Ask, Not Tell

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…..