Troubleshooting for Trainers 1952157161, 9781952157165, 9781952157172

Table of contents :
Cover
Copyright
Contents
Introduction
Section 1
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Section 2
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Section 3
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Section 4
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Section 5
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Section 6
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Section 7
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Conclusion
References
Index
About the Author

Citation preview

g n i t o o h s e l s b r u e Tro r Train fo

Sophie Oberstein

© 2020 ASTD DBA the Association for Talent Development (ATD) All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. 23 22 21 20



1 2 3 4 5

No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, information storage and retrieval systems, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, please go to www.copyright.com, or contact Copyright Clearance Center (CCC), 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923 (telephone: 978.750.8400; fax: 978.646.8600). ATD Press is an internationally renowned source of insightful and practical information on talent development, training, and professional development. ATD Press 1640 King Street Alexandria, VA 22314 USA Ordering information: Books published by ATD Press can be purchased by visiting ATD’s website at www.td.org/books or by calling 800.628.2783 or 703.683.8100. Library of Congress Control Number: 2020942892 ISBN-10: 1-952157-16-1 ISBN-13: 978-1-952157-16-5 e-ISBN: 978-1-952157-17-2 ATD Press Editorial Staff Director: Sarah Halgas Manager: Melissa Jones Content Manager, Learning & Development: Eliza Blanchard Developmental Editor: Jack Harlow Text and Cover Design: Michelle Jose Printed by P.A. Hutchison Company, Mayfield, PA

Contents Introduction........................................................................................................................... v Section 1—Lack of Credibility.........................................................................................1 1. I’m a ______, Not a Trainer.........................................................................................5 2. I’m Newer and Less Experienced in This Role..........................................................9 3. I Don’t Have Any Influence Over Learners or Stakeholders ................................17 4. I Don’t Know What’s Just a Fad.................................................................................23 5. I’ve Never Managed a Training Project Before.......................................................27 Section 2—Training Isn’t Well Regarded...................................................................33 6. I’m Not Seen as a Value-Added Partner to the Organization................................37 7. I Don’t Know How to Showcase the Successes of Our Training............................46 8. My Organization Thinks Active Learning Takes Too Much Time........................52 9. No One Is Signing Up for My Courses.....................................................................57 10. No One Is Showing Up to My Courses.....................................................................66 Section 3—Lack Of Resources......................................................................................77 11. I Have No Budget for Training.................................................................................81 12. I’m a One-Person Department..................................................................................88 13. I’ve Been Asked to Bring in a Consultant, and I’ve Never Had to Find One Before..................................................................97 14. There’s No Professional Development for Me......................................................103 Section 4—Limited Learning Design Experience.................................................109 15. I’ve Been Asked to Provide Training, But I Don’t Think It’s Going To Help....................................................................................................113 16. I’ve Been Asked to Create Training on a Topic I Know Nothing About.............................................................................................121 17. I Don’t Have an Instructional Design Background...............................................126 18. I Want to Design Interactive Sessions, But I’m Not That Creative......................137 19. I Want My Materials to Look Good—and Be Effective.........................................147 20. I’ve Been Asked to Convert Training From Classroom to E-Learning and I Don’t Know Where to Begin..........................................................................160 21. I Don’t Know How to Produce Asynchronous E-Learning...................................167 22. I’m Not Sure My Training Is “Sticky”......................................................................176

23. I’m Not Sure How to Design Informal Learning..................................................185 24. My Learners Are Overwhelmed With Digital Information...................................195 Section 5—Uncertainty Around Measurement .....................................................201 25. I’m Not Sure How to Show the Effect of Our Work on Organizational Imperatives................................................................................205 26. I’ve Never Designed a Knowledge Quiz Before.....................................................213 27. I Don’t Know How to Construct Valid, Reliable Test Questions.........................218 28. I’d Like My Level 1s to Be More Than Smile Sheets.............................................228 Section 6—Live Training Surprises............................................................................237 29. I’m Nervous...............................................................................................................241 30. The Technology Isn’t Working...............................................................................249 31. The Training Room Isn’t Right...............................................................................253 32. They’re Not Hooked From the Start......................................................................257 33. Participants Aren’t Taking Risks..............................................................................263 34. Participants Seem Confused....................................................................................271 35. I Don’t Know How to Respond to Their Questions..............................................276 36. I’m Always Rushing at the End of My Sessions......................................................281 37. I’m Not Ending on a Strong Note...........................................................................287 Section 7—Challenging Participants.........................................................................293 38. Someone Is Monopolizing the Session...................................................................297 39. Someone Is Complaining Out Loud About Every Aspect of the Session......................................................................................300 40. Someone Is Challenging Everything I Say..............................................................302 41. An Individual, or Entire Group, Keeps Going off on Tangents...........................305 42. A Few People Aren’t Saying Anything at All..........................................................308 43. There Are Varied Skill Sets and Expectations Among Participants.....................315 44. My Participants Are Distracted and Multitasking..................................................318 45. People Keep Showing Up Late................................................................................321 Conclusion.........................................................................................................................323 References.........................................................................................................................329 Index....................................................................................................................................337 About the Author............................................................................................................349

Introduction Twenty-something years ago, I arrived early to set up for my first training program in my first L&D job, which was at an international retail bank. I was so excited to finally be officially working as a trainer, even if banking wasn’t an industry I’d previously had any exposure to. So I was also nervous as I set up for this session, which focused on new software the bank was introducing. Upon arriving, I turned on and tested all of the computer terminals, hung up some flipcharts, put out name tags and participant materials, and tested my computer demo in the front of the room. I’d rehearsed several times and I was ready when participants came in and took their seats. The first activity I conducted was to go around the room asking each participant to share their expectations for the program. As individuals described what they hoped to get out of the session, I charted their responses so that we could revisit their expectations at the end to see if they had indeed received what they’d hoped for. All was going well, until I asked a man sitting near the back of the room with his arms folded across his chest. “Honestly,” he started, “I have low expectations for this course. What can you—a young, inexperienced person—teach someone like me, who’s worked at this bank for more than 20 years?” My heart, which was already racing, went into overdrive. I didn’t know what to do or how to respond. He’s right, I thought to myself. I am less experienced than he is. I don’t really know what I’m talking about. I only know what I learned about the system when I was being prepared to lead this session. Can I pull this off ? While panicking inside, I managed to keep my composure and say something to the effect of, “Hmm. If you don’t mind, I’m going to just write it here on the flipchart and we can come back to it at the end of the session, to see how you’re feeling about it then.” I added

v

to the list something like: “I don’t expect to learn anything from an inexperienced trainer.” Then I moved on to the next participant. I don’t remember any particulars of the remainder of that session, but it must have gone well enough, because at the end of the class, I went back to the flipchart and went item by item down the list to see if people’s expectations had been met. When I reached this gentleman’s contribution, I asked him, “How’d we do in this area?” He rather sheepishly told me his concerns had not been warranted. Phew! I’d successfully exceeded his expectations. Would I have responded the same way today? Not at all. Look for my current response in Section 1. That’s my story about the make-or-break moment I wasn’t prepared for. I made it through, but how I would have loved a guide in my first few months (or years) in the L&D field to turn to when I fell into situations like that one and others that arise for anyone new to training. That’s what this book is: The troubleshooting guide experienced trainers wish they’d had when starting out. Like a troubleshooting guide that’s part of the operating manual for a new appliance that has started acting up, this book will provide you with in-the moment fixes and longer-term solutions for some of the common challenges faced by new trainers at every stage in the L&D process. This book does not go deep into the fundamentals of learning design or the basics of face-to-face or online training delivery. Plenty of other authors, books, and workshops delve deeply into those topics, and I’ve listed many of them throughout the book. Instead, this book is problem- and solution-centered. Pull it out when you’re in a predicament, flip to the related challenge listed in the table of contents, and find some immediate solutions. Better yet, use it to find troubleshooting tips and strategies to help you proactively avoid the crises new trainers face. I’ve collected the challenges addressed in this book from new trainers I’ve spoken to at ATD Core 4 conferences, from the Learning Design: Fundamentals class I teach at NYU’s School for Professional Studies, and over the 20-plus years I’ve coached and mentored people entering the field. In each section, I’ve included some quotes representative of the situations these new trainers have faced, and I’ve labeled them as “The Problem.” Solutions come primarily from my own experience, and they are supplemented by literature in the field and discussions with my colleagues. They are organized by section:

vi  •  Introduction

Section 1. Lack of Credibility: Building trust and assuring people you add value when you lack experience is a major issue for those just starting out in any field. Challenges in this section include things like being “sidelined” into a training role and not yet seeing yourself as an L&D professional, and how to know what’s a passing fad as opposed to a long-lasting trend. Section 2. Training Isn’t Well Regarded: Like other organizational support functions, L&D is sometimes misunderstood or less visible. In addition to making learners throughout your organization aware of the resources you can provide, you must demonstrate how training adds value. Challenges in this section address issues like when no one is signing up—or showing up—for your courses, and knowing how to get a seat at the table as a valued business partner. Section 3. Lack of Resources: New trainers work in a variety of departments. Some are on large teams, where they maybe focus on one aspect of learning design or delivery, while others work on teams of two or three people, where they handle all aspects of L&D projects. Some are even training departments of one. I’ve worked in all of these environments—at Citibank with a training team of 40 or more people, at Weight Watchers with a team of about a dozen field trainers and four or five designers and administrators, and at Redwood City, where I was the entire training team. I’ve had to be creative with resources in all of these situations. Challenges in this section revolve around lack of money or people power. Section 4. Limited Learning Design Experience: The Center for Creative Leadership famously asked effective organizational leaders how they’d learned what they needed to be successful. Their time-tested 70-20-10 learning model emerged from more than 30 years of research, where the 70 percent (though many professionals now consider it closer to 50 percent) represents experiential learning. Most new trainers are also left to learn how to perform their responsibilities through experience. To put it another way, they are “thrown to the wolves” to figure things out for themselves. Many new trainers I’ve spoken to mention a feeling of loneliness as they tackle challenges that they are sure someone else somewhere has already faced. This section provides tips for getting started with some common projects like finding content, converting classroom training to e-learning, curating learning experiences, and making sure people apply what they learn in training back on the job.

Introduction  •  vii

Section 5. Uncertainty Around Measurement: Tracking and reporting on metrics is a core requirement of most organizational functions today. L&D is no different, except that sometimes what you are tracking is harder to quantify and measure, especially when you don’t own the data that you wish to track. This section responds to that situation, as well as describing how to construct valid, reliable assessment tools. Section 6. Live Training Surprises: The 2019 State of the Industry report from the Association for Talent Development (ATD) indicates that classroom training is still the most popular methodology for workplace development. Many new trainers start out in the classroom or facilitating live online workshops. In real-time settings like these, a lot can go wrong. That’s where a troubleshooting guide can be especially helpful. This section addresses awkward situations you might face during synchronous training events like limited time and limited seats, technology that doesn’t work, participants who aren’t engaged or look lost, and questions you don’t know the answers to. Section 7. Challenging Participants: One of the joys of providing live training is the ability to interact with people and help them achieve success. You get to be there for their aha moments and when they get past a struggle to learn something that will help them in their job and life. Yet among the participants who are a joy to interact with are some who are less so. This section provides tips for handling challenging participants, including the monopolizer, the rambler, the late-comer, and the quiet type. Each section contains a number of challenges. Each starts off with a brief description of why this is a challenge for trainers, a series of solutions for overcoming it, and some resources to go deeper on the topic. Some challenges end with tools and samples. I hope that in these pages you will find support, and that you’ll develop confidence and enhance your skills as a new trainer. Welcome to learning and development!

Acknowledgments I am grateful to the people who were, in essence, my troubleshooting guide when I started out in the field of learning and development so many years ago. They include Stephanie Nickerson and Joanne Polichetti, instructors in my master’s program at the New School for Social Research; Carolyn Hoffmann, Alan Richter, David Hertz, and Steven Katten, mentors from some of my first internal and external training roles; and Maureen Kerr, Eric Loffswold, Kathy viii  •  Introduction

Zukof, and Aaron Viera, who have been excellent sounding boards and partners in recent years. Even after 20-plus years in the field, there is always more to learn, and I’m delighted to be learning it alongside the amazing team from the Center for Leadership & Organizational Change at the University of Maryland. This book is better because of your generous and thoughtful suggestions and the wonderful examples you provide on a daily basis. You rock! I truly love passing along what I’ve learned on my journey to those who are just embarking on theirs, and am so thankful for two opportunities in particular to do this. First, I want to thank the team at ATD that offered me the opportunity to write this book—and made it such a pleasure to do so—Eliza Blanchard, Jack Harlow, Caroline Coppel, and Melissa Jones, as well as Kay Hechler and her amazing marketing and communications team. Second is the team at NYU’s School of Professional Studies, which allows me to continue teaching the Learning Design: Fundamentals course, especially Chantal Gomes, my go-to in the department. Thanks, of course, to all my former students and to those learning and development professionals who shared their experiences with me and whose thoughts are dispersed throughout the book. Finally, as always, I dedicate this book to Lily and Evan. Somehow, even without a troubleshooting guide, I’ve raised two wise and accomplished adults who continue to inspire and teach me. I feel so fortunate to be your parent. And to my co-parent and love of my life, Jeff, thanks for your acceptance, which allows me to continue to write books and not make dinner. Sophie Oberstein October 2020

Introduction  •  ix

y t i l i b i d e r C f o

1 N O I T SEC

Lack

The Problem “I think things are going well in my new training role, but I’m not really sure if what I’m doing is right. I’m mostly going by my gut because I don’t have a background in this field.” “I was asked to become a trainer because we have a lot of turnover and someone needed to get the new hires up to speed. It was treated as if it were some sort of honor to recognize my contributions to the team, but it’s not necessarily a role I expected to have when I started my career.” “I started out as a manager in my industry, so I was used to being a subject matter expert with credibility in the field. But when I became a trainer, and then changed organizations, I had to prove myself all over again.” “I’m not experienced enough to know if I should jump on the bandwagon when a new acronym or a new process comes along or if it’s just a fad.”

What’s Happening Here? Credibility is the quality of being trusted and believed in. No matter what field you are entering, it takes time to establish credibility because you are either new to the profession, or just new to the team, and you haven’t yet proven that you—and your ideas—can be trusted. This may be compounded in the field of learning and development, because people don’t always understand the role of a trainer or the value a learning professional can add. Some of the solutions described in this chapter are simply about performing your new responsibilities in a very visible way so that others can see that you are dependable and reliable, and that your work adds value. Many of the suggestions here apply just as well to other industries as they do to training. In addition, to establish credibility with others, sometimes new trainers will need to trust and believe in themselves. Especially if you were “voluntold” to train others, you may not yet see yourself as a learning and development professional. The first few solutions in this section will help you in these situations. By the way, a lack of credibility is what my new trainer story from the introduction was all about (when a participant asked me “What can you—a young, inexperienced person—teach someone like me, who’s worked at this bank for more than 20 years?”). While my solution at the time seemed to have worked, it’s not what I would have done in hindsight. First off, as a more experienced trainer today, I’m more aware going into a program of what potential challenges I may face, and I address them head-on. For example, I might have started off that session by introducing myself and then making a comment to the effect of, “You may be wondering how someone new to banking like me might be able to lead this session. Well, first I went through three weeks of systems training on this new process. Then I spoke to Miguel Cortes, who designed the new system, and who gave me some additional tips and insights. I’m excited to share with you today what I took from that training and from my meeting with Miguel.” If, despite that up-front explanation, the concern had been raised anyway, I would have thanked the person not only for being honest, but also for being brave enough to say something that, if it was on his mind, was probably also on other people’s minds. Then I would ask if others felt the same way and would lead a brief discussion on what we could all do to get comfortable with the idea of my facilitating the session. In that discussion, I might have simply asked participants to try to put their trust in me, and in

2  •  Section 1

return, I would try to deliver the most informative program I could. My actual response—writing his concern on a flipchart and moving on—was not only insensitive; it also ignored a factor that could have negatively influenced this gentleman’s learning, as well as that of others in the room. If you’re feeling like people might question your credibility in or out of the classroom, address it proactively and understand that it’s a natural reaction, because it takes time to rely on and appreciate another person. If you’re questioning your own credibility, remember that we were all starting out at some point, and now some of us are experts. Be patient, because that time will surely come for you as well.

The Challenges This section provides troubleshooting tips for the following issues related to a lack of credibility, which can be found on the pages indicated below: Challenge 1. I’m a ______, not a trainer....................................................................5 Challenge 2. I’m newer and less experienced in this role.......................................9 Challenge 3. I don’t have any influence over learners or stakeholders................17 Challenge 4. I don’t know what’s just a fad.............................................................23 Challenge 5. I’ve never managed a training project before..................................27

Section 1  •  3

1

Challenge:

I’m a _____, not a trainer

Description You’re an “accidental trainer.” You’ve been chosen for a training role even though you don’t have a background in adult learning, instructional design, or organization development. You were chosen to train others because you’ve performed your own job so well, successfully mentored or onboarded other employees, or delivered some awesome presentations on a topic. For whatever reason, you’ve been thrust into a training role, and you just don’t see yourself that way—you may even be intimidated about doing training.

Solutions If you don’t believe in yourself as a trainer, it will be impossible for others to see you that way. Here’s how to get comfortable with this new role.

Change Your Self-Talk When we walk around saying to ourselves, “I’m not a trainer,” we come to believe it. We internalize the message that this is not something we are good at—and our actions follow suit to reinforce that. Yet, as trainers, we often encourage our participants to embrace a growth mindset: to understand that the brain is elastic, so that even if you’ve been bad at something your whole life, if you put enough energy in and get the right instruction, you can become great at that thing. Research in neuroscience by Carol Dweck suggests that when you are told that growth matters and that you can improve, it happens. So, instead of telling yourself that you aren’t a trainer, start replacing that message with, “I’m not a trainer yet” or “I’m great at ___, and I can also be great at helping others become great at it.”

Fake It ’Till You Make It The reverse of changing your self-talk so that you can change your beliefs and, subsequently, your actions is to first change how you act. Observe others whom you consider to be excellent learning facilitators, talk to people who Challenge 1  •  5

design effective training programs, watch talent development professionals— and emulate what they are doing. Once you are acting like a knowledgeable, capable, confident training and development professional, and others are responding to you as such, you will come to believe you are one.

Embrace Your Beginner Lens As someone new to the training field, you add a lot of value by being able to put yourself in the place of a learner—because you are one. You may have mastered the content you’ll be imparting, but you are learning how best to present it. You are in the shoes of someone who is new to something; you are someone who is on a learning curve. The learning curve, first posited by German psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus (a name we’ll come across a few times in this book), basically illustrates that the more someone performs a task, the better they get at it. So, while you continue to get better, remember the experience of being at the beginning. Sometimes a trainer who hasn’t been a learner in a while cannot relate as well to someone at the bottom of the learning curve, or cannot present information in a manner suitable for beginners.

Recognize the Parameters of Your New Position In writing this book, I spoke to several people who became trainers after having been effective supervisors. These trainers were all of a sudden in individual contributor roles and felt like they needed to recalibrate their entire purpose. Instead of being responsible for the performance of an entire team, for strategizing and creating, they were now simply doing tasks. If you relate to this experience, know that you are not alone and that it is temporary. One such individual told me, “As someone who was used to being around the strategic table with influence and voice in the major decisions in my department, it was a tough transition to now being an individual contributor whose expected impact was in the doing rather than the thinking and leading. This transition was tough because it made me question my abilities and placement in the organization, but I quickly realized that being back in the ‘doing and executing’ phase of influence was going to lead me to truly dig deep into this work and that with time, I would be back around the strategy table.” You may also wish to think about yourself being in a building role, rather than a leadership or strategic one. Developing and generating growth in others is as important as leading.

6  •  Challenge 1

Evaluate Your Capabilities You might not identify as a trainer or talent development professional, but you very likely have some of the knowledge and skills needed to be successful in that profession, and that’s why you are asked to create and deliver training. Do you possess any of these skills: Do you communicate effectively? Analyze needs and propose solutions? Build trust? Have business insight? Network and partner? These are just a few of the critical capabilities included in ATD’s Talent Development Capability Model (Figure 1-1). Figure 1-1. ATD’s Talent Development Capability Model

Review ATD’s capability model and recognize where your capabilities match (there is a self-assessment included for those with an online ATD account). This can help you to embrace your role as a trainer one skill at a time. It can also help you to identify where you wish to improve. Keep in mind that there are 23 broad capabilities spread across three domains and more than 189 knowledge and skill sets included in this model. Challenge 1  •  7

No one can be an expert on—or have passion for—all of them. We all have parts that compel us and that we’re good at. That is why certain areas of specialization within the field correspond to the different categories reflected in the model. For example, if you’re an amazing stand-up trainer, you might need to rely on your instructional design team or an external supplier to create engaging online learning. If you’re excellent at analyzing performance and evaluation data, you might not want or need to develop your coaching skills.

Bottom Line You may not yet see yourself as a trainer, but keeping in mind that growth is possible and that you possess some of the key capabilities that trainers need will help you to flip from “I’m a ___, not a trainer” to “I’m a ___ and a trainer.”

Go Deeper “Motivating Students With Mindset Coaching and How Brains Work” by Emily Diehl People with a fixed mindset believe that intelligence and talent are fixed abilities and cannot be improved. With a growth mindset, people assume that with hard work and good strategies, we can always learn and grow. From this page, you can access articles related to growth mindset, as well as a questionnaire that helps learners to identify which mindset they hold.

“A Quick Summary of the Theory of Learning Curves” by Steve Wheeler Hermann Ebbinghaus was probably the first psychologist to conduct experimental research into human memory, resulting in the concepts of a learning curve, a forgetting curve, and a spacing effect. This article is just what it claims to be—a quick summary of Ebbinghaus’s learning curve It does include a link to a more extensive article and also, quite nicely, to a list of summaries the author has written of other psychologists (from A to Z) and their educational theories.

The ATD Talent Development Capability Model ATD is the premier professional association in the field of talent development. From the page (td.org/capability-model/access), anyone can access the ATD Talent Development Capability Model, and members can complete a self-assessment.

8  •  Challenge 1

2

Challenge:

I’m newer and less experienced in the trainer role

Description You’re just starting out as a trainer, and there’s no getting around the fact that you’re going to have to prove yourself. If you are early in your training career, you probably lack the achievements, endorsements, and experience necessary to establish credibility on those alone. This is true no matter which field you are starting out in.

Solutions To build trust and develop relationships in order to become credible, you can do the following.

Learn About Your Organization The more you know about your workplace, the more you will be perceived as an informed partner. A critical way to establish credibility is to know the details of your organization’s business, whatever business you are in. You’ll want to know the lingo that your stakeholders, including those who will show up in your sessions, use, so that you can use it when talking to them. The best way to start speaking the language of your organization is to get curious. Here’s how: • Talk to as many people as you can who are in the jobs you’ll be training people on. Talk to their managers. Talk to your stakeholders (more on them in a bit). Ask them questions about key players, team structure, key workflows, day-to-day job responsibilities, and challenges they face. • Talk to customers about their experiences. Where are they happy with the service and products they’re receiving? Where do they see room for improvement? Your company might already have this information from customer satisfaction surveys or focus groups. Get

Challenge 2  •  9

• •

•

•

ahold of customer data so that you can help link your initiatives to what they are asking for. Immerse yourself in the company website. Read the company newsletter and the reports produced by various functional areas, like IT, security, research, sales, and so on. Go to departmental and team meetings to introduce yourself, and to listen to what team members are working on and struggling with. Attend department-sponsored events where you can interact with people on a more casual, social level.

