Ask, Not Tell

Last week, I was in Singapore attending a 5-day management training. There was a facilitator from Indonesia with his own unique style which inspires me quite a lot!! In terms of behaviour, the followings are what he did and what insights I got:

Speaks very slowly and clearly – There is no ‘hm’, ‘er’ or anything like that. And he has a lot of pause + eye contact. This makes his message very clear, and compelling in making people to think. When he asked a question and then stared at you, it seems that there is nowhere you can hide. You got to think and answer the question. When I compare him to other speakers I can remember, I feel that I retain more from what he said. In some senses, simply because it is not too many words from his mouth, it is easier to retain.

I should speak more slowly in order to let the message really passing across. Allow myself to take time to pause to think, but at the same time maintain strong eye contact to engage people. In addition, pause longer after each message so that the message can be internalized;

Training as time for self-reflection – He shared that training can be powerful simply by being a space for self-reflection. And the topics can be simple and basic as ‘What are the things which I should do but I have not done?’, ‘Why don’t we do (anything important to leadership e.g. communication) as we should be?’. And the facilitator’s jobs are to bring out the issue by activity, direct the debrief to the desired areas, ask clear question to compel them to think and then more importantly SHUT UP… let them talk!!

I should remind myself more that (management) training is more about making people to think. All we do in the class e.g. activity, should be cater for this purpose.

Being ‘impolite’ – When needed, he would choose to be direct rather than subtle. Once, he asked whether we wanted him to be a ‘child’ or ‘adult’. He said, ‘child’ meaning ‘honest but impolite’, whilst ‘adult’ meaning ‘dishonest but polite’. If you want people to think, you often have to ask unpopular questions e.g. ‘Please raise your hand if you do not think you need any improvement in presentation skills.’

Observing what this facilitator did make me see the power of being direct, especially if you want people to reflect (see previous point.)

Other than learning from this facilitator, there are some others from the another equally-powerful facilitator. Will share with you soon!! Probably after my upcoming trip to Shenzhen this week!!

Recently, there are 2 occasions which educated me how I should (or should not) react when participants mis-behave.

Here is the first incident. I was asked to conduct a presentation class in Shanghai for a group of graduate trainees in the company. Only 2 out of 7 arrived at 0900 when the course is supposed to start. I was already quite unhappy with it. At 0930, all had arrived but one disappeared after leaving his bag in the training room. I was very upset. I know that my emotion showed as I stood in front of them saying nothing. Frankly, I was very close to do something more radical – I almost threw his bag out of the training room and locked the door. I did not do it at the end. That participant returned a few more minutes later and we formally started the class.

As the class went, I realized that they are good participants. They were eager to learn. They asked good questions and tried to apply the skills we covered. Ironically, I did see the strong learning attitude from the participant who had left the bag behind. I could not imagine what would happen if I did throw the bag away and locked the room. The learning atmosphere must be ruined for the whole day!!!

The second incident took place in the class I attended as a participant in Singapore. I was 100% committed to learn from the class, not only the content pe se but also the facilitation skills from the 2 Master Trainers. On day 3, I finished my lunch early in order to send out a few urgent emails in the hotel room. As there was some 15 minutes left, I lay down to rest a bit. I was very tired on that day after the night out with Victor and Elroy! And then the worse thing for a trainer happened – I overslept and was late to the class for ½ hour.

When I ran and entered the training room, I was embarrassed to death!! I was embarrassed to the fellow participants, to the Master Trainers and to myself as well. I have been telling to the others how disturbing to be late in class, but now I ….. sigh…

I have a few learning from the above 2 incidents:

NEVER, never be emotional in class – Showing emotion simply ruins the learning atmosphere for all the participants, including those who has or has not mis-behaved. It just violates the very purpose of having the training course i.e. to make people learn;

People with good intention – Most people come to the class to learn. And even stepping back a bit, when everyone wake up in the morning, we all want to do a good job on that day. Very rarely people want to have a bad day by arguing with the others or upsetting the others by being late;

Be understanding – Further to the last point, there are often other reasons why people mis-behave in class, especially after you made the ground rule clear to all. This could be work overload, a ‘disturbing’ boss, a family requiring lot of attention. Before you pass any negative feedback to a participant, check with him / her first during the break

I am running a presentation class in shenzhen this week.   Like many presentation class, the participants have the chance to present for a few minutes in order to try out new skills and receive feedback.    One conducted a briefing on an internal enquiry system to the Relationship Managers – not an easy presentation since it is full of dry fact by nature.    During the feedback session, we suggested that the participant should address more the ‘WIIFM’.  The participant argued that since the Relationship Managers’ job requires the system knowledge by nature, it is enough to just remind the audience about this in the beginning of the briefing.  

In theory it is true, but not so in reality.   I asked ‘in our life, is there thing which we should know but we just do not pay attention to?’    We all know that it is important to understand well the safety measures on the plane, but most of us do not pay attention to the crew demonstrate it before taking off.

So, when we say ‘WIIFM’ is important, it is not enough to have ‘the participants are required by their job to know the presentation content’.   We got to help them to have a reason to pay attention and keep reminding the reason during the presentation.    And this ‘them’ should be on the personal but not organizational basis – often the participants are not interested in the content though the departments they represent are.   In short, an ‘institutional’ reason is not enough.  We need a personal one.

I ran a 5-day training course last week. More than a trainer, I was a course coordinator who composed some 15 SME (Subject Matter Experts) other than myself. Whilst they are really experts in their respective fields, and they do not necessarily have to be good in training. In fact, this has been a challenge for most training professionals, especially in China where it is not easy to find full time qualified trainers.

As I was observing at one of the sessions last week, I gathered my thoughts and summarized on what can be done to make the SMEs better trainer. Well, after all, it should be my job as the coordinator from the training department. Here are my thoughts:

‘TTT’ them – It is the most obvious thing to do. Train them so that they can be a good trainer / presenter. However, this is however often not feasible since they could not spare much time… and more importantly attention to it. Moreover, quite a lot are not aware that their delivery skill is not enough;

One skill at a time – Given the above constraint, a follow-up thought is to limit their delivery behavioral change to only one item e.g. asking lots of questions;

Get the volunteered rather than the senior speakers – When I first invited the SMEs to talk, I tend to go for those as senior as possible. I did so because it would raise the profile of the course. If I am going to do it again, I would consider those who volunteered to be equally desirable. The volunteered ones are much more willing to improve their facilitation skills;

‘Program’ their delivery - This is something which I plan to do in the next round of this course. Instead of letting the SMEs to take over the whole floor from the first second, I shall do an opener from them in the beginning. For example, run a 5 mins group discussion to draw out the participants’ interest. The purpose is to:

• Break the ice for both (and between) the SMEs and the participants;
• Help the SMEs to engage the participants;
• Help the SMEs to stay focused to what is wanted;
• Add fun / atmosphere into the class;