Kong for the HK HR team.

I have learnt a lot from these.   For example, in the Singapore event, I saw my fellow facilitators from different countries in action.   They are very skilled and I learnt a great deal from them!   There are so many things I want to write about.   However, since Feb started, work became very hectic.  Got to find time…..

The first thing I want to reflect on is my ‘journey’ to become more flexible at my facilitation.  In the past 1 to 2 years, I have noticed how rigid I tend to be.  Thorough preparation is a good thing.  But sometimes I get too upset when things are not in place.  Or I can be easily disturbed when the event does not progress as I plan.

I in fact mentioned something on flexibility before in this blog e.g. see my post back to late 2008 – Preparation – the fine balance between ‘task’ and ‘people’

Anyway, back to the Feb events.  I consciously pushed myself to act flexibly.  For example, during the Singapore event, I proposed some last-minute change in my teach-back session.  Since my session was moved to after-lunch, I decided it is better to run the ‘action’ part before the ‘discussion’ part.   It worked well at the end.   And I am glad that I received positive feedback.

And in the HK event, I also made some changes and added new things on spot e.g. the way to collect participants’ feedback.   (It worked OK but I realized that it could be better if I have prepared more.)

I am glad that I am progressing on this ‘flexibility’ journey.   And reflecting on these, I think it is a balance, again.  I should prepare as much as I can.   But then on spot, I should be ready to change, including even abandon the original plan.

Another key learning in the Shenzhen TTT experience – I met a training veteran.   He gave me a lot of valuable feedback on my delivery.   And in particular what I mention here is a great phrase I learnt from him.   It is the attitude we should be having in treating our learners.   In his original wording in Chinese:

维护尊严，提高自信
(Translation: Maintain self-esteem and raise self-confidence)

Isn’t it great?   It is very profound.  Not sure what to say when a learner does not perform well in the role play exercise?  Or when a learner answers something irrelevant to your question?  This phrase will be our guidance in how to respond.

(This also reminds me of one of my previous post ‘What a presentation class do for the participant’ – I talked about the importance giving the participants with confidence in the presentation classes.)

According to Anthony, there was supporting research for this – Learning happens more likely when the learners have good self-esteem and confidence (instead of just having fun in class)

Thanks Anthony for this great sharing!!

This post is the last of the ‘Continuous Improvement’.   The 1st one is ‘Continuous Improvement‘, and the second one is ‘Continuous Improvement (Cont’d)’.    In these 2 posts, I have talked about 6 pieces of thoughts for continuous improving my own training skills.  And here is the 7th – Do things right the 2nd time.   I like this topic:

When I entered the banking industry as a graduate trainee, I joined a campaign to promote the ‘quality management’ concept.   Together with my fellow trainees, we sang a song as performance with lyrics saying ‘Doing things right the 1st time’.

For me, ‘doing things right the 2nd time’ is however more appropriate for trainers.  In short, this means that we should always try out as soon as possible new techniques we learn.   We should be brave about this.  Of course we have to prepare well before trying this.  But don’t wait too long till we are totally ‘comfortable’.

Why?   It is only after we try a training technique, we will comprehend it.   More importantly, it is only after we try it, we will readily register the technique into our mind.

Being a trainer is a “here and now” business.   We give instructions, observe and react.   We facilitate learning.   It is like guiding how the water flows.  We should not (and cannot) control totally, but we facilitate.   After all, it is the learners who learn, but not the trainer.   With this mindset, we need to have techniques right at our finger tips.   We thus have to register them well in our mind.

So, we should try things out.  Occasionally, we made some mistakes when we try the first time.  But we had to make sure we commit no mistake the 2nd time.

Why Continuous Improvement?

One may ask – why is it so important to improve?   In some sense, being a trainer can be a self-destructing career.  When the class starts, you close the door.   There are only you and your learners.  You tell a few good jokes which are often enough to get you a good L1.   And because it works, you conduct the classes the same way as you do in the years to come.   After a few years, probably when you interact with other trainers, you suddenly realise that you have not learnt much.

It is just like the analogy of ‘boiling frog’ – we can get comfortable…. in dying!

Further to my previous post ‘Continuous Improvement‘, let me share some more thoughts on how to make our own training skills better continuously:

4.    Share – One of the best ways to learn is to teach.  I believe we as trainers know it well.   And after all, we are in the business of making others succeed, aren’t we?

This can be in form of helping other trainers to design, or even writing a blog…..

5.    Talk to trainers outside the organisation – I started making effort to meet up trainers in other companies around 2 years ago.  There are so many brilliant techniques / best practices / wisdom out there.

In some senses, we could be victims of our own success – when you work in a company with a sizable training department, we try to look inward rather outward.