Learn About Your Industry A trainer’s role is complex because it straddles two industries—the industry of your organization and the L&D industry—and you’ll need to learn about both to increase your credibility. To learn about your company’s industry, you can go to industry meetings and read trade publications. If your industry is healthcare, for example, you might start reading the American Medical Association Journal or articles on the Affordable Care Act. It’s not that you need to understand that act in detail, just the gist of it and how it affects people on the ground doing their jobs. You can review competitor websites, or meet with suppliers who have worked with several clients in the field and can give you a broader perspective. In less competitive industries, you might even be able to visit other organizations in your field and talk to people in trainer roles there about their experiences and lessons learned. To learn about the L&D industry, you can connect to a professional association that supports individuals in this field. The premier association for L&D in the U.S. is ATD, which has an international presence with members in 120 countries, as well as chapters across the United States. The national group can provide you with articles, research, and workshops that can acquaint you with the field. The local chapters can help you to build an L&D community on a more intimate level, expanding your network, providing you with pro bono training opportunities, and giving you the opportunity to talk about trends in your part of the country. Even without a membership, ATD’s website is full of useful information as you get up to speed. Although ATD covers all aspects of L&D, there are also more specialized professional organizations that are focused on a certain aspect of talent development, like the Learning Guild, the International Society for Performance Improvement, the Center 10  •  Challenge 2

for Talent Reporting, the Society for Human Resource Management, the NTL Institute for Applied Behavior Science, or the International Coach Federation. Finally, some professional associations for the industry in which you work will have communities of practice for those tasked with L&D. Aside from joining these groups, you can take university classes, talk to people who’ve been in the field for some time (or ask them for mentoring), or read books and articles (but you knew that already, because here you are!). Magazines like the Harvard Business Review, Chief Learning Officer, Training, and Workforce Magazine are good sources for keeping up-to-date.

Think Like a Businessperson A key question to ask to understand your organization is how it makes its money. Nava Wexler, a training specialist at Columbia University Irving Medical Center, pointed out how complicated this can be with this example: “One might think that CUIMC generates revenue from patients visiting its medical practices. But, money from patient visits is not funneled back into the practices; instead, it funds education and research at the university. Ideally, that research leads to clinical breakthroughs and enhances the institution’s reputation and ultimately generates more revenue for facilities and, finally, practices.” Knowing this helps her avoid losing credibility by presenting a very simplistic view of how revenue is generated when talking with participants in her sessions, or with subject matter experts (SMEs). “There are multiple layers of complexity here. If I stood up in a class and said ‘Bring in more patients because patients bring your practice money,’ I would lose credibility with those who know how revenue actually works in my organization.” Understand the performance indicators of your business: What makes your organization successful? Are people driven by sales, by finances, or, as in Wexler’s example, by clinical breakthroughs? It helps when you can tie your proposals to business drivers. So, for example, if you were proposing a course on customer service, how could you tie it to increased clinical breakthroughs? (Maybe when patients have a positive interaction with staff, they are more likely to participate in a clinical trial or to bolster the reputation of the institution).

Know Your Stakeholders Learning and development work involves many stakeholders, including internal clients, champions, organizational leaders, learners, managers, partners, Challenge 2  •  11

your supervisor, your supervisors’ supervisor, and others with a vested interest in instructional outcomes. Different stakeholders have varying needs, expectations, and levels of involvement in the ultimate success or failure of your work. In Mastering the Instructional Design Process, William Rothwell (2016) advises that you “identify stakeholders, determine their level of support and involvement, and engage them effectively, or you risk project hiccups, underperformance, and even career derailment.” When you impress your stakeholders, they will champion and advocate for you. When stakeholders are resistant, you will run into problems. There will be times when you can’t please everyone, but make sure to please the people who matter most.

Help Your Stakeholders Get to Know You Stakeholders can be resistant to our efforts because of a perceived loss of knowledge and control. For example, I was part of a brand-new talent management team in one organization. This team was established under the human resources umbrella. But HR business partners, whom we really needed to work closely with, were wary of our new team because of the overlap between their jobs—which they’d been doing competently for some time—and ours. Were we going to “take over” their coaching responsibilities? Were we going to use their established relationships with managers to push our agenda? Were they still going to be able to run workshops and retreats when their clients requested them? Did we need to inform each other every time members of our shared client groups made a request? How would we do that? These are questions we needed to sit down and address together. Maybe you’re joining a team that has already hammered these issues out. Even in those instances, it still makes sense to talk about where you see your job starting and ending and how you see partnering with each stakeholder so that you avoid stepping on toes. Another facet of this perceived loss of knowledge or control is simply not being aware of what L&D professionals in organizations do. Combating this happens with an overall marketing and communication strategy (see Challenges 9 and 10), as well as with one-on-one relationship building and defining roles on each new project you embark on.

Establish Relationships With Other Departments A new instructional designer told me recently that she’s quickly realized how important it is to have open lines of communication with departments. “At 12  •  Challenge 2

first, I’d hear things like, ‘You don’t understand what we do. How can you write the training?’ Once I started to build bonds with them and their departments, they saw me as more credible. Once they saw me taking time and effort to learn what they were talking about and to understand the landscape they were working in, they started to listen to my side more and appreciate what I had to offer.” Forming relationships within your organization will enhance not just your credibility but also your productivity. Relationships can count even more than expertise or authority, as it did when the director of public works came to me in my L&D role at the City of Redwood City. He said he needed a partner for a succession-planning project, and added something like, “I don’t know how to do this, you don’t know how to do this, but we both want to learn. Let’s learn together.” Everyone I’ve spoken to about how to create these relationships has suggested sitting down and asking questions. Here are some good ones: • How can I help? • What are you most proud of that you’ve accomplished? • What do you wish you’d have accomplished? • What projects or ideas keep getting pushed to the back burner? • What is keeping you up at night? • What gets in the way of doing your job effectively? • What gets in the way of developing yourself, or your staff? • Who else should I talk to in order to learn more about your work? You may not be able to delve into sensitive issues about the organization the first time you meet with someone, but it’s the start of a relationship. Remember that the people you are talking to care deeply about these topics, so even if you are not inherently interested in things like grant-writing processes, regulations, or system specifications, you need to appreciate their importance to your audience members. Asking questions is fantastic and goes hand-in-hand with good listening. Tune in to what the individuals you are talking to are saying both verbally and nonverbally. I have conducted focus groups or interviews in which a sigh or a slump in posture has let me know I had stumbled into an area of organizational politics or unease. These sensitivities are important to be aware of in your training design, classroom interactions, and stakeholder relationships.

Challenge 2  •  13

Make Yourself Visible This advice is probably counter to what you want to be doing when you are just trying to get up to speed. While you might wish to fly under the radar until you’re feeling completely confident, that won’t help you create a strong first impression. What will help is putting yourself out there and sharing some of your greatness. This means showing up, literally: arriving early; attending meetings in person, rather than dialing in; being present. Speak up in meetings when people are batting suggestions about, contribute to group email chains, provide solid feedback on your experience as a new team member, and share what you’re reading and learning in books, at conferences, and so forth. Regardless of your tenure in the field, you can share your insights and your perspective. You can follow up on commitments and be a good team member. Similarly, pitch in to help with projects and programs. Do favors for others—go above and beyond. Volunteer for extra assignments or task forces. If there are none that can use your help, offer to write a job aid to help the next new hire understand some aspect of the department’s work, such as how to book a classroom, how to create a new course, or how to record attendance in your learning management system. Or offer to do some research and then lead an in-service training for your colleagues on a trending industry topic or a new feature of your online authoring tool.

Emulate Someone You Admire Think about how a confident, experienced person acts and stands and talks, and then try to mimic that. Think about what you’ve liked when a person has approached you, and emulate that. Maybe take a look at Amy Cuddy’s TED Talk on power poses. (Even though her work hasn’t been replicated by other researchers, data suggests that expansive postures can help you to feel more confident even when you are not.) Try it out for two minutes to see how it makes you feel. When we are presenting ourselves to the world in one way, and people are responding to us being that way, eventually we too can see ourselves that way.

Showcase Your Accomplishments There are many negative associations with self-promotion. Indeed, doing it poorly can make you appear arrogant or careerist. Humility is a virtue, yet bragging is an important skill. Bragging can be a good thing when you think about it as an opportunity, as author Peggy Klaus (2003) defines it: “to talk about your best self (interests, ideas, accomplishments) with pride 14  •  Challenge 2

and passion in a conversational manner intended to excite admiration, interest, and wonder without pretense or overstatement—in other words without being obnoxious.” In today’s fast-paced world, the world of overflowing inboxes, a job well done might be overlooked if you aren’t forthcoming about your accomplishments. How can you highlight them appropriately? Try these: • When you get an email thanking you or praising your efforts, or a particularly positive result on program evaluations, pass it along to your boss or your team. • Help to create a culture in which team members can celebrate one another’s successes. • Keep a “brag book,” a file containing the compliments you’ve received and a portfolio of the items that you are most proud of producing. Having this information handy helps keep successes fresh in your mind so you can look to them when you are doubting yourself. It also prepares you for your self-assessment, if one is part of your performance review. Get comfortable sharing your successes. If you don’t care enough about them to promote them, why should anyone else?

Be Patient We’re talking about how you get other people to trust and believe in you. In the end, those things take time. Just be your curious, personable, hardworking self. Try to make a human connection, and the business relationship will follow. Sometimes simply seeing the enthusiasm of someone entering the field is reinvigorating for a person who’s been in it for a long time. Others will be more resistant. Stick with it.

Bottom Line Jump-start building your credibility by putting yourself out there—with good questions, ideas, and work outputs.

Go Deeper “Managing Partnerships and Collaborative Relationships,” ch. 18 in Mastering the Instructional Design Process, by Rothwell et al. Relationships are critical to success in instructional design. Rothwell and his co-authors systematically outline how to identify and engage stakeholders who are typically part

Challenge 2  •  15

of instructional design projects. This chapter identifies skills associated with relationship building, such as building rapport, securing commitment, and managing conflict.

“Your Body Language May Shape Who You Are” a TED talk by Amy Cuddy Body language affects how others see us, but it may also change how we see ourselves. Social psychologist Amy Cuddy shares some power poses that, she argues, can help us to feel more grounded and confident. Some of Cuddy’s findings have not been reproducible, but these power poses take two minutes and are worth a try.

“Bragging Myths We Live and Die By,” ch. 1 in Brag! The Art of Tooting Your Own Horn Without Blowing It, by Peggy Klaus It’s not necessary to choose between remaining obscure and sounding obnoxious; self-promotion is an art. This is an older book full of timeless wisdom about smart and unpretentious self-promotion. This introductory chapter addresses common myths like “A job well done speaks for itself,” “Brag is a four-letter word,” and “Humility is a virtue.” If you subscribe to any of these beliefs, this chapter is a must-read.

16  •  Challenge 2

3

Challenge:

I don’t have any influence over learners or stakeholders

Description Trainers and talent development professionals cannot do their jobs alone: We rely on organizational input to determine which programs we will provide, to understand business needs, to access content and information, to review our materials, to help us make training policy decisions, and to help us communicate our offerings. As a new trainer, you may find yourself needing help or support from someone but have no cards of your own to play. You’re not in control. You’re nobody’s supervisor. How do you get others to do what you want?

Solutions Here’s how to integrate principles of influencing without authority to earn the respect of those you need to rely on.

Focus on the “WIIFM” (What’s in It for Me) Influence gained by exchange is cooperative, rather than adversarial. Determine what you are asking others to do and offer something that is of at least equal value to them. Instead of showering them with rationale and arguments, identify their agendas, concerns, and motivations. Ask, “What do you care about?” Learn more about what they want to accomplish and what drives them: What are their goals for the year? What business are they trying to bring in? What obstacles do they face? What have been some recent successes? The key lies in knowing what the other person values and seeking out ways to help them in those areas, thus creating a relationship of mutual cooperation.

Recognize What You Can Offer You may not feel that you have anything to offer when talking to a subject matter expert (SME), or when talking to a leader a few rungs above you on the ladder, but you too are a SME. Even if you are relatively new to talent development, that is now the lens you are examining organizational problems through. Your knowledge of how adults learn, or of some best practices, is Challenge 3  •  17

the experience and authority you bring to the conversation. You can provide impact management, helping people become aware of the impact if they do or don’t do something. For instance, when an SME suggests a certain team-building activity, you are the person who can point out that some people might be intimidated by that activity, or that the activity excludes certain kinds of learners. You can offer a broader organizational perspective than some leaders who are entrenched in their own areas, because you provide support to a broader base than one team or department. You also add value simply because you are a professional. As a professional, you can do more than just take orders, by pushing back when necessary, recommending alternative solutions, and sometimes delivering answers people may not want to hear. It’s harder to do this when you are just starting out in a field—I get that. Ultimately, it’s about how you make a contribution, rather than being a yes-person or follower. (More about responding to requests and how to say no is in Challenge 15.)

Adjust Your Influence Style William Gentry, author of Be the Boss Everyone Wants to Work For (2016), suggests that if your appeals aren’t getting you anywhere, think about how the person you want to influence wants to be influenced (not how you prefer to be). Is it through the head (data, analytics), the heart (values, effect on people), or the hands (you do this for me, and I will do that for you)? For example, when trying to convince a vice president of L&D to purchase a certain book for a training program, one learning manager was “hitting a brick wall” when trying to make an emotional appeal. It was only when she turned to a more data-driven approach—sharing research on the effectiveness of the book, and the fact that it was being used by competitors’ training programs—that the VP was swayed.

Tie Requests to Common Goals or Missions Tap into a shared purpose to generate enthusiasm for your ideas. I had a powerful illustration of the effectiveness of this approach in a meeting with a former boss (the HR director for Redwood City)and the city manager. We’d gotten together to talk about taking the succession-planning initiative I’d pioneered with public works citywide. My boss and I really needed her boss (the city manager) to champion succession planning. But he told us honestly that although this was something he knew we should be doing, it wasn’t something he was excited about. My boss expertly tied succession planning 18  •  Challenge 3

to the city’s mission of community building, pointing out that if key positions became vacant, community building would be stalled and the community would become frustrated with the lack of staff responsiveness. This connection was all it took for the city manager to realize how important succession planning was to him, and to the organization’s purpose. From that point forward, he wholeheartedly supported it. You can also use purpose to push back, as a training director did when a departmental leader came to him saying she was going to purchase her own learning management system. “Why,” this training director asked, “do you want your own LMS when we have one the organization is using? I’m not sure how this request fits with the organizational purpose of saving money to keep costs down for our customers.” This was more effective than just flat-out saying no to another LMS.

Make It Easy for Them It’s important to remember that the people you need cooperation from are busy. In addition to the time you’re asking them to dedicate to your project, they also have their everyday duties to attend to. The simpler your message and the easier you can make their involvement, the better. For example, when you need people to review materials, you can: • Be clear what you are asking for. For example, what kind of feedback are you seeking? What format do you prefer it in? What is your deadline? Why is it important to hear from them? • Offer an option to review materials in person. This lets you hear directly from your reviewers to fully understand their feedback, ask questions, and make quick decisions regarding the edits provided— and they don’t have to write a thing down. • In your request for a review, include an estimate of how much time it should take. If your SMEs know up front that they only need to invest 15 to 20 minutes, they’ll be more likely to knock it out. If you don’t tell them, they might assume it will take much longer and keep putting it off in favor of less time-consuming responsibilities. • Include a statement to the effect of, “If we don’t hear from you by this date, we will assume you are OK with the material as presented.” This often kicks them into gear, or allows them to opt out.

Challenge 3  •  19

Be Positive Negative speech kills influence. Negative speech can come across as hostile and trigger defensive responses. It focuses on what you can’t do, versus what you can do. Positive speech enhances your reputation and builds your influence. You’re seen as a person brimming with ideas and positive thoughts. Start using positive language, complimenting authentically, and focusing on the bright side. (“The internet is down—this is a good time to clean my desk!” versus “The internet is down, and now I can’t get anything done!”) Constantly finding fault can become a habit and you get seen as someone who criticizes ideas before fully considering them. To influence positively, stop complaining about issues, especially ones that are beyond your control, like when your training budget is decreased mid–budget year.

Choose Your Battles Being right can come at a cost. No one thinks especially highly of the person who says, “I told you so.” This means you must sometimes hold back, even when you know what you’re advocating for is right. At one of my jobs, a facilitator really wanted us to serve lunch during a four-hour program that ended at 12:30. Yes, it would have been great to be able to do that: The learners would have appreciated it, they’d get back to work faster, and they’d be able to focus on higher-order thinking knowing that their basic needs were being met. But organizational leaders had already balked at the cost of the program and of taking people away from work for those four hours. This facilitator said her piece and then backed off. She knew what was worth fighting for and what was a losing battle, or a battle you could win, but at the expense of your reputation and relationships. Trainers have another decision to make when it comes to exerting their influence. As an intermediary between learners and organizational leaders, they often have to speak on behalf of the organization when interacting with staff, or of the staff when reporting back to organizational leaders. They have to figure out when and how to influence management to implement things that staff are asking for in focus groups or training sessions, or when issues surface during our work that are not related to training but are negatively affecting employee performance. An important lesson I learned as a new trainer was to distinguish the signal (meaningful information) from the noise (random background information or variation that interferes with the signal) and to report up to leadership only those employee issues that were real and widespread. 20  •  Challenge 3

It’s not only tricky to determine whether and how to intervene when reporting your findings to management. You might also find yourself debating when and how to share information from leadership to those on the front lines. For instance, when Kevin Rufty was a regional trainer with Bonefish Grill, he spent a lot of time in the restaurants working with culinary managers and service managers. “I viewed part of that job as being a ‘shield-bearer’ for the brand,” he describes, “protecting and upholding brand standards through training. There were plenty of times that I’d see product that was made incorrectly, or an area of the restaurant that needed to be cleaned. Sure, as a member of the corporate office, I could’ve very easily pointed and said, ‘This is wrong; fix it,’ and they probably would have. But I was not those people’s superior. I was a trainer. So I had to help them understand why it was wrong and inspire, in them, a desire to prepare the recipe the correct way the next time and every other time after that. I had to influence them to do the right thing, without having the authority over them to tell them to do the right thing.”

Avoid Coercion Only as a last resort should you use coercion—persuasion through force or threats—to get cooperation from your colleagues. What might this look like? Having your boss reach out to their boss. Or saying, “You can go ahead and buy a different LMS than we are using, but we will not support that software should something go wrong.” Because of the potential to damage all of the good relationship building you’ve done up to this point, you want to limit these types of interactions to those times when you must get what you need, and nothing else has worked.

Bottom Line Influencing without authority requires developing relationships based on mutual objectives and reciprocity.

Go Deeper "Influencing Without Authority Model: Definition & Overview" a Study.com lesson by Beth Hendricks The Cohen-Bradford Influence Model relies on the concept of reciprocity, or the commonsense law of “one good turn deserves another.” This lesson details the six steps in the model to encourage someone to do what you want by appealing to their values.

Challenge 3  •  21

“The Influence Model: Trading What They Want for What You’ve Got (Using Reciprocity and Exchange),” ch. 2 in Influence Without Authority, by Allan R. Cohen and David L. Bradford The premise of this classic guide to getting what you need from people you don’t control is that you get what you need by offering something that the other person values in return. This chapter fleshes out this proven approach and sets up later chapters on how to implement the Exchange Model at the personal, team, and organizational levels.

“Flip Your Relationships,” ch. 4 in Be the Boss Everyone Wants to Work For, by William Gentry As a new leader, you need to flip your script from “me” to “we” in order to successfully lead your team. New trainers can learn from some of Gentry’s practical relationship advice for leaders when they are seeking collaboration across an organization.

“Getting Others to Believe You” and “Positivity,” ch. 3 and 6 in Why People Don’t Believe You . . . Building Credibility From the Inside Out, by Rob Jolles Jolles argues that credibility is as much about attitude as it is about aptitude. Chapter 3 contains some specific tactics and practices that will make you credible and convincing. Chapter 6 talks about the importance of positivity, which allows you to create hope, spread optimism, and be seen as a welcoming and upbeat partner.

“The Power of Your Words,” ch. 5 in The Power of Your Influence, by Stan Toler Your words, actions, and attitudes hold the power to build up or tear down. This chapter helps you correlate what you are saying or asking with the perceptions that others have of you.

“How to Disagree With Someone More Powerful Than You” by Amy Gallo It’s a natural human reaction to shy away from disagreeing with a superior, but sometimes the risk is greater by not sharing your thoughts. This article includes tips for evaluating the risk, principles for speaking up, and case studies in which these tips and principles are applied.

22  •  Challenge 3

4

Challenge:

I don’t know what’s just a fad

Description Massive open online courses (MOOCs), social learning, gamification, artificial intelligence (AI), click training: What’s just a fad, and what’s a good fit for your training goals? Which learning innovations are going to stick around, and which will be temporary, lasting only until the next stylish notion comes along? You want to be on the cutting edge of technology, science, and approaches to learning, but you need to be careful of being lured into solutions that are not instructionally sound.

Solutions While there is no way to predict the future, here are some strategies to determine whether a new approach to learning is going to be a short-lived fad or a long-term trend.

Determine If the Approach Is Instructionally Sound When a new approach ties back to adult-learning principles and is based on research, it is likely valid. Whether it will stick around is more a matter of how well publicized it is and how attractively it is packaged. Microlearning is an example of a more recent trend that is rooted in two core cognitive psychology findings: the spacing effect (Challenge 22) and the testing effect (Challenge 27). Microlearning is training delivered in bite-size chunks; it is scenario-based, integrates feedback, and utilizes social media for motivation and tracking (more on microlearning in Challenge 34). It checks all the boxes for what we know about how adults learn, and is therefore instructionally sound. As a counterexample, consider fidget spinners. These little toys are marketed as ways to help learners with ADHD focus, and as a way for anxious students to channel nervous energy. Some claim that fidget spinners can have health benefits, such as easing stress. But there is no evidence that sensory treatments like fidget spinners are effective in these instances. While some scientists talk about how spinners can help in theory, no empirical studies Challenge 4  •  23

back up these assertions. While the spinners were so popular that finding them was impossible for a brief while, they are now banned from many classrooms, because they are seen as more distracting than instructionally sound. Pokémon Go is another example. In 2016, when Pokémon Go became popular and people were wandering around neighborhoods holding out their cell phones trying to locate Pokémon Spots and Pokémon Gyms, many trainers tried to jump on the bandwagon and find ways to integrate the augmented reality mobile approach of Pokémon Go into their instruction. A few months later, however, interest in the game waned. People were no longer interested in Pokémon Go (and worse, players were involved in accidents and had become a public nuisance), and those who had integrated it into their training were left with an outdated, unsafe approach.

Look to the Tried and Tested There are people who want to be on the forefront of new technology—early adopters—who might benefit from lower pricing (before it’s been proven, it may be a bargain) and being ahead of the game (they’ll have this process seamlessly integrated by the time others are just getting on board). And then there are those who want to wait and see. They want evidence of a technique’s effectiveness. The only true way to know if something is a fad or is going to be a lasting approach is to wait for evidence that it works. For instance, many training teams have jumped onto social media—wikis, blogs, Twitter—for learning, when the evidence of these platforms’ effectiveness has been fairly weak (Clark 2015). This is not to say that you shouldn’t at times try out different, untested approaches, just that the risks of such approaches are greater; therefore, you want to be wary of making too big an investment in them.

Make Sure the Data Is Valid Most trends have data behind them. You want to make sure the data is valid. Clark Quinn, author of Millennials, Goldfish & Other Training Misconceptions (2018), suggests that a good rule of thumb is to always ask if the data was published in a peer-reviewed journal. Unpublished data is suspect, because why wouldn’t you publish if you could? Beware of someone saying they have data that can’t be shared for proprietary, or other, reasons. Proper research includes sufficient information for peers or other researchers to replicate the study to see if the same results are produced. Peer review isn’t everything—it might include its own errors—but it’s a good indication of scientific rigor. 24  •  Challenge 4

Make Sure the Approach Helps People Do Their Jobs When solutions are created in response to real problems, they will be enduring. But when products or processes are created to solve a problem that doesn’t truly exist, they will likely fail. Look at the origin for a new approach. If it springs from a real need, or fills a business gap, it is likely to be long-lasting. Trends solve problems and get stronger over time, as more and more people think about the same issue and how to resolve it in more effective and elegant ways. Curation (Challenge 24) is a recent example of a trend that’s growing in response to a problem: the glut of digital information available with just a few clicks, and the need to help learners connect to the portion of that information that is relevant and valid.

Determine Whether the Approach Is Related to a Larger Trend A learning technique that is grounded in how people operate in the real world may also gain traction. Tarah Cicero, learning and development specialist at Lehigh University, provides these examples: “Outside of the workplace, individuals tend to watch short videos on YouTube when they need to quickly learn how to do something. For that reason, we’ve incorporated short videos (around three minutes or less) into employee training. For example, we created a series of instructional videos for our online performance review process, which has steps that occur throughout the calendar year. Each step in the process has its own short video demonstrating how to navigate the online tool to successfully complete the step.” Another example Cicero shared: “The current competitive job market dictates a need to train new supervisors quickly. Virtual reality (VR) provides opportunities for new supervisors to practice coaching employees (something that can be challenging for them) in a low-stakes environment that feels real. The research supports its effectiveness in eliciting responses similar to those in actual human interactions. Although VR in employee training is somewhat new, the convenience, low risk, and scientific evidence have encouraged me to explore incorporating VR into our supervisor training programs.”

Be Wary of Tools That Are Concentrated on One Supplier When a company comes out with a really good product that solves a real need, competitors jump in because they realize it will be lucrative for them. Consumers then have the opportunity to choose among multiple products and to benefit from products that are continuously improved as each Challenge 4  •  25

competitor tries to outdo the others. If there is only one company promoting a certain approach, I’d be wary (think Google Glass). But if multiple companies are involved, the product is likely to become part of life. For example, one company was the first to launch a learning management system (LMS), but others jumped into that space rather quickly, because they realized the value an LMS could provide. As a result, we have multiple LMS companies to choose from, including Absorb, BrainCert Enterprise LMS, Bridge, Docebo Edvance360, PiiQ by Cornerstone, Saba Cloud, SAP Litmos, and Thought Industries. This is a sign that the LMS is here to stay. If the group sharing the trend with you stands to benefit financially from you jumping on board, look for independent research. Make sure you don’t rely on just one source for a trend, a study, or an approach.

Examine How Similar Approaches Have Been Received in the Past Trainers interested in a certain technique or product would be well advised to examine the history of similar practices or products. Did interest in them spike quickly and then die down? Or was the rate of growth and excitement slow-paced, with improvements made along the way?

Bottom Line To see if a fad will turn into a trend, look at the problem it is intended to solve and the evidence that it has done so.

Go Deeper “Distinguishing Fad From Trend” by Karl Kapp The ability to distinguish between fad and trend allows the learning professional to avoid jumping on a bandwagon, instead becoming an organizational thought leader. This brief article identifies three ways to distinguish one from the other.

“The Myths That Hold Us Back,” ch. 1 in Millennials, Goldfish & Other Training Misconceptions, by Clark Quinn Following fads, instead of what learning science tells us, is bad for your learners, your organizations (who lose time and money), and your own credibility. In this chapter, Quinn presents a “sniff-test” to measure the strength of a claim. In subsequent chapters, he debunks some common learning myths or fads, provides research to support or deny the claim, and suggests alternative approaches that will produce real learning.

26  •  Challenge 4

5

Challenge:

I’ve never managed a training project before

Description One surprise you may encounter as a new trainer is the amount of project management work that you will be called upon to do. In addition to designing or delivering learning programs, you will sometimes be put in the position of managing them, even if you’ve never managed a project before. You may turn to a project management model, but there are so many to choose from. How do you decide? And which one is best when the project is an instructional one? When you’re asked to manage a training project and aren’t sure how to go about it, it can affect your credibility.

Solutions Ultimately, project management is about getting things done. It’s about using the right skills, resources, and techniques to achieve your objectives on time and on budget. If you are familiar with some principles of good project management, regardless of which model they came from, they can help you effectively create and roll out a solid learning solution on time.

Familiarize Yourself With Common Project Management Processes Two common project management process types are traditional and Agile. ADDIE (analysis, design, development, implementation, and evaluation) is traditional, and remains the most widely used model in the profession. In the last decade, ADDIE has been supplemented or replaced by Agile models, including Megan Torrance’s LLAMA (Lot Like Agile Management Approach) and Michael Allen’s SAM (Successive Approximation Model). In a traditional project management approach, one process flows to the next. Sometimes referred to a waterfall approach, it is a sequential process in which it’s difficult to climb back up to the previous step, or to the top of the waterfall, because the process flows downstream. For example, once you’ve completed your design, you move into development. This makes traditional Challenge 5  •  27

models less reactive as things change. Waterfall approaches work well when goals of the project, scope of work, and deliverables are clear. You might use a waterfall approach if you are tasked with creating a program by a certain date on a specific topic that has already been scoped out. When I say “has already been scoped out,” I mean that the training topic is not likely to change after you’ve created the learning outcomes for the program, or that the desired outcomes aren’t likely to change once you’ve piloted the program. But let’s say a training requester asks for a program on time management for all employees. If you are strictly following a waterfall project management process, and you realize during your implementation phase that what is really needed is a session on priority setting and communicating expectations for managers, you would need to start all over again. Agile project management goes through a cycle of processes (called iterations or sprints) to present small chunks of the final deliverable at spaced intervals for stakeholder input. With this approach, the stakeholder gets value from the project sooner, because pieces are ready sooner, and stakeholder feedback on what’s been delivered so far can help improve the overall solution. Contrast this with traditional waterfall projects, in which stakeholders give input up front and then wait for the final product. The goal of each iteration is to produce a complete, ready-to-use feature. Experimentation and change is welcome and adds value. You might use an Agile approach if you have multiple requests coming in at all times, when business needs might change, or when specifications are not well defined at the outset. For example, you’ve been asked to create training for managers in relation to an organizational change that is imminent, but the change management approach the organization wants to use and the details of the change itself haven’t been hammered out yet (and maybe a new change management leader is just coming on board as well, as recently happened to me). You may be able to develop a piece of the training and get feedback through Agile, and the piece you’ve developed might help shape which change management tool the organization wants to use. The thing is, no process is really 100 percent traditional, or 100 percent Agile, and forcing us to pick ADDIE, LLAMA, or SAM (or between traditional and Agile) is simplistic. Even in Leaving ADDIE for SAM (2012), the seminal book that asked trainers to question the tried-and-true ADDIE process after decades in use, Michael Allen said about ADDIE, “What process wouldn’t include those steps?”

28  •  Challenge 5

Get Input at Every Step in the Process ADDIE has deliverables every step of the way that need sign-off before you can continue. Design documents, for example, have to be reviewed and approved by all stakeholders before instructional designers can begin to develop course materials. Pilot tests and beta testing are part of the implementation stage. Agile processes are team-based, and feedback is provided for each iteration of work by all team members, who straddle functions and roles. The team includes stakeholders and other reviewers. Any good project management model is going to include ample opportunities for input.

Don’t Be Afraid to Fail Agile models stress the importance of reflecting on everything and learning from your mistakes. But trust me, I get how that’s easier said than done. You’re new and you don’t want to look bad, but with Agile project management, everything is an iteration. Give yourself freedom to fail. Get comfortable putting work product out there, getting harsh feedback, and then moving forward, no matter what process you’ve followed to produce that work product.

Be a Good Team Member With some ADDIE or Agile projects, you won’t see your project through from start to finish. You may hand it off to another team member once it reaches a certain point so you can work on another aspect of the project, or on another project altogether. It can be difficult, especially when we feel pride of ownership in our work, to step away from something we had a big hand in. Ultimately, however, our clients don’t care whose name is on the work or who did it; they just care that it’s done. Be willing to support your team, help one another, and step away from what you started.

Don’t Go It Alone Project management requires making decisions about allocation of money and human resources, and which tasks to take on or pass up. As trainers and talent development professionals, we shouldn’t make these decisions ourselves without involvement from other stakeholders. For example, Jillian Hintz, senior manager of learning design and development at Paycor, says anyone in her organization can submit a request to her learning department online. She then presents the requests in a weekly meeting with her peers and

Challenge 5  •  29

leaders, who all say yea or nay. “My role,” Hintz explains, “is not to say, ‘Sales, your project is more important than that other team’s.’ This has to be a group decision.” As a new trainer, you may or may not be involved in decisions of this type. When you are, make sure that you reach out for ample input.

Be Thorough One benefit to ADDIE as a waterfall approach—where there’s no going back once you move from one stage to the next—is that it forces you to be more deliberate. Before you move to creating course objectives or outlining an agenda, for example, you might complete a multitude of analyses: a task analysis, a learner analysis, a content analysis, a training requirements analysis. Agile is faster, and businesses like faster, but there is something to be said for really scoping out what you’re being asked to do (more on this in Challenge 15). Even if you choose an Agile approach, don’t skimp on your analysis. Many training and L&D directors, including Eric Loffswold of NYU’s Learning and Organizational Development team, note that “junior trainers so want to have a positive impact and show they can do the work, they jump to solutions rather than doing more inquiry.”

Automate Processes Wherever possible, you want your project management process to be automated. Updating plans and tracking completion of tasks manually can lead to omissions and takes time away from the actual project work. Additionally, automated project management processes can provide the data you need. For instance, some automated project management tools can tell you where you are at risk on projects, like where you are running behind. Depending on the size of your team and how many projects are going on, having data you can report on is critical, especially when sharing updates with leadership. When you want to request additional training resources, you’ll likely be asked about how you are currently accomplishing your work. An automated project management system can help you answer that question.

Partner With Project Management Teams in Your Organization Many organizations have change management or project management functions whose members can help you. IT and other departments regularly employ project management tools and techniques. Find people in your organization who use project management models, even if their tools aren’t

30  •  Challenge 5

specifically related to L&D projects, and build off of them. Invite those who use the tools to your meetings and ask for their feedback on how you can be more project-management focused.

Let Your Process Educate People About What You Do There is confusion about what trainers can and can’t do in organizations, which projects are suitable for training and L&D teams, and which aren’t. Let your processes help educate people about your work and your capabilities. Jillian Hintz provides an example: As part of her aforementioned project management process, anyone in the organization can submit a training request. Her team created a form to handle these requests that explicitly and proactively lists the types of requests that are legitimate (like creating training materials) and those that are not (like taking professional portraits for associates). When you streamline your processes and the tools that are part of those processes, you have a chance to educate stakeholders along the way, and explain what you can and cannot do.

Be Flexible Find a project management system that can be customized for your needs. Megan Torrance’s LLAMA model is a newer approach that is an adaptation of ADDIE. Kanban is an adaptable version of Agile. Microsoft Teams lets you write your own project management tools with your own timeframes. It’s good to know something about project management, and then be able to articulate how you’d like to do it and find or create the models and tools that can support you.

Bottom Line ADDIE, SAM, AGILE, SCRUM, LLAMA, Kanban? Use principles from all of them to become a better project manager.

Go Deeper “A Course Development Template,” ch. 3 in Project Management for Trainers, by Lou Russell When creating a project plan for a training program, there are several models to choose from. Starting with some existing models and keeping what works from that model for your project is an efficient way to create a plan. This chapter provides detailed overviews of several such models—ADDIE, Learner First, SAM, Agile, and Design Thinking.

Challenge 5  •  31

“Instructional System Design (ISD): Using the ADDIE Model” by Steven McGriff ADDIE is a systematic approach to creating learner-centered instruction. This means that every component of the instruction is related to learning outcomes, which are determined after a thorough analysis of the learners’ needs. This concise (two-page) overview of the ADDIE model contains an especially useful chart describing the common tasks and outputs at each stage of the process.

“Instructional Systems Design” and “Preparation Phase,” ch. 2 and 7 in Leaving Addie for Sam: An Agile Model for Developing the Best Learning Experience, by Michael Allen. The best model today is the model that works well for an organization—one that ensures that each project will be completed within its constraints and will achieve desired performance outcomes to the fullest extent possible. Chapter 2 talks about the evolution of ADDIE, including its shortcomings and adaptations that have been made to the traditional model. Chapter 7 dives into the data-gathering stage of SAM, in which, after background information is collected, a “Savvy Start” is implemented.

“The Case for Agile” and “Design and Deliver in Iterations,” ch. 1 and 9 in Agile for Instructional Designers, by Megan Torrance The Lot Like Agile Management Approach (LLAMA) is an Agile approach adapted specifically for instructional design projects. Chapter 1 explains how LLAMA embraces the steps in ADDIE with a twist. Chapter 9 talks about how to section work into iterations through the creation of minimal viable products, and how to gather feedback on those.

“Agile and LLAMA for ISD Project Management” by Megan Torrance Until an Agile project is considered complete by the sponsor, or there are no more meaningful things worth changing, the team continues to produce iterations of the work. This TD at Work highlights some of the unique tasks that are involved in those iterations, including creating a primary learner persona, defining scope, chunking, and corkboard scheduling.

32  •  Challenge 5

2 N O I T SEC

t ’ n s I g d n i e n d i r Tra Rega l l e W

The Problem “The training department here is part of HR, and even HR doesn’t get a seat at the table when important organizational issues are being discussed. It feels like we’re the lowest priority in the organization.” “At my organization, there’s a mentality that learner-centeredness and active learning take up too much time. We’re funded by the government, and they give us content we have to cover. Promoting interaction among participants is a hard sell here.” “I worked really hard to create an interactive and informative online course. I hired an external vendor to help with the look and feel, and our LMS can distribute it right to learners at their desks. I’m really proud of what I created, but practically no one is taking it.” “We put out a rolling calendar of the courses we’re offering for the next two months on the first day of every month. Many of our courses fill up within the first day or two and we even have a waiting list for them, but we also have a 30 to 40 percent no-show rate for all of our classes. It’s annoying because the people who don’t show up are taking a seat that someone on our waiting list could have used. And, more important, we often don’t have enough people in the sessions to do the interactive activities we’d planned.”

What’s Happening Here? Many new trainers I spoke to lamented not only their own individual credibility (as addressed in Section 1), but also the credibility of their learning and development functions. At a minimum, employees in an organization aren’t always aware of the services an L&D team provides, or of how they can—and have—helped the organization meet its goals. At worst, there is lack of buy-in from senior management, battles for resources, arguments with subject matter experts about what you bring to the table, and low participation rates for your programs. I have twice had to create a talent development function for organizations in which one hadn’t existed before: once when I was the inaugural training director at Redwood City, and once when I joined a newly formed team at Columbia University Irving Medical Center. The first thing I did in my role at Redwood City was to conduct an organizational needs assessment. In response to my questions about her team’s training needs, one of the managers in the parks and recreation department told me that none of her employees needed any centralized training from my office—her staff members were certified and educated landscape gardeners and had all the skills they needed to do their jobs. It took me some time working with this manager to help her realize that while her staff might not have immediate training needs, her role as a manager was also to prepare them for the work environment of the future and groom them for future positions in our organization. I don’t know if it was my words, or the circumstances she soon faced, that swayed her. The first time she called and asked for my help, one of her gardeners had had an altercation with a citizen. And then, even though they didn’t use computers at the time, within a year of our conversations, her staff was given laptops and told to use them for tracking and reporting. This manager became a big consumer of our technical and customer service training for her team members, as well as managerial and leadership training for herself. This was one of my favorite success stories from my time with the city. What I like about these opportunities where people aren’t familiar with how L&D can help is that they come with the built-in opportunity to define what we are all about and to educate the organization on our purpose. There is a focus on marketing and communication that isn’t as prevalent in existing training departments I’ve been part of. Whether your team is new or not, the

34  •  Section 2

need for marketing your services and your value never ends. The solutions in this section are all about how you can accomplish this.

The Challenges If training isn’t well regarded where you work, it could indicate that a change in focus is in order, or that you’ll need to invest some additional effort on communication—not only to enroll learners, but to involve employees at all organizational levels in broader development efforts. This section provides troubleshooting tips when you notice that any of these issues are present: Challenge 6. I’m not seen as a value-added partner to the organization.............37 Challenge 7. I don’t know how to showcase the successes of our training..........46 Challenge 8. My organization thinks active learning takes too much time..........52 Challenge 9. No one is signing up for my courses..................................................57 Challenge 10. No one is showing up to my courses................................................66

Section 2  •  35

6

Challenge:

I’m not seen as a value-added partner to the organization

Description Let’s face it, regardless of what you call the function in which you work—talent development, L&D, training—it is a support function. That is, it is not (usually) revenue producing (though I have been in entrepreneurial TD departments that are), and its members don’t always get a seat at the table from which you can contribute broadly to organizational strategy and initiatives. You may feel that your budget will be the first hit in a downturn, or that anytime something goes wrong with a training rollout, your department will be subsumed into another organizational function with less of a priority on learning.

Solutions There are organizations where L&D is seen as a value-added partner to its business functions. As Abbie Lundberg and George Westerman posited in their 2019 article in Harvard Business Review, “The Transformer CLO,” “In today’s dynamic business environment, workplace learning has become a key lever for success.” They suggest that chief learning officers are “embracing a more powerful role in which they reshape capabilities and organizational culture.” The more widespread this phenomenon becomes, the better for all of us. Here are some of the things new CLOs are doing, which you as a new trainer can emulate.

Focus on a Broader Purpose Than Training The focus of training and L&D needs to be greater than imparting some missing knowledge, skills, and attitudes through formal or informal training platforms. It needs to be on developing mindsets and capabilities that will help workers perform well now and adapt smoothly in the future. The workplace is changing rapidly, and our efforts need to concentrate on helping all employees to explore, learn, and grow so they can perform well on tasks that have yet to be defined. We need to continually promote the value of a growth mindset and continuous learning.

Challenge 6  •  37

Some of the rudimentary platforms I’ve used to promote the concept of lifelong learning and the role that every individual in an organization plays in that goal are included in the tools at the end of this challenge. Tool 6-1, “Your Role in Professional Development,” is the slide deck for a keynote I facilitate at departmental meetings with the goal of expanding people’s definitions of what constitutes learning and of having individuals realize their own responsibility for that growth, whether they are a manager or an individual contributor. Tool 6-2 shows the table of contents for “A Manager’s Guide to Employee Development” in which I provide a broader definition of organizational learning, define organizational roles in providing learning opportunities, and answer some of managers’ frequently asked questions about obstacles to learning.

Enable Leaders to Promote Organizational Learning A strong learning culture is created when leaders in the company know how to promote learning in a broad sense. This might include making sure employees feel safe to ask questions and contribute ideas. It includes knowing how to conduct reviews after projects are complete and helping people learn from mistakes. Google is known to impart this expectation of its leaders, and also includes having leaders model knowledge-sharing formats by making it part of the culture for leaders to ask for feedback, advice, opinions, and help. Your role in all of this is to share organizational expectations like these in your communications and during training events. If your organization is bought into organizational learning, your role is to provide managers with the tools they need to meet these expectations. If your organization has not yet bought into the concept of ongoing learning and development, your role is to keep sharing examples like Google’s of how this is becoming a prevalent and valuable way of working.

Focus on Broader Topics To achieve this broader purpose means also changing the topics we focus our efforts on—that is, shifting from training on specific skills to training on broader topics like critical thinking, analyzing risk, or using data in decision making. It means making employees aware of their talents and strengths so that they can further enhance and deploy them. This has a broader organizational impact than producing training to fill gaps in individuals’ knowledge or skills, which might only bring them to an adequate level of performance. Your role in this is to continue building up relationships so that you will have opportunities to 38  •  Challenge 6

share the direction you think your team should be heading, and to continue building your awareness of how other organizations are shifting to this broader focus so that when the time comes, you will be prepared to share what’s working.

Be Nimble The training function needs to move as quickly as the businesses it serves. This is one of the reasons Agile project management models have become more popular in the training and instructional design space (see Challenge 5). And it’s why you need to change how you get content to employees, so that it is more immediate and responsive to challenges as they arise. When content is pushed to learners at the right time and in the places where they will use it, it is more effective, which can lead to other business functions valuing you as a partner in improving performance. The classic example of this is when sales processes or product information is designed to be viewed on a mobile device that sales people can refer to at the point of need (such as a store, sales call, or client meeting).

Focus on Continuous, Informal Learning David Grebow of IBM’s Institute for Advanced Learning is quoted as saying, “We get only 25 percent or less of what we use in our jobs through formal learning. Yet, most of today’s investment in corporate education is on the formal side. The net result is that we spend the most money on the smallest part of the equation.” A successful company doesn’t merely provide formal training, but cultivates a system that creates continuous opportunities for learning, including coaching, support tools, and just-in-time, bite-size chunks of training that make it easy to find the exact information you need when you need it. Learning is no longer considered a singular, unconnected event that happens once with no bearing on an employee’s job or life. Challenge 23 provides specifics on the design of such opportunities.

Be Aspirational Changing how L&D is perceived in an organization and building a learning culture takes time. Start now by educating your organization on where you want it to be. You become a partner not just by having successes, but by asking employees—from senior leadership to front-line employees—to join you on your journey. Let the organization know what you aspire to be for them and where you are headed. Tool 6-3 is an example of what I shared in my early days as training director at Redwood City (you’ll find it at the end of this challenge).

Challenge 6  •  39

Provide “Employer of Choice” Data An “employer of choice” is an organization with an extraordinary work environment that has above-average recruitment results and low turnover. They are the organizations where people want to work and choose to stay, even when they are courted by other employers. And, on every list I’ve seen of the features that make a company an employer of choice, opportunities for career growth and learning and development feature prominently. This is compelling information to share within any organization that wishes to be such an employer. In a 2014 Willis Towers Watson global workforce study (whose results are summarized in Table 6-1), learning and development opportunities were seen as one of the top five attraction drivers among employees up to age 39 (and career advancement opportunities, which L&D can help to shape, were both attraction and retention drivers for all ages). Table 6-1. Top Attraction and Retention Drivers by Age Younger Than 30 •

• •

•

•

•

•

•

•

30 to 39

Base pay/salary (a) (r)

•

Job security (a) Career advancement opportunities (r)

•

Career advancement opportunities (a) Length of commute (r)

•

Learning and development opportunities (a) Manage/limit work-related stress (r)

•

Organization’s reputation as good employer (a) Trust/confidence in senior leadership (r)

•

•

•

•

•

40 to 49

Base pay/salary (a) (r)

•

Job security (a) Career advancement opportunities (r)

•

Career advancement opportunities (a) Trust/confidence in senior leadership (r)

•

Learning and development opportunities (a) Relationship with supervisor/ manager (r)

•

Challenging work (a) Length of commute (r)

•

•

•

•

•

Base pay/salary (a) (r)

Base pay/salary (a) (r)

Job security (a) Career advancement opportunities (r)

•

Job security (a) Trust/confidence in senior leadership (r)

Career advancement opportunities (a) Trust/confidence in senior leadership (r)

•

Organization’s reputation as good employer (a) Job security (r)

•

Challenging work (a) Relationship with supervisor/ manager (r)

•

Note: (a) indicates attraction driver; (r) indicates retention driver. Source: Cheah (2015).

40  •  Challenge 6

50+ •

•

•

•

•

Challenging work (a) Career advancement opportunities (r) Organization’s reputation as good employer (a) Job security (r) Career advancement opportunities (a) Relationship with supervisor/ manager (r)

Bottom Line Don’t be an order taker; be a culture shaper.

Go Deeper “The Transformer CLO: The Role of Chief Learning Officer Isn’t Just About Training Anymore” by Abbie Lundberg and George Westerman Chief learning officers in large companies are reshaping employee and organizational capabilities and influencing organizational culture. While this Harvard Business Review article focuses on L&D professionals with many years of experience, the ways that these leaders are structuring learning goals, learning methods, and learning departments to enable these changes is inspiring and can be reproduced by less tenured professionals.

“Turning Trainers Into Strategic Business Partners” by Ingrid Guerra-López and Karen Hicks Essential skills for L&D professionals to demonstrate their value to the organization include systems thinking, strategic thinking, critical thinking, and collaboration. This TD at Work issue highlights nine key steps that help ensure alignment between learning solutions and strategic objectives, while providing a framework for demonstrating the L&D function’s value.

“Strategically Aligning the L&D Function,” ch. 7 in Partner for Performance, by Ingrid Guerra-López and Karen Hicks L&D professionals must set out to understand in what ways their work may directly or indirectly affect organizational performance. This chapter provides excellent tools for determining this, including an L&D alignment diagnostic and examples of specific changes L&D can make to integrate “strategic alignment into your daily business, and, in turn, improving the impact you have on the organization, the customers it serves, and the society to which it contributes.”

Challenge 6  •  41

Tool 6-1. Your Role in Professional Development Slide Deck Slide

Script Thanks for inviting me to talk about professional development and your role in it, whether you are a manager or an individual contributor. Most of us know what the benefits of professional development are . . . . . . like these benefits to the employee, the manager, and the organization But not all of us know what professional development actually is . . .

What are your reactions to this definition of professional development?

“Anything” means that professional development meets any of the criteria listed here.

At our organization, professional development is acquired in these ways, to conform with the Center for Leadership Development’s research on how successful leaders learned what they needed to be successful.

Most of us think of professional development as the 10% that is formal learning, but that isn’t the majority of what helps us to be successful in our roles. In our organization, that 10-25% is comprised of these three offerings.

42  •  Challenge 6

If 20-25% of your development is supposed to come from coaching and feedback and you’re not getting any, you need to ask for it. And not just from a manager, but from anyone you have interacted and worked with.