6.    Be a learner – Don’t forget to look at things from the opposite perspective.   I always find it amazing when I have chance to be a learner.   Just settle myself into the U-shaped tables and following the trainer’s instructions or answering his / her questions.   Take a mental record how I feel, and then imagine what if I were him / her….   It is very effective in helping me reflect.

I have 1 more point to share.  But I like it a lot, I will write a separate post for it.   I shall post it before the Chinese New Year!!

I am now in the Changi aiport waiting for my flight back to Shanghai….  It would be a tiring overnight flight….

I just attended a TTT class in Singapore…..  in a wonderful learning centre.  I would say it is the best I have ever been.  There is lot of natural light in the training rooms.  And there are lot of nice open areas with wireless connection, and even outdoor gathering place surrounded by green.   Just cannot help share here!!

I conducted an internal 2-day training skills course in Shenzhen last week.   I enjoyed the 2 days very much.   I made new friends and learnt from the learners.   Great experience!!

One learner raised in the class an expectation of knowing his own weakness.   I want to further my answer here.   I however do not want to focus on what weakness is identified in a single event.   Instead some ideas about how to improve training skills continuously came to my mind.   Specifically, there are 7.   Let me share the first 3 here.

1. Invite feedback, real feedback – We need feedback to improve ourselves.  Of course, the primary source is our L1 feedback.   But it is often too general.   As discussed in my previous post called “Obtaining Better Feedback” , we need to put extra effort in order to get quality L1 feedback.   Other than L1, we can also gain feedback from the learners through other means – refer to another post called “Getting Feedback during a class” .

2.  Get others to observe – Ask your colleagues to observe you whenever possible.  Sometimes, your colleagues come to the training room to learn how to run the class, or to understand the learners.   Ask them to do something extra – your own training / facilitation skills.  I normally give them a piece of blank paper dividing into 2 column – ‘Things I did well to facilitate learning’ and ‘Things I can do better to facilitate learning’.   Make the task simple and specific to them.

3. Observe others – Following the last point, the observers learn as well.  You may simply pick up new techniques from the others.   Or you may realise your own shortcoming when you witness the others making similar mistakes.

More to come…..

Let me share my learning from the rare opportunity I mentioned in my last post.   Summarizing the various feedbacks from the others, my learning in terms of action includes the followings:

Aligning Expectation

I experienced the challenges one can get into when the expectation is not aligned.   In this situation, there were a few reasons why expectation was not well aligned.   First, the learners were external.  My usual assumptions on how people behave or what they expect can easily fail me.   In addition, I understood the learners’ expectation mostly from the organizer instead of my direct contact.   On the other hand, my learners have diverse background – there were both part time trainers and full time trainers.  Moreover, some are much more senior than the others.   In short, they come with very different expectations.

Learners - I shall talk to the opinion-leader-type learners directly before the class.   I did call up the learners before the class to understand their expectation.   I however just managed to get hold of only one whom I picked randomly.   I have also sent out survey in advance.  But I should be aware of its limitation e.g. how expressive people would be in a written survey, or that some opinion leaders may not respond at all.   I should talk to more learners.  And I should find out who the opinion leaders are so that I do not miss learning from and building rapport with them.

Organizer - I shall extract more information from the organizer.   We have only chatted twice on phone.  I probably should prepare a list of specific questions to ask.  Preferably, I should have met with them in person.   For example, if I know in advance that my course was positioned as an intermediate level TTT, I would have sought to understand what the basic level TTT looks like.  It would help avoid duplication and understand better the learners’ expectation.   In addition, by communicating more thoroughly with the organizer, I could also have them managed the learners’ expectation better for me e.g. more focused nomination or more appropriate course title / description.

‘Local Culture’ – I shall understand better in advance the ‘local culture’ e.g. class discipline.  I probably should achieve this by talking to the opinion leaders and the organizer.

Preparation for ‘Conflict’

‘Conflict’ is good – Looking back at the challenge I received in the class, I think that it happened because the ‘challenger’ was ‘irritated’ by the new mindset introduced by me.   (Note that the new mindset or the controversial point is that ‘Subject Matter Expert is not necessarily a good trainer’)   Whilst ‘rejection’ is an unavoidable stage in mindset change, I shall not be surprised to receive the challenge.  Instead, I should be happy to see the challenge.

Reducing disruption – Having said that, I shall minimize the impact to the other learners.   I could contain the disagreement in the table team, and then manage from there, instead of letting it show in the big group.   More specifically, I can ask the table team to first discuss what the difference is between a SME and a good trainer.   I then walk around and observe.  In the big group, I will invite first a table team which has a conclusion favorable to the point I try to make.

Making it less controversial - I could also make the new mindset (or any possibly controversial point) more convincing.  I will avoid introducing that it is my view.  It could induce argument especially if rapport has been well built.   Instead, if possible, I will mention the research supporting this point or that it is from a reputable person.

Again, it was a great learning experience.   It is probably one of the defining moments in my training career!!