What do you think can make up the 50-70% of experiential (or hands-on) experiences that contribute to your learning?

In our organization, that 50-70% might include some of these activities.

What do you think is your role in professional development as a manager? Let’s see how your ideas compare to those on this list.

What do you think is your role in professional development as an employee? Let’s see how yours compare to what’s on this list.

Challenge 6  •  43

Tool 6-2. Table of Contents for “A Manager’s Guide to Employee Development” Here’s a sample of topics I used in a guide for managers about the importance of employee development. What is employee development? What is the purpose of employee development? What is a manager’s role in employee development? How can I establish informal learning opportunities on the job? Employee Development Resources at Our Organization Frequently Asked Questions: Who can attend our programs? • When is supervisor approval needed? • Who gets registration priority? • What about if, due to the nature of our work, I don’t know in advance if people will be able to attend? • Are there any fees for employee development? • What is tuition reimbursement? • When is it appropriate to send employees to training on work time? • How can I develop employees and still have my department remain productive? • Aren’t trained people more likely to move to “better” jobs elsewhere? • What is the role of the employee development manager? •

Appendices: Handout: Where’s the Employee in Employee Development? Form: Learning Contract Form: Individual Development Plan

44  •  Challenge 6

Tool 6-3. Where Our Organization’s L&D Function Wants to Be Redwood City has been taking steps to move employee development from the way it is described in the column on the left to the way it is described on the right. But largescale changes like these don’t happen overnight. Every employee is part of the effort to ensure that professional development is helping people to be successful in their jobs today and to be prepared for their jobs in the future. We Need to Get From Here

To Here

Training is defined as an event (like a classroom workshop)

Training is anything that helps employees grow (not just classes), provided wherever employees are, not just in city hall

Training is offered in a vacuum (without considering citywide priorities and what is going on in departments)

Training is integrated with departmental and citywide needs and priorities; results from training are tied into organizational systems, including performance management

Training topics are chosen because individuals ask for them

Training topics are driven by business strategy (tied to strategic goals)

Training gets a rating after each program or solution

Training is continually measured; outcomes are determined before training takes place, and programs are evaluated against desired outcomes

Training is not tracked and it is unclear who is accountable for development

Everyone in the organization is responsible for employee development; tracking is consistent

Training programs are listed in a catalog and participants can sign up only for the dates listed

Training is a continuous process, most of which occurs in customized, individual interactions on the job

Challenge 6  •  45

7

Challenge:

I don’t know how to showcase the successes of training

Description Feedback on your programs is very positive overall. You’ve heard anecdotes about how people are integrating their new knowledge and skills back at work. But you’re not sure that information is getting to the people it needs to get to, or whether it’s making the positive impression you hope to be making throughout the organization.

Solutions Sharing with senior leaders the positive results your learning function has contributed to the organization and its business results is vital to being seen as a contributing organizational function. Here are some tips for doing that well.

Share the Right Information With the Right Audience If you’ve tried sharing Level 1 evaluation data (see Challenge 25) with senior leaders—such as how many people you’ve trained or how much people enjoyed the training—or even some Level 2 data (Challenge 26)—such as how well participants did on tests following training events—you might not have garnered the type of support for your efforts that you had hoped for. Data on whether the learners responded favorably or improved their knowledge is compelling to instructional designers or to program facilitators, but not as much to the business leaders who can become your champions. Senior leaders want to know whether learners are demonstrating behaviors that will further the organization’s strategic objectives and if they are adding greater value than they were prior to participating. As you are designing a training initiative, work with the requester to establish what kind of results they wish to see and how they’d like those to be reported. On an ongoing basis, find out what metrics matter to your organizational leaders about the effectiveness of your overall efforts, and make those numbers available at all times. Let me repeat, find out what metrics they want and then

46  •  Challenge 7

prepare a dashboard so that these key indicators are always measured. (If one already exists, ask them what they want to keep on the dashboard and what they don’t care about.) Rich Hurley, learning and organizational development manager at NYU, provides this example: “Every two months, we share a report with the AVP of our area and the VP of HR. Recently, a new AVP came on board, and we asked her to look with us at what we were currently collecting and to flush out what was important to her. As expected, she wanted to keep the quantitative data, as it helps her with budgeting. And she also wanted some demographic data that we’re now starting to collect.” The resulting bimonthly report contains numerical data on instructor-led and online courses offered, enrollments in and completions of those, and new courses created. The new demographic data includes date of hire, band or grade, age, race, gender, military and veteran status, work location, and department. Hurley continues, “The demographic data helps us to better gauge how folks enter our programs and to identify populations that might not connect with our current offerings. For example, if 75 percent of those completing training are female, we need to learn why. Why are we not connecting with men? Is there historical research that women seek out development more readily then men? If so, we have more work to do, because those men who aren’t connecting with our offerings are still impacting our organization and certainly still need development.” Just as you customize the data you share, you also want to customize how you share it. Communicate with organizational leaders as they wish to be communicated with. Be sure to talk with others who have presented to a particular organizational leader or group of leaders to find out what they like. Do they want PowerPoints or detailed reports? Do they prefer numbers or discussions? Are their meetings collegial or formal? Who is the person at the table who will be your champion, the one you can turn to if the discussion goes south? Who is the person to watch out for; how do they generally launch their attacks, and what is most important to them that might help win them over?

Give Leaders Insight Into Employee Attitudes and Concerns Author and motivational speaker Simon Sinek posits that as people move up the ranks in organizations, they are no longer responsible to the organization’s customers, but to the people who are directly responsible to the organization’s customers—the employees. As such, you are in direct contact with their primary customer—the employees you interact with in your live training, during needs analysis, and in social-learning situations. You can Challenge 7  •  47

provide both anecdotal and data-driven information about what employees are thinking and experiencing, related not only to training, but to broader organizational concerns.

Bring Them Data They May Not Otherwise Have Business leaders need data to make decisions. The talent development team often has access to data that can be helpful to supervisors that they aren’t regularly receiving. Team up with your HR business partners to regularly share employee data, including attendance, turnover, promotional, and diversity information. Then share training participation data and, wherever possible, show correlations between training participation and this other employee data. Did turnover decrease after all employees attended a program that helped them do their jobs better, or one that provided managers with coaching skills? Did those who were promoted have higher rates of participation in online learning programs over the prior year? This data can be hard to get (see Challenge 25). Even if you can’t make these sorts of correlations, being seen as a proactive resource that is there to help managers monitor and manage employee development and engagement will go a long way toward enhancing your reputation as a value-added function.

Highlight How Other Leaders Regard L&D At Redwood City, twice a year, I asked department heads how they felt about the priorities of my training unit; I then reported the feedback to senior leader‑ ship. Figures 7-1 to 7-3 show examples of some of those reports. Figure 7-1. Department Head Perception of Importance

48  •  Challenge 7

Figure 7-2. Importance of Employee Development Goals

Figure 7-3. Importance of Planned Employee Development Programs

This annual process allowed me to not only get feedback on the priorities for my unit, but also remind organizational leaders of what we were working on and its importance. Letting leaders who viewed L&D initiatives less favorably see how their colleagues viewed them at times led to a helpful conversation on the management team toward bridging the perception gap.

Share Organizational Trends Be able to roll up all departmental data you collect into an organizational snapshot that you can present on a regular basis. Organizational leaders appreciate year-over-year data. They want to see trends, not just isolated numbers. For example, did the number of people completing the online change

Challenge 7  •  49

management course go up in the last month since our enterprise-wide change effort launched? Was the decline in course completions over the summer the same as it was last year at this same time? What trends are you noticing in the number of graduates of our leadership programs leaving our organization?

Share Competitor Data Another language senior leaders speak? The language of competition. What drives some organizational leaders to make learning a priority is hearing how others in the industry, or other respected firms, do it. You can get this benchmark data on your own, from industry data, from ATD’s annual State of the Industry report, or from articles on ATD’s best-in-class companies. For example, when I was at Redwood City, I surveyed other city and county agencies annually to find out what they were up to, as well as what their top training needs were. I would bring information like, “Among 433 cities and counties, the top five training needs were safety, customer relations, computer literacy [remember, this was decades ago], management and supervisory skills, and financial management.” This was certainly an argument my department heads considered when funding a high-potential leadership program (and letting me open up seats—for a fee—to other local agencies).

Share Accomplishments It’s common for trainers and L&D professionals to shy away from boasting about their accomplishments. But you can’t expect to receive recognition for your efforts if you don’t proactively share the successful outcomes of L&D initiatives. You can do this by inviting senior leaders to graduation events of leadership or mentoring programs, by writing case studies of pilot programs you conducted with one unit or division, and so on. Piloting initiatives with one unit is amazingly helpful, because it’s easier to track results from a small group sample, and because the leader of that group is a peer to leaders in other areas, so they can promote what they tried to their colleagues. Stories about your graduates—with names and photos—for company newsletters, trade magazines, or local news articles can have a terrific impact. For example, after a six-month leadership development program at the City of Redwood City, one graduate put his action plan into place and won an award from his professional association. He was promoted in their national publications, and in each he mentioned the course that prompted him to implement the program for which he’d won. 50  •  Challenge 7

Members of your L&D team who are winning awards, speaking at conferences, writing books or articles, or otherwise gaining attention in our field should also be highlighted in your company newsletter or on the company website.

Bottom Line Don’t expect your results to speak for themselves; be a promoter of yourself and your work.

Go Deeper “Strategically Aligning the L&D Function,” ch. 4 in Partner for Performance, by Ingrid Guerra-López and Karen Hicks Your task is to identify the results and metrics that are particularly relevant to the performance issues you are attempting to address, and to determine which would best evaluate the effectiveness of your solutions. This chapter offers examples of metrics you can use, as well as information on establishing targets and data collection strategies.

Challenge 7  •  51

8

Challenge:

My organization thinks active learning takes too much time

Description When people talk about the instructional strategies that work best for children, movements are formed, politicians coalesce, and school systems adapt them with much fanfare. But when it comes to the instructional strategies that work best with adult learners, organizations are slower to respond, saying there simply is no time for instruction that includes active learning strategies. Suddenly people think you can just throw something together, or make a PowerPoint deck, and it will be sufficient. They want to do the bare minimum in the program itself, which often translates to “Just tell them what they need to do.” Sufficient it might be, but effective, not so much.

Solutions Active—not passive—participation is needed for learning to occur. Here are a few strategies to employ when your organization is resisting active learning techniques.

Provide Research on the Efficacy of Interactive Learning Active learning corresponds to multiple theories of how adults take in and recall information. It checks against many principles that are described in more detail later in the book, including: • Adult learning theory, which says that adults bring a wealth of experience, and a level of self-direction, to your programs and need ample opportunities to contribute that experience and to participate actively (Challenge 17). • The failure of rote memorization, illustrated by the fact that most of what you memorize is lost in hours (like after you’ve crammed facts into your head for a test and then promptly forgotten them), which indicates that participants need to employ approaches to encode

52  •  Challenge 8

information into long-term memory other than just repeating messages over and over again (Challenge 17). • Cognitive science, which, among other things, tells us that because our brains are thinking while we are listening, we can’t possibly process or retain everything we hear. This means relying solely on imparting information through lecture-like methods will be ineffective (Challenge 17). • Microlearning, which posits that learning is not a one-shot event and it takes several exposures to material to understand it. So, even if you do rely on a “tell” model for your training, you’ll still need to spend the time to tell and retell until the content is understood (Challenge 34). • Connectivism, which says that we learn by making connections to things we already know. Unless a speaker slows down to allow us to process new information and compare it to what we already know, the chances of encoding that information into long-term memory are slim. Getting participants to ask questions or to discuss connections with their peers is critical (Challenge 24). • Cognitive overload, which happens when trainers flood participants with too much information. Pouring facts and concepts into people’s brains can actually interfere with learning, which means we have to limit how much we share with learners in one sitting (Challenge 34). • The social side of learning, which aligns with Maslow’s teaching that people need to feel connected to one another in a group before they will take the risks required for higher-level thinking and growth to take place (Challenge 33). • Neuroscience, which is the study of the nervous system and the brain. David Rock, director of the NeuroLeadership Institute, tells us that you need four things to embed ideas: attention, generation, emotion, and spacing (this is the foundation for his AGES model). It is the generating aspect of this model that is at work in active, versus passive, instruction (Challenge 33). Grounding your arguments for active learning in theory like this can help to make your point that active learning methodology is worth the time and investment. Mel Silberman, an internationally known leader in the field of active learning, used to tie his own Active Learning Credo back to what Confucius

Challenge 8  •  53

knew about how we came to acquire new knowledge and skill more than 2,400 years ago. You’ve probably heard this advice credited to the Chinese philosopher, teacher, and political figure: • I hear and I forget • I see and I remember • I do and I understand Silberman (2015) expanded on Confucius’ words, as follows: • When I only hear, I forget • When I hear and see, I remember a little • When I hear, see, and ask questions and discuss with someone else, I begin to understand • When I hear, see, question, discuss, and do, I acquire knowledge and skill • When I teach someone, I master what I have learned. To get to the level of mastery, then, a combination of active and passive approaches must be used.

Explain the Trade-Offs There is a project management principle that suggests that every project requires a decision: Can we skimp on some aspect of it to get it faster? Do we want to do it slower if it means we don’t incur the costs associated with rushing it? The “good, fast, cheap” model suggests that you can get only two out of three for any given initiative (Figure 8-1). When your training requester or client suggests that active learning takes too much time to prepare and conduct, remind them of the sacrifices that would have to be made in the areas of cheap, or, in this case, good—effective, quality instruction—if you were to focus on fast.

Give Them a Demonstration Shermaine Perry, employee development specialist for the Fulton County government, says, “The easiest concept to explain to others is cognitive overload. Just throw a bunch of information at them and watch their eyes glaze over. Once that happens, I tell them, ‘You’ve just experienced overload—too much information too fast. The better way to learn that is to chunk it and to have opportunities to process it.’ They get it.” This helps build buy-in for delivering less content in more active ways than lectures.

54  •  Challenge 8

Figure 8-1. Good, Fast, Cheap

OD GO

FA ST

CHEAP

Speak Their Language Instead of sharing the benefits of active learning from an instructional perspective, talk about it from a business angle. Explain that you want to design training that will lead to the results they are hoping for and help them to be successful. Shape the conversation about how to impart information around the things that are keeping them up at night. For example, “If, during training, we simply present this content and don’t allow time for more participatory models of learning, we will create a culture in which employees are dependent on others for answers and are unable to use their judgment on how to apply their skills to the various situations that will arise, because they won’t have had the opportunity to do so.”

Embrace Vulnerability Client opposition to participant-centered learning strategies often stems from a fear that things will get out of hand. Assure the naysayers that with proper design and excellent facilitation, the uncertainty of active learning approaches will be managed, and key messages for the overall course will be covered, even if the discussion and facilitation of each individual session isn’t exactly the same. Likewise, that same fear might also be limiting you. There is a great deal of nervousness, especially from new trainers, around turning learning results over to participants. You might be worried that you will have a hard time reining participants back in after an interactive activity, or that the conversation will go off the rails, so you hold back from asking participants anything at all

Challenge 8  •  55

(Solutions for those scenarios can be found in Challenge 41). Make sure to consider if the opposition to active engagement in your learning events isn’t coming from you—whether consciously or unconsciously.

Bottom Line Even though telling participants what they need to know might allow you to cover more ground in your trainings, you have to question how much is really learned that way.

Go Deeper “Introducing Active Training,” pt. 1 of Active Training, by Mel Silberman and Elaine Biech The key to effective training is that learning activities be designed so that participants acquire knowledge and skill, rather than merely receiving them. Part 1, written by an internationally known pioneer of active training techniques, provides convincing, evidencebased arguments in favor of active, not passive, training, and also addresses common concerns about this approach.

“Don’t Lecture Me” by Emily Hanford College students spend a lot of time listening to lectures. But research shows there are better ways to learn. This terrific podcast is part of American Public Media’s Tomorrow’s College series. Although it’s academically focused, says a lot about why we need to abandon the lecture in the 21st-century economy, which demands more well-educated workers.

“Adult Learning Principles,” ch. 5 in Telling Ain’t Training, by Harold D. Stolovitch and Erica J. Keeps Adults actively engage in their day-to-day decision making, and they engage and contribute in their work. So, they should also engage in their learning. This chapter reviews principles of adult learning and participant engagement.

56  •  Challenge 8

9

Challenge:

No one is signing up for my courses

Description Excited after designing and developing a course, new and experienced trainers alike can feel dismay when they look at the roster for an upcoming session to learn that the minimum number of seats have not been filled. This usually happens about a week before the class. Your response might be to send out an additional, desperate email trying to fill those seats so that you won’t have to cancel the class. And, often, you do get a few more sign-ups that push you over the threshold needed. But this reactive and last-ditch approach doesn’t address the larger issue: You need to both ensure that the marketing you are doing for your offerings is effective, and address a larger potential issue around whether learning activities are valued organizationally.

Solutions Motivation to attend training is closely tied to that training’s perceived value, to learners’ confidence that they will be able to learn and perform the skills, and to their overall mood. Here are some tips to enhance all three.

Tap Into Learning Motivations The primary solution to the problem of low enrollment is to tap into what motivates people to participate in training events more generally and to exploit that in your marketing efforts. In writing my book Beyond Free Coffee and Donuts: Marketing Training and Development in 2003, I spoke to individuals in many organizations about what motivated them to sign up for training generally. Here are the top motivators they shared with me, which, I’ve found, have held up over time: • There’s a clear connection between training and the work I do. • It’s required.

Challenge 9  •  57

It’s tied to career advancement. • I receive recognition for completion. • I’m compensated for participation. • I get to meet others from across the organization. • Stepping away from work can be invigorating. • I’ve had positive training experiences in the past. • I value personal growth. Whatever marketing and communication you do will need to capitalize on these motivations. •

Focus on Problem Solving The first item on the list of motivators—which is the one most often cited—is closely tied to the principle that adult learners have a strong readiness to learn things that will help them cope with daily life efficiently. Adults are willing to devote energy to learning things that they believe will help them perform a task or solve a problem. When new trainers tell me that people are not signing up for their programs because they have no time for training, I argue that most individuals I’ve encountered would make time to attend a program that would immediately help them become more productive and less stressed on a daily basis. Your programs need to be tied to organizational needs, relevant to your target audience, and applicable right away. But that’s not enough. Now you have to create marketing that makes it clear that your program hits the mark in these three areas. Consider these examples of positioning a coaching program for managers (Table 9-1). Your marketing needs to be explicit about why the skills being taught are important to the organization, as in the example from the CEO’s message in Table 9-1. You need to include the benefits (the “What’s in it for me?”) in your marketing messages, as a testimonial or question approach can do. Focusing on the relevance and applicability of your training will go a long way toward attracting people to—and motivating them to attend— your programs. But, this marketing can’t be all hype. If you advertise that your programs will help people experience success in their roles, you need to deliver. Otherwise, people will cease to trust your marketing. Additionally, their disappointment in the results they achieve will mean that they can no longer say, “I’ve had positive training experiences in the past,” which is one of the motivators lower down on the list. 58  •  Challenge 9

Table 9-1. How to Position a Coaching Program Using Senior Leaders to Promote Organizational Need “Our organization relies on its pool of talented, dedicated managers coaching their team members to provide the high-quality programs and services that we are proud to offer our customers. In coaching conversations, you equip our staff to improve the experience for our customers. I hope you will consider sharpening your coaching skills by participating in the next coaching program for managers.” —Your CEO Using Questions to Highlight Relevance If you answer “yes” to any of these questions, you may want to attend our next coaching program for managers: • Do you want to leverage your team members’ strengths to enhance overall team performance? • Do you want to tap into what motivates each of your employees to contribute their best work? • Do you need to establish goals with your team members in order to plan their workloads? Using Testimonials to Highlight Applicability “After completing the coaching program, I was able to work with my team members to support better performance not only for those who’d been struggling, but for some of my star performers as well.”

Make Attendance Mandatory—Or Not One might ask, “Can’t a CEO who’s on board, like the one in the previous example, simply mandate that every manager attend?” I’ve worked in several organizations where certain training was required, and several others where the words required or mandatory were taboo (with the exception of some compliance training that was mandated by law). In those institutions, training could only be “strongly encouraged.” I can see both sides of the issue. Sometimes, a requirement to attend training creates an imperative that clearly bolsters attendance. When the chief operating officer at one company where I worked not only required all employees to complete customer service training, but tied manager bonuses to the percentage of their staff completing this training, participation soared. However, it’s important to note that just because training is mandatory doesn’t mean you can skimp on marketing. If you don’t use your marketing to create buy-in for the program, people will enter the session as “prisoners,” have a less-fulfilling experience, and tarnish the reputation of your learning function for the next program you want them to complete (more on prisoners in Challenge 32). You still need to promote a required program through a focus on the benefits, by sharing what competitor organizations are

Challenge 9  •  59

doing, or by showing potential participants how they’ll be getting ahead of the curve by training on topics that are becoming more prominent societally. I’ve also found that some organizations have shied away from making training mandatory, but only for particular audiences, such as senior leadership or, in higher-education settings, faculty members. Their perceptions of the willingness of these populations to attend training is limiting. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve heard senior leaders and faculty members come up to me after a session and ask why more aren’t required at higher levels. “After all,” they tell me, “my background is in my subject area. I got promoted to running this department and I’ve never managed people before. I need training like this.” When you hear this, share the message upward to help dispel the misconception that you cannot compel people at these levels to attend training, and use these testimonials to bring credibility in your marketing to those groups. The bottom line, however, is that I prefer, whenever possible, to have people in my sessions who have chosen to be there, rather than forced.

Have a Senior-Level Champion Senior leaders can do more than mandate participation in a course: They can attend the training themselves and talk up their experience. (Even if they don’t talk it up, saying, “Even our CEO took this training,” goes a long way.) They can designate organizational leaders to show up at subsequent sessions to provide an introduction about its importance. They can integrate language from the program into their own meetings and processes. They can present completion stats by department in their senior leader meetings. And they can provide supportive quotes for newsletter articles and other marketing platforms. How do you get a senior-level champion? First off, as a new trainer, you may need to enlist a senior-level colleague from your team to talk peer-to-peer with another senior leader about your offerings. In the best-case scenario, you will be invited to these meetings and will have some face time with the senior leader to promote your program and to point out how much this leader’s endorsement will mean. You’ll want to position your program as a solution that can relieve pain points that the organization or employees are experiencing, and you’ll want to share which organizational metrics you hope to influence through the training (for more on training’s effectiveness on key metrics, see Challenge 25). Once the senior leader is on board, you can suggest what kind 60  •  Challenge 9

of involvement from them, or from a member of their team, will help ensure that the benefits you’ve just shared can be realized.

Provide Tangible Benefits The next several items on the list of motivators get at the tangible benefits an employee may receive for attending training, in the form of compensation, promotions, or recognition (the operative word being may, because you never want to imply that attending training guarantees you a raise or career advancement). Tangible benefits are only possible when an organization puts a high value on training. In organizations where the talent development function is highly regarded, and where training is very much related to organizational outcomes, completing a course or a curriculum can be a stepping-stone for job growth or movement. (For more on how to steer your organization toward a culture with a high value on professional development, see Challenge 6.)

Focus on What’s Important to Your Audience Other motivators near the bottom of the list are about personal benefits some individuals experience by attending training generally. Do you know what these are for your employees? And, if you do know, does your marketing focus on these benefits? For example, if having a chance to meet others from across the organization is a primary draw for people (and that is the one I hear most often), does your marketing stress these opportunities, as in these examples? • In this highly interactive program, you’ll work in small, self-directed groups, mixed by department, to solve work-related challenges. • You will leave this program with the names and contact information of all the other newly promoted supervisors, who can become sounding boards for you as you implement some of the strategies discussed during the program. • All participants in this leadership academy receive a mentor for the duration of the program, and a peer coach who can work with them during the program and after completion. Meeting others was so important at one organization where I worked that we started every session with a networking activity, even if it had nothing to do with the content being covered. And we marketed that with a tagline for all our courses: “Connect before content with our speed networking events at the start of every program.” The point is, if something matters to Challenge 9  •  61

your learners, make sure that it happens during your sessions and is featured in your marketing. Do you know what motivates your employees to attend training generally? And what stands in their way? If not, perhaps you can ask as part of a broader organizational training needs assessment, or on a casual, more anecdotal basis.

Reduce Logistical Barriers A few of the more logistical obstacles to attending training include not being able to get away from work, or that training is offered at a bad time or in a bad location. I’ve seen some very creative approaches to these logistical concerns: cross-training groups of employees at Redwood City so one group can provide coverage while the other attends training; offering the same training in a variety of formats, like the course on running a worthwhile meeting that Columbia University Irving Medical Center that is available either online or in person; or alternating the day of the week, the time of day, and the location of courses each time they are offered. You just have to keep experimenting with what times of day work at your organization. For instance, at CUIMC, we tried offering two classes a few weeks apart and also back-to-back on the same day (a morning session followed by an afternoon session) to see which people preferred. The main thing I discover when I do experiments of this type is that in numerical terms, the results of these experiments are often a wash. That is, no more people attend at one time versus another. However, different people attend at different times, so your overall reach is broader. The idea is to mix it up to get the widest swath of employees to attend. If being uncomfortable with the learning technology—such as webinar software or online learning—seems to be a demotivating factor for employees in your workplace, it’s often a good idea to offer some classes on how to use the technology, even if it’s only a 15-minute orientation immediately preceding the class (sort of like if you sign up for your first cycling class at a gym, you go a few minutes early so they can orient you to the bike, its gears, the cues, and so on). And some people will always prefer a face-to-face offering, or one they can complete at their desks or on their own time. Offer your programs using a variety of formal and informal formats.

Educate Through Marketing While it may be true that some people don’t need training right now (and a scan of performance review data can give you a good indication of whether 62  •  Challenge 9

your staff is generally where it needs to be), others may not be aware of a need to improve their performance. Your marketing then becomes a chance to educate people on what they don’t already know, and to teach them a little something about a particular subject area to get their minds open to learning even more. Use the questioning approach shown earlier in Table 9-1—or give them a self-assessment in your marketing—to help them get an accurate view of their current abilities.

Vary Your Approach Marketing is broader than just promoting a single incidence of training. You will need to market on three levels: a single class, a catalog of classes, and development as a whole. These levels are completely interrelated. Single events or initiatives are less likely to be successful when they are presented in an organization where development is not valued. When you promote a larger catalog of offerings, you promote each incidence of training as well. Once you know what motivators your marketing should appeal to, you need to consider how to get these messages out. If you have a communications team, they can help you to craft a plan—sort of a mini-campaign—for every course you create. They also often have access to email distribution lists that you don’t. In the absence of such a function, you may need to create a communications plan on your own. Tool 9-1 includes a sample for an online stress management program I recently introduced. It includes the following components: • Email to all employees • Monthly course mailing and course catalog • An article in the company e-newsletter • An announcement on the department’s website • Road shows • Monthly manager meeting guide • Video • Raffles and prizes As the example illustrates, you need to use a variety of methods geared toward a variety of audiences to build momentum and to create excitement around your offerings.

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Bottom Line Getting people to training isn’t just about sending enough emails; it’s knowing what motivates your audience to learn and tapping into those motivators.

Go Deeper “Addressing Motivation: Your Learners’” and “Addressing Motivation: Your Organization’s,” ch. 2 and 3 in Beyond Free Coffee and Donuts, by Sophie Oberstein The question isn’t why learners aren’t signing up for your programs, it’s why they might sign up in the first place, and how to align your marketing with those reasons. Chapter 2 addresses 11 learner motivators and five demotivators, while addressing some myths about why people sign up for training, including “people come for the free food” (hence the book title). Chapter 3 builds off the idea that when organizations are supportive of L&D, getting people to enroll is less of a struggle. Tips for how to move your organization toward a broader learning culture are described.

“Creating a Marketing Plan for Your Employee Training Program” a webinar by Stacey Moore Knowledge is power as a marketer; you need to know what your audience needs and what information is lacking. Have employees forgotten about the resources you offer, or is there a population of employees who don’t know you exist? Did learners come in contact with you through compliance training and think that is all you provide? BizLibrary’s Stacey Moore helps you identify these sorts of gaps and then provides suggestions and examples of how to fill them.

“Three Practical Ideas on How to Market Your Training Program” by Dilyana Hadjeva You’ll have to keep experimenting with variables (subject lines, calls to action, format, the day and time to send out your communications) to get to know how best to get your audience to respond. This blog post offers some creative and concrete suggestions of which variables to test and what to do with your results.

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Tool 9-1. Sample Communication Plan •

•

•

•

•

•

•

•

Email to all employees: Yes, email is a part of my overall marketing campaign, but it can’t be the entire plan. People’s inboxes are overflowing and email often gets lost. People need to hear messages in a variety of ways in order to retain them. When you do send emails, keep them short and to the point. And make sure that you are coordinating your emails with other departments who are advertising learning events to avoid inbox overload. Monthly course mailing and course catalog: In addition to an email about one specific course, we announce our course catalog monthly with short, bulletpointed emails that link to our courses, and we send out a postcard listing our offerings each quarter. Company e-newsletter: I partner closely with our organization’s communications team and alert them when new courses or programs are launching so they can assist with getting the word out via short articles and features. Website: Our departmental website also needs to have an announcement on it, perhaps as a banner. I like to also have a page for every certificate program or curriculum on the site, with FAQs, testimonials, and descriptions. Road shows: Depending on the course content, I do a circuit making announcements at departmental and organizational meetings, such as monthly HR network meetings, and meetings of the customer satisfaction committee or senior leadership team. Spread the news to all organizational levels. If you tell only managers, for example, they might not share the information, especially if it’s a busy time and they don’t know how they can afford to let someone go to training. Your HR rep is often too busy to disseminate the information or to follow up. Monthly manager meeting guides: We send out a one-page outline each month on a training topic that managers can conduct in five minutes or less during a regular staff meeting. The topic of the guide for the month I was promoting this stress management program was relieving stress. Video: While filming senior leaders for an opening segment for the course, I also asked them to describe their support for the program on camera and used this one-minute promotional video on the website, during road shows, and in an email. Raffles and prizes: While I’d prefer that people sign up for training because it is timely and relevant, I do sometimes resort to raffles for those who complete a new program in its first month (or I do quarterly raffles of everyone who has completed an online training program). I’ve also used giveaways or branded items for those who sign up in a certain timeframe. For this course, we gave away stress balls to the first 50 people who signed up. The truth is, when those 50 people left those branded stress balls on their desks, it helped get the word out about the program more broadly (and reminded participants of the program once they were back at work, thus keeping the content alive for these individuals). While we didn’t do it for our stress reduction program, gamification efforts also can help, in which participants rack up points and levels for every course they take, unlocking rewards and special access (such as a breakfast with a senior leader for all those who completed a dozen programs this year).

Challenge 9  •  65

10

Challenge:

No one is showing up to my courses

Description Just because people have signed up to attend your training doesn’t mean that they will actually show up. Or that, even if they do show up, they will show up fully. Training can appear to be a low-priority activity when there is a lack of follow-through on the participant’s part, or when their commitment to attend is flimsy.

Solutions Here’s how to respond when your programs are often under-attended.

Establish Consequences for Noncompletion or Failure to Show Up The previous challenge talked about the carrots to entice people to training events. But sometimes it takes a stick to ensure follow-though. Do you have established, credible consequences when participants sign up and don’t attend some—or all—of your training sessions? Some organizations choose to institute policies that penalize departments—usually financially—if those who enrolled in training do not successfully complete it. Others find that simply reporting the number of no-shows to department heads and managers on a regular basis—while describing the negative impacts to the learning community—adequately helps to combat this problem. A few policies that can be helpful include: Credit for Completion To combat the problem of participants who arrive too late, leave too early, or miss the bulk of the training to respond to emergencies outside the training room, L&D functions can establish a cutoff point, after which individuals will not receive credit for course completion. This matters more if the course is mandatory and noncompletion means they’d need to come back and retake

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it or when the course fee will not be refunded. Having such a policy takes some of the onus off of you when you have to tell someone who informs you they have to leave a 90-minute class a half hour early, “I understand you have some competing priorities. Unfortunately, our department policy is that people must attend at least 75 percent of a course to receive completion credit, because it’s very disruptive to your learning—and to the rest of the participants’—when people are in and out of our sessions.” Sometimes, a participant may respond, “But I took the train to get here from far away and work released me for the morning. I have to complete the class today.” In these cases, you can determine what you want to do. Course Fees Charging a fee for your courses can also help to ensure participants actually show up. Tom Sontag, executive director of HR learning and education, HR communications, and quality of work-life programs at the University of Pennsylvania, says, “We charge a nominal fee for nearly all training events. The fee schedule was instituted to get people to attend training. The thought was that if they had some ‘skin in the game,’ they would value training enough to attend. My observation overall is that this has been correct.” On the flip side, some organizations don’t get involved in course fees because, in essence, this is just moving money from one department’s budget to another, and all of the money belongs to the organization. In others, the training department is already funded by other departments, and charging for courses on top of that contribution wouldn’t go over well. In these cases, fees can be just enough to recoup costs for materials, external facilitators or coaches, and refreshments. No-Show and Late-Cancellation Fees Last-minute cancellations and no-shows are problems that are not specific to new trainers! I’ve seen no-show rates for organizational training as high as 50 percent. Late cancellations mean we cancel classes at the last minute, which can be an inconvenience for everyone, especially when travel or coverage is involved. Having all those empty seats, especially in a course where there is a waiting list, is demoralizing. Having fewer people than you planned for can also affect the ability to conduct planned interactive activities. The decision of whether to cancel a class is a tough one, especially as people tend to sign up for courses on the day you announce them and in the Challenge 10  •  67

last 24 hours before the class is supposed to happen. Do you run the class as scheduled when you are at, or just under, the minimum required to attend, assuming a few more will enroll at the last moment? The answer depends on several factors, including your usual no-show rate, whether you’ve canceled the course before, how urgent the content is, who is signed up (their organizational level and where they are coming from), whether the course is a pre-requisite for others, and so on. As a general rule, I find that if you are at, or under, the minimum needed, the number of last-minute sign-ups will be offset by the number of no-shows, so I cancel anyway. This points to the importance of setting realistic minimum numbers to achieve the objectives of each course you will offer. Deadlines for enrollment are helpful in making these decisions, too, because they can be set to allow enough time to notify those making plans to get to the training if you will be canceling, and give you a reason to reach back out to people with messages like, “The deadline for registration is coming up.” Establishing policies for late cancellations and no-shows can increase the number of “butts in seats.” Just be careful that your policy doesn’t backfire so that you end up with the wrong butts in the seats, which can negatively affect the learning environment. (That is, to avoid a large penalty, departments send a random person to the program when the enrollee is unable to attend at the last moment, but the person sent is not in your target audience). In the event you have that opportunity to create or amend policies like this, here is a sample you might propose (Table 10-1). Table 10-1. Cancellation and No-Show Policy A large number of seats in our training programs have been left empty because of late cancellations and no-shows. To combat this underutilization, we are instituting this policy: • Training registrants must cancel their enrollment at least two business days prior to the date of a class. If registrants fail to cancel two business days in advance, or are a no-show, then their departments will incur a $100 cancellation fee. • There will be no exceptions to the policy (for example, even if employees are legitimately sick, need to attend an important meeting, or have another reason). • Last-minute substitute participants will be accepted provided that they are in the same department and at the same level as the registrant who is unable to attend.

The “no exceptions” clause may sound harsh, but you don’t want to be in the business of judging one excuse over another. The only exception to “no exceptions” is when a person is absent because of a disability covered by

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the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA); otherwise, you want to universally apply the rule and not have to determine whether someone’s absence is due to a valid reason or not. You also need to figure out the logistics of collecting any fees. Will people give you their account numbers when they enroll, and you will charge them only if they fail to attend? Will you send out monthly invoices to departments? And do you have the administrative capacity to handle that sort of tracking and billing? If you choose to institute any of these policies, make sure they are widely communicated—that is, they are included on every course description and course confirmation message, on your website, and in your learning management system.

Start the Course Upon Enrollment Oftentimes, once people enroll in your courses, your communication with them ends until the day you see them in your session. Maybe you send out a reminder email (or three) to ensure they remember the date, time, and place of the course, but this is not enough. Anticipation theory states that learners have more heightened attention and emotion before an experience than afterward. Your marketing should capitalize on this initial enthusiasm. Additionally, getting buy-in from the supervisors of those who enroll in your programs not only helps ensure employees show up, but has also been shown to be positively correlated to application of training after the fact. The more of a connection you can build with participants prior to the start of the session, the more they are compelled to attend. Here’s what you can do: • Send a reasonable amount of relevant, purposeful materials to enrollees in the weeks leading up to the training. For example, you can share a current newspaper headline related to the topic, or offer a preview of a strategy they will be able to use after the training. Send “teasers” like intriguing facts, tips, or models that show your learners the course will add value. Send puzzles whose answers you will reveal in your session. • Send an email from a senior leader after they enroll indicating the course is valued by the organization. • Assigning pre-work can help to ensure that those who sign up show up. If they’ve already put in some effort for the course, they’ll be more inclined to complete it (for more on pre-work, see Challenge 17).

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•

•

•

•

Send three to five questions immediately upon enrollment that help them articulate the value of the course for themselves. As they reflect on its value, they psychologically buy in. Questions might include: ° What made you sign up for this training? ° Why does your manager want you to attend this program? ° How might this training help you in your job? ° What are the most important things you want to get out of this program? ° How might this program boost your individual contribution to your team? Have them submit their questions about the topic to you in advance of the session. That way they have a stake in attending because they know their own questions will be addressed—and you have the ability to tweak the course to meet their needs. Send out physical items related to course content—or just a coursebranded item, like a water bottle or a pen. Like the companies that send you a small gift, or a dime in the mail, people feel indebted to those who have already given them something. They feel they owe it to you to show up. For some courses, you may wish to start an online discussion group or social-learning space ahead of the course. You can ask participants to post an introduction, or to respond to a question there in advance of the session. These connections to other participants not only increase the likelihood of them showing up, but mean that they show up already engaged with others.

Generate Manager Buy-In The key factor in whether participants will actually show up—and whether they will pay attention when they are there—is when supervisors of members of the target audience are on board. This could mean they have been involved in the analysis or design process that you undertook to create the course, or it could mean that you offered some sort of orientation or overview of the program to managers before you offered it to target audience members. For example, at Weight Watchers (now WW), we did an abbreviated version of our training programs at national manager meetings on a quarterly basis so they could see and experience the content before we marketed it to their employees (and so

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that everyone in the field would end up with the same vocabulary). For more involved programs, like leadership development courses that spanned several sessions over several months, I’ve hosted breakfast, or wine and cheese, gatherings for managers in which we provided an overview of the entire program and asked them to encourage their employees to apply, and I’ve invited them to the kickoff and graduation of these programs. At a minimum, most of my courses entail sending out a “manager cheat sheet” to supervisors of everyone who enrolls (Tool 10-1). A learning contract (Tool 10-2) helps get the manager and employee talking about the program, and the purpose of sending the employee to the program, prior to their attendance. Getting supervisor buy-in helps ensure not only that their employees enroll in, and show up for, training, but also that they will have opportunities to apply their learning when they are back at work, which contributes greatly to learning being “sticky” (Challenge 22) and participants retaining the information.

Get Zen About It Even if you implement every strategy in this challenge, you will host learning events that are under-attended. In the past, I got upset when this happened: I would question whether I’d done enough to interest people. I’d lament all the effort that went into the program—and the great instruction we’d lined up—that was being shared with only a few people. And I’d get embarrassed in front of senior leaders who had taken the time to show up. And then one of those senior leaders said something to me that I’ve remembered any time this has happened since. When I was apologizing for the low turnout to my boss’s boss, he said, “There may not be many people here, but the people who are here are here, and that makes them the right people to be here.” Deep, huh? And I’ve found it to be a helpful perspective.

Bottom Line Use carrot or stick approaches to garner buy-in from enrollees, and from their managers, to help ensure they show up fully to your training events.

Go Deeper “Building the Campaign,” ch. 5 in Beyond Free Coffee and Donuts, by Sophie Oberstein It requires a concentrated effort to convert learner motivation into action—in this case, the action is actively showing up for training: That is your marketing campaign. This chapter

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includes seven key components that should be considered in any marketing plan, as well as 50 ways to market your training offerings.

“Deliver More Value in Your Instructor-Led Trainings,” a webcast by Sam Cauthen This terrific webcast by the COO of Poll Everywhere provides tips for capitalizing on anticipation theory through expectation setting for learners, engagement of direct managers, and building curiosity and anticipation so that your learners show up—and show up ready to learn.

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Tool 10-1. Manager Cheat Sheet Supervisor’s Overview: CRITICAL THINKING Your employee, ______________________________, has enrolled in the course listed above. This overview is intended to help you and your employee reap the most benefit from this investment in their development. If you have any questions about this course, please get in touch with me. Thank you for releasing your employee for this training.

* * * Course Objectives • •

Define critical thinking, why we need it, and how our thinking can be flawed Practice strategies for critical thinking and decision making

Topics covered What is critical thinking? (It’s not finding flaws; it’s the art of ensuring that you use the best thinking you are capable of in any set of circumstances) • Why do we need critical-thinking skills? • How is our thinking flawed? How are people clouding our thinking? • Strategies and practice in critical thinking: Determine the rationale, ask questions, consider multiple perspectives, question whether flaws in thinking are present, be reasonable (change your mind when there is compelling reason to), approach each scenario as different, be able to explain your process or methodology • Tips and practice in decision making: Create buy-in, input not consensus, 10-1010, sleep on it, flagpole it • Plus the “Top 12 Questions for Success,” DeBono’s Six Hats, “Wake Up Your Mind,” and more! •

General tips to support your employees’ learning before, during, and after a training program • Review the topics and objectives above prior to sending the employee to training. Discuss what you hope they will get out of the program. • Discuss how the topics and objectives listed relate to the employee’s job or performance goals. • Release the employee to attend the session and encourage them to attend even if last-minute issues flare up. • Use the discussion questions or application activities below when the employee returns from the session. • Allow the employee to share what they learned at the training with you or your larger team soon after the session, whether this is a written summary or a brief presentation.

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Tool 10-1. Manager Cheat Sheet (cont.) Discussion questions What’s one thing you want to remember from this session? What did you find most interesting about the training? What surprised you? • Which critical-thinking or decision-making strategies that you learned do you want to apply on the job? How can I help you to do that?What sort of requests do you receive and what questions might you ask the next time you get a request like this? • Which perspective do you usually stand in? How can you move out of that perspective to see other sides of the issue? •

Activities to apply what was learned at this session When you next have to make a tough decision, walk the employee through your decision-making methodology, or bring your decision to the employee and ask them how concepts from the session would apply to the decision at hand • Point out when the employee’s thinking is flawed from thinking too quickly, making assumptions, baggage, answering the wrong question, and so on. • Have the employee teach you the “Wake Your Mind Up” model and hold each other accountable for using it • Keep your teams’ brain muscles sharp using puzzles and brain teasers as warmups at staff meetings •

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Tool 10-2. Learning Contract To Be Completed By the Employee and Their Manager Prior to Training You are about to participate in a developmental opportunity. This is an investment on your part, as well as on the part of your work team (who will fill in for you during your training) and for the organization that is sponsoring you. To make the most of this investment, you and your manager should complete this content prior to your attendance. Developmental Opportunity: __________________________________ Date: __________________________________

Objectives and goals of the program: (Cut and paste from the course description)

What prompted you to register for this opportunity? What is the business reason for your participation? What are your personal objectives?

What will you do with the skill when you return to the workplace?

How will you share what you learn with your colleagues?

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s e c r u o s e R f o

3 N O I T SEC

Lack

The Problem “I’m the entire training function for our organization is one person. I often find myself stretched in multiple directions with no one to bounce ideas off of.” “I have to produce stellar training on a shoestring budget.” “We work so well with a small budget that we can’t get traction to increase it. For instance, getting money to automate our processes is a struggle. Our organization says, ‘We hear that it takes you 10 hours a week to do this manually, and you’re good at doing it, so the manual process isn’t broken and there’s no need to fix it.’”

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What’s Happening Here? Depending upon the organization in which you’re working, your training team can be large—with individuals assuming specialized roles like registrar, LMS administrator, measurement specialist, instructional designer, or internal consultant—or you can be one of just a couple of people who are performing all these functions and more. Budgets for training can also be large or incredibly small. As a support function in the organization, L&D is often given the suggestion to give back, even when it starts out with a larger budget, because other groups need the funding. A lack of resources is often the reality of a trainer’s life. We are often brought in to help with organizational initiatives late in the game, when we have little time to develop meaningful programming. Recently, I talked to a new trainer tasked with turning all of his department’s existing training programs into documentation by the end of the week! Many trainers belong to teams of one, two, or three members supporting employee populations in the thousands and often can’t assist organizations as they’d like to due to lack of capacity. A lack of funds manifests in small ways—like not being able to serve snacks or coffee during our classroom offerings or to provide participant materials in folders or binders—and in large ones, like not being able to bring in an external vendor or to invest in a comprehensive learning management system. The good news? As the adage goes, “Constraint fosters creativity.” And this was certainly the case when I was originating the role of director of employee development for Redwood City, where I was not just the director, but the entire training department. Although I was not new to the field when I was in that role, new trainers can easily adapt or employ a few of the things I did during my time. For instance, I created a peer-coaching program to enhance the performance of those being coached while increasing the coaching skills of individuals across the organization. I created a team to conduct an organizational needs assessment made up of local graduate students, two pro bono consultants from the local ATD chapter, and an individual from another department who was interested in learning more about the field. Local community college professors came and taught Spanish classes after work to our employees, and, for a fee, to community residents, whose tuition paid for the professor to come. I partnered with members of the IT department to put aside one day a month to provide one-on-one computer training, by appointment, at employees’ desks. Even though I was the sole person at the city with

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organizational L&D as my primary responsibility, I could not have done it alone, so started both an internal employee development committee, made up of individuals from every department who had a stake in training, and an external council composed of individuals in training roles at city agencies up and down the peninsula. Among other things, these groups collected data across agencies and shared the cost of bringing in external vendors. I not only produced a robust catalog of training opportunities on a minimal budget, but I also brought in money to our human resources organization by helping to establish an HR consulting service that provided HR functions, including training, to other organizations for a fee. The other good news? Trainers are extremely willing to share resources, lessons learned, materials created, and so on. It’s what I’ve set out to do with this book. Building a network of trainers was invaluable early in my career— and to this day. My last two roles were at universities, both of which belonged to the Ivy Plus network. Within Ivy Plus, there is a group of learning and development professionals from universities across the country that meets annually and bounces ideas off of one another through an email distribution list for the remainder of the year. The point here is that by the nature of our roles, L&D folks are all about helping others to grow and develop, and want that for one another, too.

The Challenges When resources are lacking, look to these challenges for some solutions: Challenge 11. I have no budget for training...........................................................81 Challenge 12. I’m a one-person department..........................................................88 Challenge 13. I’ve been asked to bring in a consultant, and I’ve never had to find one before...............................................................97 Challenge 14. There’s no professional development for me............................. 103

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11

Challenge:

I have no budget for training

Description Budgets for training, especially in lean times, can be modest. Whether you’re in an organization where training and learning and development activities are highly valued or not, your department or team is generally a support function. For better or worse, most organizations spend less on their infrastructure than they do on visible, outward-facing departments and initiatives. Trainers need to figure out ways to do more with a tight budget.

Solutions Attack your budget woes on two fronts: making do with what you can get, and knowing how to advocate for more. Here’s how you might approach both battles.

Prioritize Spending The best and perhaps most self-explanatory solution is to simply make sound financial decisions that wring the most out of your budget and show the organization that you are fiscally responsible. Focus your spending on what will have the most impact on the organization. How do you know what that is? By conducting an organizational needs assessment. An organizational needs assessment is like an analysis, but is usually kicked off by the L&D function itself, not in response to a training request, and is focused on determining business needs and how to prioritize addressing them as a function. Table 11-1 indicates whom you might speak to during a needs assessment and what kinds of questions you might ask to make sure you are investing in the areas that will give the biggest bang for your buck.

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Table 11-1. Advice for Conducting a Needs Assessment Sources in a Needs Assessment

• • • • • • • • • • • •

Senior leaders Human resource business partners Union representatives Customers Global site directors Prior participants in existing training programs Trends in performance review data across teams or organizations Trends on customer service or satisfaction surveys Trends in requests for coaching in the prior year Training topics requested in the past year Subject of most calls to help desk or service line Competitors’ training offerings

Sample Questions During a Needs Assessment • • •

• •

•

• • •

What gaps are you noticing when internal candidates apply for jobs? What gaps have been identified in performance reviews in your area? What is coming down the pike, and what skill sets will be needed to address whatever it is? What sets star performers apart from average employees? What skills are needed now, or will be in the future, to get their and your work done? Has any group of employees been excluded from prior training initiatives? What have been the obstacles to professional development? What informal training or on-the-job learning is happening now? For past participants: What did you learn that you used? What didn’t you use? What didn’t we cover that we should have?

Evaluate spending decisions as a finance director might. For instance, when you have 10 people who need training, should you send them out to a public offering, or provide that training in-house? A finance director will be doing a cost comparison of the two options: If the public offering is $3,000 per person ($30,000 for all 10 people), it is probably cheaper to bring someone in. Should your training efforts address the largest skill gap, or the most critical skill? A finance director is probably going to steer you toward the most critical skill. If 75 percent of employees need presentation skills, but 8 percent of senior leaders don’t know how to do strategic planning for the organization, that 8 percent matters more and is, therefore, a better use of funds. How about the skill affecting the largest number of employees or the most critical employees? How your finance director looks at the situation will vary depending on your organization, and on where your organization is at a given moment. Caroline Yost was involved in training decisions for a small startup and recognized that when the company was small, sending one employee to

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a class for $1,500 made sense; once it had more employees working for it and asking for training, that option was no longer affordable. Thinking like a finance director isn’t the only lens through which to view your spending decisions. An L&D lens can identify issues like whether providing a certain training in-house will have less value than sending learners to a public offering, where they will be exposed to a broader set of best practices and where they might make some invaluable connections through networking.

Get Rid of One-Size-Fits-All Approaches The last thing you want to do when budgets are limited is to waste money. Yet, training departments do this all the time when they roll out training to an entire organization, and even sometimes with their open enrollment offerings. The problem with rolling out a brand-new training to all employees at once? Some won’t need the material for their particular jobs, or might not need it for several months to years, or might already know it. If employees are taking a course now that they will have no opportunity to apply on the job, you are wasting money. Providing training to employees who have already mastered the content is, again, a waste (not just of financial resources, but also of time). Your offerings should include test-out options wherever possible. Even specialized open enrollment courses that employees choose for themselves may not be based on current or future business needs, and thus might not be a good option in lean times.

Appeal to Other Departments With Budgets to Become Sponsors While training’s budget may be small, other departments within the organization who are more flush might have some imminent training needs. Align with these departments to provide training. See if they will become sponsors for other departments by donating rooms, food, or materials; by paying three-quarters of the cost of an external vendor; or by providing a quarter of the seats in their training programs to folks from other areas of the organization. That is, design the training they want, but ask them to make it more widely available.

Share Costs With Another Organization Similar to asking internal departments to help subsidize your training, think about whether you can ask other external organizations or departments to

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share costs with you. I have been at organizations that have pooled their resources with another organization to have vendors create online or classroom learning for both organizations at once. I’ve had organizations trade training facilitators. I’ve seen organizations share design resources based on one or the other’s capacity in a given moment. I co-created a job rotation program with another agency, sharing not only the workload, but also the number and type of rotations possible. And I’ve worked at corporations where other companies donated materials, products, or services for training purposes in the form of a sponsor in exchange for exposure to the training audience. For instance, a print shop produced the posters for a training program with their logo in the corner, and a bank provided lunch during the orientation of a new manager rotation program in exchange for presenting a 15-minute module on sound investment practices. Are there companies that you could partner with in this space?

Explore Alternative Formats Low-tech options may seem just that—low tech—but they’re also often cheap. Printed materials in lieu of classroom training are an example of low tech. At Weight Watchers, I created a meeting observation workbook that new meeting leaders took with them to four different meetings. The workbook suggested what questions to ask staff at that meeting site and what to look for during the meeting, with assessment questions about each visit at the end. The observation workbooks were relatively cheap, but the learning was rich. Even some tech-based options aren’t especially costly. These days, people are using their phones to film subject matter experts talking for three to five minutes on a particular topic and sending those YouTube-style instructional videos around by email. For example, Maggie Romanovich, director of learning and development at Constellation Brands, asked for a report on the topics their SMEs were spending time addressing versus doing their everyday work, reassigned these as topics to the teams who handled them, bought $65 worth of video-editing software, and made videos of staff walking through the topics in question. Romanovich says, “We created a learning library with three hours of content on demand. This was not only an inexpensive option; it saved our SMEs the time it takes to respond to these most frequent requests.” In a January/February 2020 article in Harvard Business Review, “The Transformer CLO,” Abbie Lundberg and George Westerman reported on how some senior learning officers at large companies are posing leadership questions to 84  •  Challenge 11

managers during the day through mobile apps or text messages. I have seen other organizations that use mobile apps for training—for example, sending a problem case to staff on their phones and asking them to respond that day by clicking the button next to their chosen resolution to the case. Other organizations ask employees to record themselves immediately after a certain type of customer interaction, responding to two questions about that interaction. Feedback comes from their manager back to their phones, usually the same day.

Learn How to Successfully Request Money If you will be speaking to a financial person, speak in their terms. Yost suggests developing a financial vocabulary addressing such topics as who are attendees? Based on their salaries, what does an hour of their time cost? What is the cost of the course? If it’s free, build out a proposal that includes missed work time. “Provide a business case,” she suggests. “Be prepared to answer: How will this training drive the business forward, or lower attrition rates, or enhance company morale, employer branding, and talent acquisition. More and more, professional development opportunities make you an employer of choice.” When requesting more budget or resources: • Emphasize pain points that your solution would solve that resonate with decision makers. For instance, if you wanted a learning management system, you might not want to emphasize that it would help you by automating class registration. From the decision makers’ point of view, whatever you’re doing now—as grueling a process as that might be—people are getting registered for classes. That might not be as compelling an argument as saying that manually entering reporting data requires 20 hours per week of an administrator’s time, which translates to almost $19,000 per year, and keeps the administrator from doing other, more valuable activities. • Provide two to three options, one of which is doing nothing, and the financial consequences of each. • Provide the best short- and long-term cost estimates you can, including one-time and ongoing fees, such as maintenance or license renewals. • Be clear about how your solution or action will benefit the organization. Will it solve a problem, cut costs, increase return on investment, decrease turnover, or help you attract more and better candidates? Lianabel Oliver Bigas, author of the TD at Work “Preparing and Defending Your Training Budget” (2017), advises, “As you go Challenge 11  •  85

•

•

•

through the budgeting process, do not lose sight of your primary goal: To obtain the resources required to support the organization’s business needs for the next fiscal year.” Be prepared to provide data about the current workload of yourself and your team. When you ask for more money for contractors, for example, you are likely to be asked, “How busy are your people currently? And what are they busy doing?” Have a ready response. Be prepared to negotiate. The budget review process is usually a multistep endeavor that will require you to explain and defend your budget to multiple levels of management. Each new review will scrutinize and question it further, which may result in your requested budget getting smaller as the process continues. If you did not pad your budget, be sure to explain this to reviewers at every stage. Let them know that each cut to the proposed budget will translate to a cut in services your team can provide. Report on Level 3 and 4 evaluation results (see challenge 25). Show how your training resulted in money saved, or a reduction in errors, to garner more spending in this area.

Maintain a Positive Attitude It may be a natural reaction to feel like the stepchild when other departments are getting funding and you are not. Yet, you don’t want to come off in meetings with senior leadership as bitter or angry that you are not able to do all that you want due to lack of financial resources. Instead, act positive. Show the organization how much you can accomplish with a limited budget and help them imagine what you can do with more money to spend.

Bottom Line It takes some creativity, and some difficult choices, to produce results on a shoestring budget—and it’s totally possible.

Go Deeper “Solo Flyer: Self-Directed Learning,” ch. 2 in Employee Development on a Shoestring, by Halelly Azulay Self-directed learning is just one of the cost-effective approaches to learning in this commonsense book. This chapter details how learning completed individually works, how it benefits the learner and the organization, as well as its downsides, implementation tips, and how to track results.

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“Preparing and Defending Your Training Budget” by Lianabel Oliver-Bigas This TD at Work issue includes everything you need to prepare a budget for your training function, from questions and factors to consider to the things you’ll need to have or say during the budget review process. A must-read if you have never before been through a budget review cycle.

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12

Challenge:

I’m a one-person department

Description The Association for Talent Development’s 2019 State of the Industry report indicated that the average number of employees per L&D staff member in 2018 was 350, a number that has been slightly increasing since 2013, and up from 307 in 2017. It is often the case that smaller learning teams of one to three people are responsible for more than their share of learners in organizations.

Solutions The most important thing when you work alone or on a small team is, don’t try to do it all yourself. So who can help you? Here are some suggestions.

Create a Training Advisory Board This might be an informal group of people who do this work in different organizations that you can turn to for suggestions or resource requests. Or, it can be a more formal committee of like-minded individuals, such as those responsible for training in each department within your organization.

Creatively Supplement Your Staff Laura Scott, director of the Center for Leadership & Organizational Change at the University of Maryland, College Park, has brought on several part-time consultants (I’m one of them), job-sharing employees, and retirees to supplement the few full-time employees on her team, whose mission is to support the university and its people in doing their best work by partnering to solve problems and develop possibilities. This staffing model has not only expanded her team and what it’s capable of, but has created jobs that are meaningful and flexible, and that, in the case of shared employees, lets them develop new and desired skills. Here are two ways she’s done it: • “Buy-out” model: “Everyone does some amount of work below their pay grade,” Scott explains. “When we’ve identified a person who

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already works at the university and who wants to work with us, we’ve asked if their managers were open to rearranging their jobs so that they are still responsible for the highest-level tasks on their plates. They then work for their department 50 percent of the time doing those tasks, and 50 percent of the time they work for us as trainers, coaches, and internal consultants. We pay half their salary back to their department, which can hire graduate assistants or offer ‘overload’ payments to other employees to take on additional tasks, which works particularly well when there are new tasks that allow these other employees to expand their abilities. This allows our job-sharing partners to keep a foot in what they really do and get a new skill set.” • Peer consulting network: Scott provided intensive weeklong training for individuals across the university in process consultation and then sent them out in pairs to do intake and consulting projects. “These volunteer consultants brought sophisticated process improvement skills back to their own departments, and this university-wide consulting work allowed these employees to fulfill their obligation of service to the Maryland community, which we ask of all employees.” In addition to Scott’s innovative techniques, you can: • Borrow from other departments, like I did at Redwood City when I asked IT team members if they would provide one-on-one training at employees’ desks one day per month if I publicized the opportunity and set up the appointments. • Have experienced people onboard newer ones to free up time that a trainer would have spent doing onboarding. • Encourage people to write articles for your online platform. For example, ask an employee with exceptional time management skills to pen a piece on managing time well. • Utilize peer teaching. This model provides learning opportunities when and where they’re needed, often from colleagues who live the topic every day. For example, DBS Bank sets aside a day in which 45-minute sessions take place covering technical subjects, business topics, and “softer” subjects taught by internal SMEs, whose range in seniority helps promote a culture in which expertise is valued over rank. Many organizations require those employees sent to conferences or training events to share what they learned upon their return.

Challenge 12  •  89

Provide managers with tools so they can develop their direct reports during their regular team interactions, like my monthly manager meeting guides (see a sample in Tool 12-1 at the end of this challenge). • Bring back retirees. There are trade-offs in hiring retirees with relevant or adjacent experience on a part-time basis. On the plus side, they’re already familiar with the organization and its culture. On the less positive side, they could be stuck in an old way of doing things, or they may have left the organization with a less-than-rosy view of certain people or processes there. • Utilize students, whether graduate, undergraduate, MBAs, or highschool aged, as interns. There’s something meaningful you can ask students at all levels to complete for you. Remember, though, that interns sign on for developmental opportunities, not grunt work. • Temporary help might be possible for some of that grunt work, like a backlog of data entry, catering requests, scheduling, registration reporting, or learning records management. • Include in some executives’ or senior leaders’ performance assessment that they donate a certain number of training hours each quarter. Many consulting companies ask partners to facilitate new manager or new partner training, for example. What made Scott, and others who creatively supplement their small L&D teams, so successful? • Identifying people who will be a good fit. Often, the people you will partner with are those who self-identify. They might come to you to tell you they are looking to branch into the L&D field and ask how they can get involved. Or they might tell you they are bored with their job and are looking for a new challenge. More often, you might notice them. They are people you’ve worked with on a project, or who’ve been superstars in training programs where they were participants. Some may come to you during an organizational change or other major initiative where each department needs to lend a change agent or representative. • Just getting them in the door. Once you meet a person whose background and personality bring attributes you’re looking for, just sign them up, even if you don’t know exactly how you will use them. Scott explains, “You have to let go of control. Ask them, ‘What do you •

90  •  Challenge 12

•

•

•

•

want to do?’ And then, if what they’re excited about fits in to what the organization is excited about, or in need of, let them do it.” Learning to tolerate less than perfect. Not everyone you will partner with is going to come from a training background, or have all the skills you need, ready to use. That’s often why they want to work with you. As such, you need to have tolerance for people learning how to train on the job. While they should have some minimum qualifications (such as knowledge of the subject, credibility with the target audience, good presentation skills, or success in a role that requires a lot of influence without authority), many of them will need to learn the nuances of L&D as they do it. Making them feel a part of the team. It isn’t sustainable to send your partners out to train on behalf of your team and not include them on your team. Your messages and your brand will be diluted. You must create a space where these partners want to hang out with you; you must capitalize on what motivates them, including ongoing professional development, a respite from their usual work, being with like-minded people (like those who believe in people development), or a chance to bond with other people at the organization. To create this sort of space for her peer consulting network, for instance, Scott hosted monthly professional development lunches during which she could try out new things she was working on for a real pilot audience. Providing a solid train-the-trainer course, when needed. In addition to a tolerance for their learning on the job, you might invest in some formal training for those helping out your team, like a train-thetrainer course on basic design or facilitation skills. If they are going to deliver a certain program, you may have to ease them into it: Let them observe the program as a participant and then as a facilitator, let them co-facilitate, and finally, unleash them. Helping their managers understand the value. Departments often don’t want to give good people up as trainers. You will need to convince them that the individuals they are loaning you will acquire skills that will also serve their “home team.” Show departmental leaders the ATD Talent Development Capability Model so they have a better idea of which areas their star employees will be exposed to.

Challenge 12  •  91

Ask these managers what skills they want the person they are loaning your team to develop, and create a growth plan to help ensure the person is working on those. And, it might not hurt to remind departmental leaders that employees who feel they aren’t being fully utilized or challenged become disengaged and often seek other jobs. Sometimes giving these employees this opportunity to contribute in a new way can keep them around for longer.

Tap Into Other People in the Organization Maybe you can’t supplement your staff in the ways I’ve described. There are still those across the organization who can help you in their existing capacities (Table 12-1).

Use AI There are some cool 21st-century tools that can also expand your capacity as a solo practitioner. For example, certain artificial intelligence (AI) programs on the market can provide feedback that used to require a human. PowerPoint has an AI-powered assistant that will appear during a rehearsal mode and provide feedback on a presentation, including tips on pacing, filler words, muttering, or swearing. Other AI programs can offer basic coaching as learners respond to questions or role play.

Utilize an LMS Depending on the size of your company, it is not feasible to do manual record keeping when you are a department of one. Or rather, it is, if that is to be a major component of your work. If you are operating alone and do not have a learning management system, you will, sooner or later, wish to advocate for one. In a 2010 report for the Learning Guild by Patti Shank, the top five reasons for bringing in an LMS were implementing e-learning, automating reporting and tracking, measuring and reporting on training offerings and delivery, ensuring employee compliance with mandated training programs and industry regulatory requirements, and better access to and use of data. Imagine what the departments seeking an LMS could be doing instead of these functions.

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Table 12-1. People Resources During the Instructional Design Process Before Training Subject matter experts

• •

Managers

•

•

•

Business leaders

•

• • •

During Training

Provide information regarding content Often review design documents or content

•

Provide information regarding learners, tasks, or content May review design documents or content Establish learning contracts with employees they will send to training

•

Provide business perspective during solution design Provide funding and resources Sponsor or market the solution Remove barriers to success

•

•

•

• •

•

•

After Training

Help correct course related to content May be on hand to answer work-related questions

•

Support needed edits as content shifts

Ensure coverage, allowing learners to attend course Budget for training for team members Often participate in the program to establish a common vocabulary with the team being trained

•

Support learner application and follow up on the job Hold employees accountable for ongoing development

Provide support (e.g., guest speaking, coaching, or mentoring) Intervene with unexpected organizational issues Participate in the program and talk up the experience

•

•

•

Review evaluation results Decide next steps

Legal team

•

Review documents

Project managers

•

Create timelines and roll-out plan Collaborate with internal and external stakeholders and vendors

•

Provide project management support for evaluation plan

Create and execute a marketing and communications plan Facilitate translation

•

May assist sharing evaluation results or examples of application

•

Communications specialists

•

•

Graphic designers

•

•

Technology experts

• • •

May attend to ensure compliance

Create look and feel of course materials, web, and slide templates. Provide graphic design support Provide technology design and setup May produce online learning May administer LMS

•

Provide technology, LMS, or registration support

Source: Adapted from Rothwell et al. (2016). Challenge 12  •  93

A few things to consider when making an LMS decision: • Think of the decision about which features you’d like in an LMS as you would a decision about which health insurance to choose. Should you add a vision plan? That depends on whether you’ll need new glasses this year. Should you add a healthcare spending account, or drug prescription plan? Do you think you will use it? The same thinking can be applied to your choice of LMS. Make sure you know what you will be using it for: to track compliance training? To aggressively add online courses and cut travel costs? For succession planning? Consider your purpose, as well as the number of courses you have in your catalog, and the number of employees and departments in your organization, to select a package that fits your needs—not more or less than you need. • Also consider what your organization is already using. I worked at one company that had more than 14 different LMSs that didn’t speak to one another. This was costly for the organization, and unwieldy for users. If another part of your organization uses an LMS that would fit your needs, there are very few reasons not to work with a different vendor. • Will your LMS be able to pull employee data from other HR information systems so that, for instance, managers can use it to monitor and support their team’s development? • Will you use a hosted, cloud-based, or internal solution? Hosted and cloud-based solutions are maintained by the provider and are less costly, but an internal solution addresses security issues for handling sensitive information. However, if you are not hosted, you also don’t get automatic system updates and have to perform these processes yourself. • Does your LMS have the customer support you—and your users— will need? If not, LMS help desk will become part of your job description. Or, you might need organizational backing to add LMS support to the support your current call center or help desk provides.

Share Data When you know you are woefully understaffed, it might be helpful when making your case for more support to show how your staffing compares with 94  •  Challenge 12

other organizations. This information is available in ATD’s State of the Industry report, broken down by organization size and industry, so that you can share how other firms of your size and line of work are staffing L&D.

Bottom Line Tap into some obvious and less-obvious resources and you won’t have to go it alone.

Go Deeper “Working With SMEs,” ch. 4 in E-Learning Department of One, by Emily Wood If you are your entire training team, developing strong working relationships with SMEs will be critical. This chapter provides tips for building those relationships with even the most reluctant (or busy) SMEs, as well as how to delineate the roles of SME and training developer and how to articulate the expertise you bring to the table.

“Selecting and Implementing an LMS” by Stacy Lindenberg Organizations use a learning management system for a multitude of purposes, including to distribute and track e-learning, to automate enrollment processes, and to measure and report on training. Knowing how an LMS can assist your organization is one way to advocate for its purchase. Most relevant to this section are the tips this Infoline issue provides to make a business case for the purchase of an LMS.

Challenge 12  •  95

Tool 12-1. Manager’s Meeting Guide September: Using Positive Language Materials Two-minute online training on using positive language, which is attached to this guide.

•

Talking Points Responsiveness is a quality that is extremely important to our customers. • One of the ways that we demonstrate responsiveness is by using positive language that tells people what we can do for them, rather than what we can’t. • Possible benefits of using positive language include reducing conflict, reducing defensiveness, improving communication, and portraying yourself as professional and eager to help. •

Possible Questions to Ask What are your reactions to the mini-training on positive language? • How have you seen the principles from the mini-training on positive language to be true in your work here, if you have? • What are some of the things we often have to say no to in our area—whether to internal or external customers? How can we say these in a more positive way? • What do you think the impact will be of our saying these things in a more positive way? •

Possible Activities Practice turning negative phrases, such as “I don’t know how long your wait will be” or “I can’t help you with that; it’s not my department,” into positive ones. • Target responses: ° “I will let you know as soon as I get an update on your wait time.” ° “That is a question for the Billing Department. I can give you their contact information.” •

For More Information work911.com/articles/poslan.htm • goodnet.org/articles/how-to-turn-11-everyday-phrases-from-negative-positive •

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13

Challenge:

I’ve been asked to bring in a consultant, and I’ve never had to find one before

Description The Association for Talent Development’s 2019 State of the Industry report found that 27 percent of L&D expenditures are spent on external (supplier) services. It speculates that “smaller organizations may choose to outsource certain activities because it is not practical for them to develop and deliver certain offerings using their internal staff and resources. They may also not have the necessary expertise on staff for certain projects. Large organizations may be able to engage in major partnerships with suppliers, similar to how they may have the resources to partner with educational providers.” There are some good reasons to bring in an outside vendor, but if you’ve never contracted with one before, you may not know how to go about it.

Solutions Contracting with a consultant is a multistep process similar to that of recruiting for an open position—finding candidates, screening them, and selecting one. Here are some tips for each step.

Conduct a “Make or Buy” Analysis Traditionally, “make or buy” decisions were limited to the manufacturing world. These were analyses of whether to produce an item or purchase it from a vendor, also known as outsourcing. The decision to bring in a vendor is often based on cost or time factors, but there is more to it than that. Here are some other determinations to consider: • How critical is the initiative? If a training solution is mission critical to the organization, do you want to hand it over to an outside party? That will depend on what you know of the vendor, whether you’ve worked with them previously, and how much control you’ll retain over the work.

Challenge 13  •  97

•

•

•

•

•

Do the tasks that need to be performed fall well into your team’s (or your organization’s) capabilities, or those you want your team members to develop? If you lack certain expertise, it might make sense to call in the experts, and set a goal to learn all that you can from them about the work you are handing off. How much will you be able to customize the vendor’s work product? Some vendors will work with you to make the content they provide your own, or they’ll let you “brand” their output, but others will sell you a proprietary product that cannot be altered. Will learners react better to internal or external credibility? Some learners want things to be done the “Company X way.” They are more likely to find an internal resource a credible subject matter expert. Others, however, appreciate the broader, validated external perspective that a vendor brings to your programs. What’s the capacity of your team to produce or to manage production? Just because you bring in a vendor does not mean your time is instantly freed up for other projects. Your role simply shifts from producing to managing. How does that factor into the time savings of bringing in outside support? Is your organization ready for the concept? You might get very excited about bringing in a vendor who is on the cutting edge of learning technology, or who has a brilliant new way of approaching your content, but if your organization is not with you at the cutting edge (or is maybe behind the times in its approach to professional development or leadership development), even the best external vendor will not be a good fit.

Know Where to Look If you have “training” in your job title and are searchable on your company’s website, you will start getting contacted by vendors as soon as your first day on the job. (It’s happened to me.) You’ll get emails and phone calls regularly from providers who want to sell you learning management systems, online training libraries, off-the-shelf training programs, or consulting services. How do you vet these vendors? Some of those vendors who are proactively reaching out may be just the ones you need. And just like when searching for a real-estate agent, contractor, haircutter, or dentist, the best source for good referrals will come from 98  •  Challenge 13

friends or people you know. When searching for referrals for professional vendors, friends in your field and outside your institution are especially helpful. Tarah Cicero, who was a pharmacy staffing, training, and development coordinator, chatted regularly with trusted counterparts at other pharmacy chains (noncompetitors) to discuss projects she was working on and vendors she was considering. Or, she’d ask pharmacist friends outside her company about what products they were using for certain tasks, such as pharmacy tech certification training. Joining a network of trainers at other institutions through a professional or industry association or on LinkedIn can be extremely helpful when you are asked for a list of companies that your organization can vet. Cicero explains, “Asking trusted partners for advice on external consultants is invaluable. I’m more inclined to explore using a consultant if a trusted partner vouches for them.” Many vendors will list current clients on their websites. This can help you to feel comfortable when a reputable company is using a product or service you are considering. It also gives you possible contacts to reach out to for their experiences. Another place to look is at the bios of the authors of articles and blog posts on the topic area in which you have a need. For example, if you are in need of customer service training, or of a 360-degree assessment tool, and find a helpful article on it, find out if the author is a consultant or works for a company that provides consulting services. And it’s okay to bring in vendors you might one day consider, even if you can’t afford them now, and see what they can teach you. Consultants are out in the world talking to individuals in your same role all over the country and can give you insight about what other companies are doing, where their pain points are, and where trends are heading. Just be transparent that you are bringing them in just to meet them when you don’t have any current needs or ability to hire a vendor.

Have a Vetting Process While sending out requests for proposals (RFPs) can be a grueling process, they do provide you with the opportunity to compare vendors and involve others in your selection process. Like most financial decisions, you probably don’t want to make it alone and be held solely responsible. Whether you

Challenge 13  •  99

use an RFP process or not, here are some things that should be part of your vetting process: • Have more than one consultant to consider. Not only does this give you some options and show you different approaches to your problem, it helps if, down the road, you need to replace the vendor you do select. • Create a vendor selection committee. Depending on what service you are seeking to contract out, committee members might include representatives from your finance, project management, communications, or legal departments, as well as a senior-level decision maker. If the service is technical, a member of your IT team should be involved as well. • Define selection criteria to ensure that the decision is made based on objective, defendable rationale. • Review proposals and work samples. • Check references. • Meet with finalists. Part of this decision is greater than work product; it’s whether you want to work with this provider’s team for the duration of the project.

Know What to Ask Here are some questions for potential consultants: • Are you familiar with our industry (your company’s industry, not the training industry)? What has been your experience with other clients in this industry? • What is your experience in the L&D industry? • What professional associations are you a member of? • What are your areas of experience and expertise? • What initially attracted you to L&D work, or to doing this work within our industry? • What kinds of companies have you worked with: large, small? Nonprofit, government? Collaborative, innovative? • With whom do you like to work? What type of client involvement do you prefer? • What does working with your company typically look like? • What percentage of your customers are repeat customers? • What does your long-term vision for your company look like? 100  •  Challenge 13

Know What to Be Wary Of Most of us who have brought on the wrong vendor can, in retrospect, identify some warning signs we should have heeded. Here are tips to avoid disaster: • Talk to the people who will do the work, not sales staff. Sales staff can promise you the world when they won’t be seeing you on a day-to-day basis, or when they aren’t as familiar with the intricacies of the work as the people who will be on your project team. Insist on meeting with the people who will perform the work. •

•

•

Take note of the vendors’ customer service during the selection phase, when they are “at their best.” How responsive are they to questions and emails? Do they explain the product thoroughly? Are they pushy about closing the deal? Do they rush through demos? If the customer service isn’t top notch during the courting phase, it’s likely to be downright bad after implementation. Avoid engaging too early on budgetary concerns. Starting by engaging around the price you are willing to pay will limit the creativity of the proposals they give. Keep some information to yourself. Don’t tell them who their competitors are in the selection process, as this can affect the effort they put into their proposal. And don’t give them the names of individuals in your company beyond those on the selection committee; you don’t want them to try to approach someone in the organization directly and obtain information that is not available to all consultants in the RFP process.

Clarify Roles and Responsibilities Once you select a vendor, be prepared for ongoing involvement, especially in the initial stages. Take the time to set up your working relationship, determining who is doing what and when. Establish key project milestones and what kind of guidance and monitoring will be required on your end.

Bottom Line Selecting a vendor is just the beginning. Be sure that you’ll be happy working with a consultant by choosing wisely.

Challenge 13  •  101

Go Deeper “A Template for Managing External Suppliers,” ch. 8 in Project Management for Trainers, by Lou Russell In the best case, writes Russell, “outsourcing means that 60 percent of the work will be done externally, but 40 percent of the work is so dependent on the expertise within the company that it can never be done outside.” This chapter covers several elements of dealing with contractors: the secret to success, requests for proposal, contractor law, confidentiality and security, communication standards, change management, knowledge transfer, and shared risk.

102  •  Challenge 13

14

Challenge:

There’s no professional development for me

Description Perhaps you’ve heard the proverb “The cobbler’s children have no shoes.” It’s meant to express the idea that people who are in the business of providing a particular service are so focused on delivering for their customers, they don’t provide the same service for themselves—and those close to them. Sadly, this is often true for those who work in departments that provide learning opportunities to the rest of the organization. You likely don’t get much training yourself. Or, if you do, it is up to you to find those opportunities.

Solutions Here are some places to seek out your own development. These sources for personal growth are also useful to share with employees, as they provide life skills that will be useful to them in the constantly evolving workplace.

Remember 70-20-10 In my presentation, “Your Role in Professional Development” (Challenge 6), I remind employees of two things that might be relevant here. First, when you say there is no professional development for you, are you thinking about learning broadly, or only about the 10 to 25 percent of learning that comes from formal training? Perhaps there are other opportunities for you to learn through more informal channels. Check out the options in Table 14-1 to see if you can actually find more training opportunities for yourself.

Challenge 14  •  103

Table 14-1. Development Opportunities Experiential • •

• • • •

•

Get involved in a variety of experiences. Read magazines (e.g., Chief Learning Officer, Workforce Magazine, Training, TD, Harvard Business Review). Provide pro bono training. Co-facilitate a new topic with a SME in that area. Observe other trainers. Conduct after-action reviews at project milestones. Serve on (or head) a committee.

Social •

•

•

•

Join a network of people in roles similar to yours Participate (actively or passively) in online communities both in and outside your area of expertise. For example, learn more about your LMS or authoring tool with the online communities that exist with these products. Join and attend local, national, or international meetings of professional associations. Find a mentor.

Formal • •

•

Sign up for education courses and workshops. Attend conferences (e.g., ATD’s International Conference & Exposition, ATD TechKnowledge, DevLearn, and Learning Solutions). Enroll in a certificate program, or earn an additional degree.

Seek It Out In my presentation, I also remind employees not to sit back and wait for someone to offer them developmental opportunities (they may be waiting a long time), but to seek out and advocate for the development they need. Is there anything you can be doing to develop yourself, even if opportunities aren’t readily presenting themselves? For example, can you: • Learn from people in and outside work? In addition to learning from colleagues, managers, team leaders, and HR staff, are there role models or mentors among your family and friends? Seek out and learn from others who are different from you. Ask yourself what you can learn from each person you meet. To keep learning, you must put yourself in unfamiliar situations and expose yourself to a wide range of perspectives and views. • Seek feedback and coaching? If 20 to 25 percent of your learning is supposed to come from coaching, but you’re not getting it, ask for it. I had a terrific boss once with whom I met weekly. She was surprised—and, of course, willing—when I asked her if she could provide me more feedback in our one-on-ones, because we spent most of our time together talking about projects and approaches to work. Probe deeper when someone says, “Nice job.” Ask them what

104  •  Challenge 14

made it such good work. Express appreciation when you do receive feedback, including accepting criticism openly and nondefensively.

Set Your Own Learning Goals Start your proactive professional development by setting your own continuous learning goals. Assess your strengths and opportunities and decide which you want (or need) to focus on. Typically, your greatest successes will come from leveraging your strengths. Review the goals of your department and determine what skill sets will be required to achieve those and make those your own individual pursuits. Think about what competencies you’ll need not only for your current role, but for future roles. Ask your manager in which areas they feel you should focus your developmental efforts. Once you’ve conducted this survey, establish learning goals that will motivate and propel you forward. Using a career development worksheet, like Tool 14-1 at the end of this challenge, can keep your goals on track.

Make Learning a Habit Learning isn’t an event. Make it part of your daily routine. Even five minutes a day can help. What can you do in five minutes? Practice a new skill, observe someone who does it well, read an article about it. If you just get in the habit of asking every day, “What did I learn today?” you’ll be surprised by how much you grow.

Process Your Formal Learning As trainers and learning professionals are well aware, simply attending formal training does not translate into learning. You need to process the new information you’re exposed to or it won’t filter into your long-term memory. When reading or attending a seminar, take notes. Highlight ideas you might want to use and changes you might want to make. After a course is over or you finish a book, decide what you will do differently. Either tell someone about your intentions, or keep track of your follow-through on your own. Teach what you learned to someone else. Extend this concept to your entire team by having business-book-club discussions, or group discussions of free online courses or webinars.

Challenge 14  •  105

Practice Reading Efficiently There is more material to read than ever—online and in print—and there is no way that anyone will be able to read it all. So, learn to read only the relevant sections of books or articles, as you might be doing when you read only relevant challenges in this book. Search for one insight or application in everything you read. It is more beneficial to read one article and learn from it than to skim five articles and take away nothing of substance.

Network Training can be an isolating field, whether you’re part of a team or a department of one. Often you are designing and developing training on your own, or delivering it without any colleagues present. Finding others to bounce ideas off of, share resources with, or just talk shop with is a rare and precious opportunity. Because trainers straddle two industries—that of their company and talent development—it can be especially valuable to find a group that shares both interests. For example, the Ivy-Plus HR group does L&D in universities, and the Council of Hotel and Restaurant Trainers (soon to be renamed as Hospitality Trainers), addresses training issues especially relevant to the hospitality industry.

Learn From Mistakes View mistakes as opportunities. Consider or ask, “How could I improve or do something better?” When something goes wrong, focus on “What can I learn from this?” Focus on your role in the mistake, not what others did or didn’t do. If you have not made a mistake lately, ask: “Am I challenging myself in my job and outside of work? Am I taking risks?”

Bottom Line Learning opportunities abound for those who make them.

Go Deeper “Resources and Professional Development,” ch. 14 in E-Learning Department of One, by Emily Wood When you’re working as a department of one, you may find yourself in a rut, developing the same type of training or the same activities over and over. This chapter provides an extensive list of formats, and specific resources, for continuing to expose yourself to new ideas and to grow in your craft.

106  •  Challenge 14

88 Assignments for Development in Place by Michael Lombardo and Robert Eichinger This book was produced to help learners capitalize on the adage that “experience is the best teacher.” The authors found that weathering certain leadership challenges contributed to the building and seasoning of managers, if they were given the opportunity to learn from them. This slim volume from the late 1980s has been a staple in my work for decades. It offers 88 developmental experiences that can be added to existing jobs to systematically develop people by providing variety in leadership challenges and help in learning from these challenges. Some examples from the book that I’ve adapted and used in various organizations can be found in Tool 23-1.

“No-Budget Professional Development” by James Bennett This short TD magazine article describes the problem of lack of funds for professional development from the perspective of a manager of an L&D team—with a couple of creative solutions added in.

Challenge 14  •  107

Tool 14-1. Career Development Worksheet

Create a five-year career goal and then answer the questions that follow related to attaining that goal. What's your five-year career goal (Keep it SMART—specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound)?

What competencies do you need to develop or improve to reach your goal?

What resources do you need to develop these competencies?

Who can help you develop these competencies?

What barriers will you encounter when working to develop these competencies?

How will you overcome these barriers?

Next Steps:

Deadline:

____________________________________________ ____________________________________________ ____________________________________________ ____________________________________________

_________________ _________________ _________________ _________________

Adapted from Collins (2018).

108  •  Challenge 14

g n i n r a e e c L n d e i e r t i e Lim gn Exp i s e D

4 N O I T SEC

The Problem “I’ve actually been doing training for a number of years; I just never learned the fundamentals, so I don’t have the vocabulary—or the confidence—to talk about learning as a professional.” “My organization tends to throw training at all kinds of problems and then, when training doesn’t produce the kind of results they hoped for, they get to blame it for the fact that the problem still exists.” “My boss wants our training materials to be visually appealing, and I’m an instructional designer, not a graphic designer!” “I can design a classroom training, but I don’t know how to put together informal learning, or how to convert classroom training to online.”

What’s Happening Here? The bulk of the work that is done to make training successful happens during the design phase. Yet many new trainers do not receive formal education on how to design training. Instead they go by instinct or based on how they learned to do something. I was very fortunate to have two opportunities to learn how to be an instructional designer. I was already enrolled in a master’s program that included an option for certification in training and development when I landed a job with Citibank’s retail-bank training team, a heavily instructional design–driven environment. Citibank put all new trainers through a very intense curriculum-design training program. We had experienced managers to mentor us through the application of the principles we learned when we were designing and developing content for employees and managers of the retail bank. Like I said, I was fortunate. But I’ve had to learn for myself how to adapt the universal training design concepts I received through those formal educational opportunities to an ever-expanding world in which L&D is only a part of a broader talent development function, and in which learning is delivered via an increasing number of platforms. What instructional design encompasses has evolved, and it can be challenging to evolve with it. For example, if I were to do it all over again now, I might not focus so exclusively on formal learning solutions, but would make sure I could address curation and informal learning needs. I might expand my skill base from adult learning theory, curriculum design, and assessment, to creative functions like graphic design, user experience design, and video or e-learning production, as well as to technological skills like utilizing e-learning authoring tools and basics of social media. These are things I’ve learned by doing where some foundational background would have been helpful. Regardless of where the field is going, the underlying principles of instructional design—and the challenges faced by those who haven’t been exposed to those principles—remain. Even though training tends to be measured based on what happens when it’s under way, designing without some knowledge of these principles creates a risk of offering ineffective and costly training.

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The Challenges This section can help you if you have limited learning design experience, even in these situations: Challenge 15. I’ve been asked to provide training, but I don’t think it’s going to help............................................................................................... 113 Challenge 16. I’ve been asked to create training on a topic I know nothing about....................................................................................... 121 Challenge 17. I don’t have an instructional design background....................... 126 Challenge 18. I want to design interactive sessions, but I’m not that creative.................................................................................. 137 Challenge 19. I want my materials to look good—and be effective................... 147 Challenge 20. I’ve been asked to convert training from classroom to e-learning and I don’t know where to begin............................................. 160 Challenge 21. I don’t know how to produce asynchronous e-learning............. 167 Challenge 22. I’m not sure my training is “sticky”............................................... 176 Challenge 23. I’m not sure how to design informal learning............................. 185 Challenge 24. My learners are overwhelmed with digital information.............. 195

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Challenge: 15

I’ve been asked to provide training, but I don’t think it’s going to help

Description Sometimes when employees are not performing as an organization wishes they would, training is suggested to improve the situation. Before you know it, the request for a program lands on your desk, even if other approaches might have worked better to address the performance problem. Providing training when the problem can’t be solved by training can damage your own reputation and that of your department.

Solutions If training won’t help resolve a performance problem and you offer it anyway, it is a big waste of resources—yours and your organization’s. Avoid this waste by adhering to some of these tips.

Conduct an Analysis I cannot make this point strongly enough: Do not blindly accept every request you receive to provide training. In my own informal study of colleagues, trainers’ blogs and articles, and my own experience, I’ve found that jumping in to provide training before vetting the request and determining whether training is the right answer is the number-one most common mistake new trainers make. Your first step needs to be an analysis of the request to make sure that training is the right approach. This analysis may be formal and comprehensive, or informal and brief. It may be called a needs assessment, a needs analysis, a gap analysis, or a business analysis. The goals of your inquiry are the same: to find out if there is a gap between what employees are currently doing and what they should be doing, what impact that gap is having, and what is causing it. Many new trainers respond to a request like “Our sales results have been slower than usual and we need you to provide sales training right away,” with questions like “When do you want the training?” or “What do you want

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included in the training?” These responses assume that there will be training. That assumption is premature and opens up the risk of developing a costly learning solution that does not produce the desired results. When that happens, organizational leaders can blame training for the poor performance results, when you were only trying to help. In response to a request like the sales-training one, your first question must always be exploratory: “What’s behind your request for this training?” or “What is the gap in performance that you are experiencing?” Your initial analysis, whatever name you want to give it, needs to answer three sets of questions, as noted in Table 15-1. Table 15-1. Assessment and Analysis Questions

• •

• •

Needs Assessment Questions

Business Analysis Questions

Needs Analysis Questions

Is there a gap?

What is the impact of the gap on the business?

What is the cause of the gap?

Why are you requesting this training? What is happening (or not happening) that needs to happen (or not happen)? How widespread is this problem? Who is displaying the gap? (i.e., is it the whole team, or certain individuals?)

•

•

•

How do you measure performance in this area? What has been the impact of this gap in performance on the key measures? On a scale from 1 to 10 where 1 represents little impact and 10 represents a crisis, where does this performance issue fall?

• •

•

When did you first notice this gap? What was going on in the organization at that time? What factors do you think might be influencing this gap in performance?

Many new trainers tell me that their company’s decision makers don’t want to allow them the time to conduct an analysis. If this is the case, the solution “Set parameters when you must deliver a program anyway” later in this challenge will give you some appropriate responses for those decision makers.

Consider Whether the Gap Can Be Filled With Training Once you determine that there is a gap that is having a negative effect on the business, and have some ideas about what is causing that gap, you can determine whether training is going to help you close that gap. There are some holes that training can help fix and others that it can’t. For example, if you’ve determined that sales results took a dip soon after a new compensation

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structure was introduced, it may be that the new structure demotivated employees in sales, not that employees don’t know how to make a sale. This is not to say that training will not be helpful to sales employees at this time, but that maybe your approach will need to change. Training is most effective when it is addressing a problem that is internal to an employee, rather than something rooted in the company itself. That is, training can help when knowledge (cognitive), skills (psychomotor), or attitude (affective) gaps are present. Benjamin Bloom referred to these domains of learning that we can influence as KSAs (knowledge, skills, attitude). If the problem is a bigger, systemic one, training may not be the right answer. I use my own adapted version of Gilbert’s Behavioral Engineering model, shown in Table 15-2, to help me determine whether a gap in performance can be solved by training. Requests that relate to issues in the right-hand column, I happily accept; requests related to issues on the left make me more wary. It’s important to suss out during your analysis, for instance, if a performance gap is due to lack of staff (resources) or lack of skill. Table 15-2. My Version of Gilbert’s Behavioral Engineering Model What the Organization Provides Content

Capability

Motivation

Information • Business goals, mission, vision • Expectations • Structure, departments, teams • Organizational history Resources • Tools • Human and material resources • Systems, structures • Procedures, rules Incentives • Benefits, pay, bonuses • Recognition • Feedback, coaching • Consequences of performance

What the Employee Brings Knowledge Understanding of organization, industry, role, product, processes, and more

•

Skills and Behaviors Technical • Professional • Supervisory, leadership •

Attitudes Values • Confidence • Fit with company culture •

Some new trainers have been told that attitudes, because they are personal and subjective, are not something that training can fix. That belief is a topic of debate among learning professionals. At a minimum, training can affect learner’s motivation to acquire knowledge, try out new skills, or apply what

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they learn on the job. By considering attitude when approaching any training topic, you are more likely to engage with a learner’s emotions, and engaging emotions is a form of encoding information into long-term memory. So, while it’s true that you may not be able to make someone become a more positive person through training, for example, you can provide training to help people see the benefits of holding a positive mindset, and you can help them see that mindset change is possible.

Suggest an Appropriate Reaction to Performance Issues What about when the performance issue is more on an individual level? That is, when instead of being asked to create training to address an organizational need, you get a request to provide training for an individual who needs to improve. Will training work in this situation? I use a flowchart like the one in Figure 15-1 to make that determination. You’ll notice there are many considerations to be made before providing training, including making sure that employees are aware of expectations, that any obstacles in the way of their effective performance are removed, and that there is accountability in the form of positive or negative consequences if the employee performs above or below expectations. The other thing to watch out for when a training request comes in response to a performance issue is how widespread that issue is. If the requester is asking for training for all employees when only one person needs it, they may be doing so to avoid addressing the issue with that person, or trying not to make that one person feel singled out. However, everyone forced into that training knows who actually needs it, and requiring them all to attend can make the situation far worse and cause the person far more pain than addressing it head-on. In these cases, the better solution is often providing coaching for the person’s manager on how to have a tough conversation.

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Figure 15-1. Performance Diagnostic: Should You Provide Training? Is the Employee Aware of Performance Expectations? No

Share or clarify expectations

Yes Have Any Obstacles to Performance Been Removed? No

Remove obstacles

Yes Are There Consequences for Poor Behaviors and Rewards for Desired Behaviors? No

Establish positive and negative consequences

Yes Is the Employee Motivated to Perform the Desired Behaviors? No

Work with the employee to increase motivation by reiterating the value of the work or by enhancing their confidence

Yes Does the Employee Have the Skill?

Yes

Start diagnostic again from the top

No

If the employee is motivated to develop the skill and can develop it quickly enough to address workplace needs, provide training

Involve Your Stakeholders If you conduct your analysis without input from your stakeholders, including the requesters themselves, they’re likely to be skeptical of your results and recommendations. Involve them in your analysis. As Tim Slade wrote in his

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“Ask a Trainer” blog post (2019), “If they have the opportunity to participate in the analysis, they’ll be much more likely to see what you’re seeing and agree with your recommendations. In addition to helping you build rapport and trust, they’ll also gain insights into your world and why you’re asking the questions you’re asking. You’ll also have a greater respect for the challenges they’re seeking to overcome.”

Set Parameters When You Must Deliver a Program Anyway Peter Block, in his seminal book, Flawless Consulting, advises that if the conditions are not set up for you to be successful in a consulting engagement, you might refuse it. That’s good advice, but not always realistic for those of us who are, in essence, internal consultants being asked to launch a training initiative internally. Block recognizes situations like these, and points out that if you proceed with a project that you think might fail and, in fact, it doesn’t go well, you are in bigger trouble, because the damage to your reputation and credibility will be significant. He advises, “It is just not good business to take on low-chance-of-success projects.” Don’t be shy about making your concerns known, especially when you can phrase them in terms the business will understand. Explain the potential cost-to-benefit ratio of the program they are requesting. Talk about the investment of time and money that the training will require and whether you expect that investment to pay off. Be clear about what you can and cannot accomplish and what’s needed to supplement training, such as business actions to ensure that training has an impact. Despite your concerns, there will be times when you will need to create or deliver training when you are asked, even if another solution might have been optimal. In these cases, you might say something to the effect of, “We can train your sales team, and we might even be able to increase their motivational level, but we can’t promise an increase in sales results following this training, because there are some structural issues in place right now that we think are affecting performance that training can’t address.” Then, think about designing your training with what you know about the potential obstacles in mind. Following through on our sales example, for instance, you might want to change your objectives from “demonstrate proper sales techniques” to “describe three benefits of our new sales compensation structure.”

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Learn How to Say No There are ways to say no to a colleague that damage the relationship you’ve been building, and ways to say no that preserve those ties. In situations where you need to push back on a training request, follow these tips: • Use a “Yes, and . . .” approach, as in “Yes, I can limit that course to one hour, and it will mean that we will only be able to cover one idea. Is that OK for you?” •

•

•

•

Empathize with their situation. “I realize that a few of your new employees never received the training and can’t contribute to the full extent on your team. I would love to help you get them up to speed, and I would need to ask my boss to release me from another project in order to help you.” When you have to say no, be clear about why you are saying it. For example, “I appreciate you asking me. Our department is working on a high-potential leadership program that is tied to the President’s Preferred Workplace initiative coming up next month. We can’t take on any new projects until then, as we wouldn’t be able to give any new projects our all when we’re already under such a tight timeline.” Suggest an alternative. I know you found the training on recruitment practices you just attended to be extremely helpful, and I wonder if we might want to try two other things before taking on the expense of providing the program to your whole team. What if we gave employees three more months to learn the new applicant tracking system? We could add some open learning lab hours this month for those who are struggling. We can also observe the interactions between your team members and the candidates they are trying to recruit to see where the conversations are breaking down. Provide something. Jillian Hintz, senior manager of learning design and development at Paycor, explains, “If I decline something, I provide some solution, rather than leaving the requester high and dry.” For example, Hintz’s team determined that they could provide job aids as collateral for an existing learning solution, but could not produce random stand-alone job aids for organizational units. Now, when one of these is requested, she sends out a blank, branded template employees can use to create their own job aids, along with tips for how to write one.

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Bottom Line Analyze every training request that comes your way to ensure that the organization’s investment in training is successful, that your reputation remains solid, and that the courses you design are effective.

Go Deeper “Planning and Analyzing for Instructional Design,” pt. 2 of Mastering the Instructional Design Process, by William Rothwell Needs assessment is important because all of the subsequent steps in a training design process depend on the results you uncover. This section of the book is a thorough and detailed description of the terms, steps, problems, costs, and reports associated with this critical step.

“What’s My Greatest Performance Block?” ch. 4 in Training Ain’t Performance, by Harold D. Stolovitch and Erica J. Keeps Research suggests that 70 to 80 percent of workplace performance is affected by such environmental variables as clarity of expectations; specificity and timeliness of feedback; adequacy of tools, materials, and procedures; and appropriateness of incentives and consequences, including opportunities for career advancement. This chapter talks about how to identify when environmental factors are at the core of a training request. Details on the Gilbert Behavior Engineering Model I shared in this challenge are also provided.

“Business Justification” and “Analysis,” ch. 2 and 3 in Training Design and Delivery, by Geri E. McArdle An error in the analysis stage can throw off the entire training process and usually results in an unsuccessful training program. These two chapters provide bulleted lists of every aspect of data collection while uncovering the implications of conducting, or not conducting, the training, and of whether training is the appropriate solution.

“Contracting Overview” and “The Contracting Meeting,” ch. 4 and 5 in Flawless Consulting, by Peter Block Block posits that consultants’ most important contribution to the client is defining the problem that is causing them pain. These chapters in his seminal book on consulting engagements are helpful whenever you are setting up a project, eliciting client expectations, and making appropriate recommendations.

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16

Challenge:

I’ve been asked to create training on a topic I know nothing about

Description Even though you probably know that you possess critical skills for bringing content to learners, whatever the topic, it is still unsettling the first time someone comes to your desk and says, “Hey, can you develop a training on crane operation for us? Oh, and we need it delivered yesterday.” Unless you’ve been a construction engineer before, you might panic about being asked to explain to others how to do something that you are currently unfamiliar with.

Solutions Asking the right questions and otherwise researching the content you’ll be delivering—as well as the audience you’re being asked to deliver it to—can help you get comfortable with designing training on an unfamiliar topic. Here’s how.

Get Confident People have asked me over the years why my role is necessary (rude, huh?). “But you don’t know anything about banking/prescription drugs/museum curation/tractor trailers,” they say. “Why doesn’t the person who knows this stuff create and deliver the training?” The answer I give explains the role of an instructional designer as being a sort of translator. I take information that lives in the brains of subject matter experts, and I translate that into learning activities that people can understand and remember. Experts are sometimes too close to the subject—and too much of an expert—to relate to someone who is learning this for the first time. That’s where we come in. You may feel like you’re not bringing much to the table when you’re being asked to create training on a topic that is not in your area of expertise, but you are an important part of the process. You can help a person who is more familiar with the topic look at content from a different angle. And remember, you are the expert when it comes to adult learning, active

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classroom techniques, classroom management, and creating and meeting learning objectives. Because you have—or are developing—these skills, you can use them no matter what the topic, even if you don’t know much about it yet. And being on a learning curve will help you relate to how your learners will react to the content, an advantage that actually diminishes as you become more familiar with it. So, take a deep breath. Believe it or not, you will know all you need to know about this new topic, very soon.

Gather Content There are so many ways to become knowledgeable on the topic on which you’ve been asked to train. First off, there are several people you can ask to teach you about the topic, or who can refer you to relevant materials and resources, including the person who requested the training, supervisors of the target audience, or star performers in this area. If you are lucky enough to have one, a designated subject matter expert is your go-to source. This is a person who holds in their head all the information you need to impart; all you need is for them to give you a thorough download. You might also get your hands on job manuals, job aids, past trainings on the subject, and information that is widely available on the internet or from professional associations. Ask your SME what memberships your organization holds and look at some of their materials. For instance, when I was at Columbia Irving Medical Center, I tapped into the client’s membership at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement to get content for a course I was developing on transforming customer service specifically related to healthcare. Another highly effective route for learning the content yourself is conducting on-the-job observations.

Narrow Down the Content Even though what you were initially most worried about was not knowing enough about the subject, the trickier part is probably going to be narrowing down all the information that you find. Rich Hurley, learning and organizational development manager at NYU, describes the challenge this way: “There is so much research and there are so many books out there, and so many ways to connect to learning—it can be overwhelming.” As an example, he points to the wealth of change management models. If you were asked to create a program on change management, how would you choose one? Here are two suggestions:

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Tap into what’s already working. Hurley suggests not getting embedded in the idea that you must present something brand new. For this example, determine what change management approaches the organization is using successfully already. As he describes it, “What theories and basis of knowledge are people using now to impact the organization and people within it?” Who are the people in your organization who excel at change management, what are they doing, and what are they reading about the subject? • Limit yourself to trusted sources. Find some people you respect and who are successful in organizations like yours and ask them what they’re reading or focusing on. Use their input to create your own list of the best resources or educational platforms you can turn to when you need to get up to speed on a topic. For instance, whom do the people you deem as experts follow on Twitter or LinkedIn? Hurley follows faculty members whose work aligns with what he does as a learning professional, such as those with an EdD or a PhD in the subjects he’s looking at or who are doing research in these areas. Narrowing down content is another place where you add value as a training designer, because many requesters or SMEs will want you to cover every possible aspect of the subject. They don’t understand that when it comes to learning, less is more. Content has an intrinsic load. If the content is straightforward and relatively simple, that is said to be a low intrinsic load. If the content is complicated, dense, or challenging, that is referred to as a high intrinsic load. The higher the intrinsic load, the more learners’ working memories jam up, and the more careful the instruction that is designed to impart it needs to be. Collect as much content as you wish, but remember your job is to weed it out into “need to know” versus “nice to know.” Instead of putting all the information you find into your training program, you can help determine what content learners can review on their own time and provide resources and tools to access it. •

Conduct a Learner Analysis As important as the content are the people who will be using the content. Learning about your learners—from your requester, from the learners’ supervisors, or from the learners directly—will help you determine what specifically about the content they need to know, how much content they need, and how much they

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can handle. An audience, or learner, analysis determines the characteristics and needs of your target audience, and includes questions about: • Job responsibilities: What tasks do the participants do on a daily basis? How should those tasks be done correctly? What are the typical situations they face? Knowing this will help you determine what content they need based on how they will use it. It also helps you create realistic case studies and practice exercises. • Work environment: Where will they be applying the knowledge and skills you will be imparting? Under what conditions will they be doing this work? What human, organizational, or instructional supports are there to assist them in using these skills back on the job? Knowing this will help you determine how well they need to know the content, and whether they need to commit it to memory or if they can rely on those supports back on the job. • Obstacles: What obstacles or pressures might the participants face when applying these skills in the real world? Will their supervisor support the use of their new skills? Knowing this will help you address these proactively and make the learning relevant and sticky. • Prior knowledge of topic: One of the prime factors in how information gets in and out of long-term memory is whether the learner is experienced or a novice. Find out whether the content of your training is new to them. Remember that novice learners are new to the subject at hand; they are not necessarily the younger or less experienced employees. If employees have been trained on this subject before, how did that go? What worked well and what fell flat? • Motivation to learn: Is this topic important to them? Do they see the value in it? What parts of it will bore them? What do they believe about the benefits of learning in general? Are they interested in developmental opportunities? • Experience: Tenure with your organization or in their job affects confidence levels and motivation. Newer employees may feel overwhelmed; more experienced employees may feel overconfident— or jaded. • Cultural characteristics: Are there cultural sensitivities in the group, such as language or communication preferences? What is the corpo-

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rate culture in which this topic is being presented? Knowing this will help you present the content in a respectful and inclusive way.

Bottom Line With good analysis skills, you can create effective and engaging training on any topic, even one you’re not yet familiar with. You’ve got this.

Go Deeper “The Subject Matter Expert’s Role in Training and ISD,” ch. 1 in SMEs From the Ground Up, by Chuck Hodell Hodell suggests that all established professionals in your organization are SMEs and that the best way to get your content correct is to find a way to work efficiently and productively with SMEs. In this chapter, categories of SMEs are presented as well as how to select the best type of SME for your needs. Discussion of the SMEs role in providing content, and working on other aspects of training projects, is presented. Further chapters provide strategies for collaboration with each type.

“Identifying the Target Population and Environmental Characteristics,” ch. 4 in Mastering the Instructional Design Process, by William Rothwell et al. The authors outline three points in the instructional design process when learner characteristics should be assessed, including before instruction is prepared, to create content that is suitable for the entire learner population. This chapter includes detailed lists of learner—and setting—characteristics that should inform instructional materials, methods, delivery, and assessment.

Challenge 16  •  125

17

Challenge:

I don’t have an instructional design background

Description Many new trainers, when asked to design training programs from scratch, rely on instinct, or design a program that mirrors how you learned the content. Often your instinct produces great or fine results, but you’d like to validate that intuition, have the vocabulary to talk about the design choices you’ve made, or figure out why some things didn’t work.

Solutions New trainers familiar with some instructional design strategies—as well as the broad principles of how adults take in and process information—can produce effective and exceptional training experiences. Here are some of those principles.

Start With the End in Mind Really the only way to know if instruction is effective is to know what that instruction is trying to achieve. Designing the most effective instruction requires identifying the intended outcomes first, and then designing the content to produce those results. The behavioral learning objectives you create for your courses are the road map you’ll use for design and development. A behavioral objective is just that—behavioral. That is, it spells out the observable, measurable behavior that participants will be able to do at the end of your program. So, to say that the objective is to “know” something is not adequate, because that’s unobservable: What will the participants need to actually do or say to show you that they know it? Additionally, to say that the objective is to “give you a model for developing objectives” isn’t right, because the objective needs to say what participants will do at the end of the program, not what the instructor is doing. Objectives should always include the actor (who is always the participant), the behavior (observable and achievable), a condition, and a degree. The

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last two components of this ABCD formula refer to the circumstances and tools the participants will use to exhibit the behavior (condition), and how well they need to do it (degree). Here’s a solid ABCD objective: Using their course notes (condition), participants (actor) will name (behavior) the four components (degree 1) of a behavioral objective with 100 percent accuracy (degree 2). You’ve probably never seen an objective like that at the start of a course you’ve attended. That is because it isn’t necessary to share all of the components with the learners. But you, as a designer, should know them and work toward creating them. The other thing about objectives is that you want to create them at the highest instructional level. You need to create significant learning goals to produce significant learning outcomes. One tool trainers use to elevate their objectives is Bloom’s Taxonomy. This hierarchy of learning outcomes starts at the simplest behaviors—recalling facts or providing definitions—and ends with creation, putting together knowledge in new ways (Table 17-1). (Note: Different people have different names for the levels of the taxonomy, but the concepts at each increasingly challenging level remain the same.) Table 17-1. Bloom’s Taxonomy

Description:

Example: Harassment Training

Put the information together in new ways. Can you build or invent something with the knowledge?

Write a policy statement for your staff on the reporting of alleged harassment

Creating

Judge or evaluate. Can you use the criteria or knowledge to assess a situation?

Evaluating

Critique this HR manager’s response to an allegation of harassment

Break the information into parts and examine them. Can you fit the pieces together with

Analyzing

Compare the steps for responding to quid pro quo versus hostile workplace harassment

Applying

Apply the steps for responding to an allegation of harassment to this case study

prior knowledge? Demonstrate the knowledge. Can you use the information in a new situation? Make sense of the content. Can you explain what it means? Remember the content. Can you name the facts, concepts, or models?

Understanding

Recalling

Explain why the steps for responding to an allegation of harassment are necessary List the steps for responding to an allegation of harassment

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The ABCD objective I gave was an example of remembering, the lowest behavior on the taxonomy. Just because someone can remember and name four components doesn’t mean they can create or use them. Here’s one that’s higher on Bloom’s Taxonomy: Using their course notes (condition), participants (actor) will evaluate (behavior) a behavioral objective to determine whether it contains all four parts (degree 1) with 100 percent accuracy (degree 2).

Create an Appropriate Level of Struggle Related to the concept of higher-level learning outcomes is the concept of struggle. Ask a question that’s too easy, and participants check out. “Why does that question even need an answer,” they wonder, “when it’s so obvious?” Ask a question that’s too challenging, and they shut down. Design your questions at an appropriate level of struggle and you will keep them engaged and motivated. Struggle isn’t just about the questions you ask, your exercises and content should also push learners a bit outside their comfort zones. More on the concept of struggle in Challenge 34.

Tap Into How Memory Works Cognitivism is the theory that learning happens based on what goes on inside our brains. Aspects of memory influence your work as a training designer: • The short-term (or working) memory is an active processor. Shortterm memory isn’t a place (it can’t store anything); it’s an information treatment function. It’s the part of your brain that is busy thinking, solving problems, and learning. • That working memory has a limited capacity for how much it can process at one time. And the limits are even more stringent when it’s already busy actively processing something. So, for instance, at the beginning of your courses, there’s more room for your content to enter into a participant’s processor. Once the course is under way, there is less room, because the processing function is already busy. The concept of chunking content is a result of this limitation on working memory. Chunking is taking several disparate pieces of content and grouping them together so there is less to process. For example, you could ask learners to remember the four components of a behavioral learning objective, or you could ask them to remember the mnemonic ABCD. In the latter case, it moves through the treatment function as one item rather than four. 128  •  Challenge 17

The short-term or working memory does have dual channels. That is, people have two processing centers—one for auditory information and one for visual information. Things that can be presented to your active memory in two ways—visual and auditory—have a greater probability of being encoded and moved to long-term memory (where capacity is almost limitless). So, when you can get people to associate an image with a concept, it’s more likely to be remembered and retrieved. A simple example of this at work is when learning participants’ names. If you look at the person and say their name aloud at the same time, you are dual processing, instead of single processing, and doubling your chances of moving that information to long-term memory, and of having techniques to retrieve it. • Information in short-term memory is converted from data to code (referred to as encoding), which is how it gets transferred to longterm memory. The more elaborately learners encode information at the moment of learning, the stronger their memory for that information. Effective encoding techniques include making personalized connections to the content, arousing emotions (emotionally arousing events tend to be better remembered than neutral events), and associating content with information already present in our brains. • Retrieval may be improved by replicating the conditions surrounding the initial encoding. So, if you learned something while standing on your head, you will remember it best when standing on your head. If you learned it when you were sad, you will better remember it when you are sad. The implication is that you should provide training in an environment that replicates learners’ workplaces as closely as possible and try not to introduce content to learners when their minds are agitated, unless you want them to remember it best when agitated. These features of short and long-term memory are prime determinants for what works and does not work in your training. •

Don’t Try to Cover Too Much If working-memory capacity is needed to process new information for learning to occur, when you load it up with unnecessary content or irrelevant work, you impede that processing. This is called cognitive overload.

Challenge 17  •  129

One of the most common mistakes trainers at all experience levels make is to try to throw too much content into too short a timeframe, or to try to cover a lot of content at the expense of processing and practice time. Cognitivism will tell you that is going to have a detrimental affect on your ability to have participants meet learning outcomes or apply their new knowledge on the job. Given that you shouldn’t overload learners during your courses, you may wish to re-evaluate what kind of content you focus on during your sessions. Here are some best practices along those lines: • Separate “need to know” from “nice to know” content and leave the “nice to know” for individuals to pursue. • Consider flipped classrooms in which the information, models, and foundations are presented asynchronously (not live), as pre-work, and the live training time is devoted to discussion, practice, and synthesis. But I’m often asked, how do I get learners to actually complete their pre-work? Some techniques put the responsibility for doing the pre-work on learners (like those that offer two sessions of a class—a shorter one for those who can commit to doing the pre-work, and a longer one for those who can’t), while others take more of a hand-holding approach (like when pre-work is tracked in your learning management system and you are unable to even enroll in the classroom portion of the course until you have successfully completed the pre-work). Reminders help, especially when those reminders make the point clearly and often that the class will assume learners have certain knowledge and that those who arrive without that knowledge may fall behind and may need to come back at a later date. The precedent you set in your sessions also contributes to whether people complete their pre-work. If they know that you provide a thorough review of the pre-work at the start of each of your programs, they’ll be less likely to do the pre-work the next time. If they spend some time in your session lost and confused because they didn’t do it, they will be less likely to repeat the offense the next time. • Participants won’t remember everything you tell them in training. This makes sharing resources and showing how to find and use them perhaps the most important part of any training effort.

130  •  Challenge 17

•

•

Because most learning happens outside the classroom, one of your main jobs is to pique learners’ interest and curiosity so they are motivated to try things out and learn more on the job. Providing courses that help people learn how to learn are critically important, especially in today’s evolving workforce, in which some of the questions they’ll need to be able to answer, and tasks they’ll need to be able to do, haven’t even been created yet. Develop their knowledge, skills, and strategies for continuing their learning after the course is over, engaging in inquiry and constructing knowledge with this subject matter, and becoming a self-directing learner relative to this subject.

Capitalize on What Motivates People Behaviorism is the school of thought that behavior can be changed through conditioning and external rewards and penalties. This theory of learning is closely tied to learner motivation. Motivated participants have better learning outcomes. To motivate employees, you need to increase these three factors: value, confidence, and mood. As the learner attributes a higher value to what is to be learned, motivation goes up. How might your design increase the perceived value of training? Build in the “What’s in it for me?” (WIIFM). Have participants reflect on or discuss the benefits they might extract. Include examples of admired role models valuing and using the concepts from your course. As the previous discussion of struggle indicated, motivation is positively correlated with confidence, to a point. As I believe that I am capable of learning or doing something, my motivation to learn or do it goes up, until I reach the point where I become overconfident, and my motivation plunges (“This is so easy, I don’t even need to try”). The optimal point for learning, then, is that moment when I feel challenged (“I have to work at this to succeed”) and I feel secure (“If I work at this, I know I can succeed.”). That’s the point you need to design to. Finally, mood. We all know that if we’re not in the mood, our motivation to learn (or to do most anything) goes down. A positive mood, in which you are open and optimistic, without being flighty or euphoric, tends to increase motivation. Personal feelings affect our mood, as does the atmosphere of the learning and working environment. To affect mood as a trainer, you need to create a safe, positive learning environment and help learners reduce stress, Challenge 17  •  131

which breeds anxiety and fear of failure and severely dampens learning. More on this can be found in Challenge 33.

Connect to Prior Experience The constructivism theory of learning posits that learning happens as individuals construct meaning from their own experiences and environment. Design that encourages adult learners to recognize how new content connects to their prior knowledge and experience is the most powerful way you can achieve learning outcomes. Novice learners, or those new to the subject at hand, process new information and move it to long-term memory differently from experienced learners. Experienced learners have already built the connections that move information quickly from short-term to long-term memory, whereas new learners have not yet formed these sorts of connections. Here’s an example: If you are teaching an experienced horticulturalist three new breeds of flowers, you can help them compare the new breeds with ones they already know and have an image of in their minds. If you were teaching these three new breeds of flowers to someone who doesn’t have an existing “catalog” of breeds in their memories, you’d need to help them become experienced learners by helping them make connections to their own prior knowledge. For instance, “Have you ever seen a pinwheel? With that image in your mind, look at this breed of flowers and notice its similarities to a pinwheel.” You’ve now created a bucket that this novice horticulturalist can use to sort things into in the future.

Utilize Adult Learning Principles and Andragogy Sometimes trainers stick to lecture-type formats in their training because they think that’s the only way to impart the information. In essence, they don’t trust learners to learn the content any other way. This means trainers are not treating them as adults, nor using principles of learner-centered instruction (andragogy). Most people’s learning was done when they were younger, and so you may be more familiar with pedagogical (instructorcentered) approaches to instruction traditionally used to teach children. Table 17-2 shows how andragogy differs from pedagogy.

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Table 17-2. Andragogy Versus Pedagogy Key Features of Traditional Pedagogy

Key Features of Andragogy

Audience is referred to as “students”

Audience is referred to as “participants” or “learners”

Belief that students are dependent on a knowledgeable teacher for learning

Belief that participants have an independent learning style and are not reliant on others to impart knowledge

Assumption that learners are inexperienced or uninformed; trainer is seen as the primary resource to provide examples and solutions

Assumption that learners have experience to contribute; participants are seen as the primary resources for examples and solutions

Learning objectives are predetermined and inflexible

Learning objectives can be customized for individuals or groups

Uses passive training methods

Uses active training methods

Teacher controls timing and pace

Learners influence timing and pace

Students contribute little to the experience

Participant involvement is vital to success

Learning is content centered

Learning is real-life-problem centered

When active learning methods are used (like those in Table 17-2), when participants are involved, and when learning is centered on real-life problems, training embraces principles of adult learning and is more effective. Malcolm Knowles, a pioneer in adult education, contributed these principles to our understanding of andragogy: • Relevance. Adults need to know why they need to learn something. • Self-concept. Adult learners see themselves as self-directing, responsible grown-ups. • Learners’ experience. Adult learners have a great deal of knowledge and skill to contribute. • Readiness to learn. Adults are eager to learn things that will help them efficiently cope with daily life. • Problem-orientation. Adults are willing to devote energy to learning things they believe will help them solve a problem. • Internal motivation. Adults are more responsive to internal motivators (such as increased self-esteem) than to external motivators (such as higher salaries).

Challenge 17  •  133

Lean on Established Practices Trainers and learning professionals have been thinking about how to utilize the strategies that help people learn best for decades. As such, you don’t have to reinvent the wheel when you’re designing training. Here, for example, are two approaches that have held up well over the years. In fact, novice trainers would do well to use either of these as the outline for their programs, because doing so will ensure interactivity, variety, and stickiness. Kolb’s Experiential Learning Cycle American educational theorist David A. Kolb created a holistic, cyclical theory of learning that combines experience, perception, cognition, and behavior. In Kolb’s model, you first have an experience—whether that is an active experience or just exposure to a new subject. Then you reflect on that experience. Next you conceptualize what you learned from that experience. Finally, you try out what you have learned, which becomes a new experience that you then reflect on, learn from, and try out, as shown in Figure 17-1. Figure 17-1. Kolb’s Experiential Learning Cycle Do or Experience Something (e.g., watch a training video on leading others through change)

Apply What You’ve Learned (e.g., implement one of the key concepts back on the job)

134  •  Challenge 17

Concrete Experience

Active Experimentation

Reflective Observation

Abstract Conceptualization

Reflect on the Experience (e.g., debrief or journal about key concepts from the video or how the video made you feel)

Determine What You’ve Learned and How to Apply It (e.g., discuss or create an action plan for how you can apply key concepts from the video to a change you will be leading)

Gagné’s Nine Conditions of Learning In the 1960s, educational psychologist Robert Gagné created a list of nine conditions for learning that still holds up today. These nine conditions are: • Gain learners’ attention. Make a provocative statement, ask a question, give a self-assessment; do something to hook them in. • Share the objectives. Set expectations; don’t let them waste energy wondering where this program is going. • Stimulate recall. Tie concepts back to something they know. • Deliver content in bite-size chunks. • Use methods to enhance understanding. • Provide practice opportunities. • Provide feedback on performance: Practice without feedback can be ineffective—or harmful. • Assess performance. • Enhance retention and transfer to the job.

Bottom Line You don’t have to be an instructional designer to employ the verified learning strategies, tools, and principles that make up the craft.

Go Deeper “Short Term Memory,” rule 5 in Brain Rules, by John Medina This entire book explains the complicated workings of the brain in a straightforward, simple manner, including stories to illustrate each concept. The short-term memory “rule” covers the life cycle of a declarative memory: encoding storing, retrieving, and forgetting. The types and conditions for encoding presented here have profound implications for training design. Other rules Medina puts forward, including for long-term memory, attention, wiring, and stress, are also widely applicable to our work.

“Human Memory” by James Kelly The three domains of human memory we must understand to create effective learning are encoding, storage, and retrieval. This webpage from the Peak Performance Center provides more information about each of these, along with links to many related articles on memory.

“Memory and Cognition in Learning” by Jonathan Halls Our work as trainers must be primarily focused on where learning takes place—in the brain. The better we understand how humans think, understand, learn, and remember, the more effective training we design. This Infoline provides a comprehensive overview of how information is processed through our brains, as well as brain-friendly learning principles.

Challenge 17  •  135

“Cognitive Load and Learning,” ch. 3 in Evidence-Based Training Methods, by Ruth Colvin Clark If working memory gets overloaded, learning is disrupted. This short and theoretical chapter introduces the concepts of intrinsic, extraneous, and germane cognitive load.

“Adult Learning” from the Peak Performance Center This webpage contains only a chart with the headings “Principle” and “Action.” For each of 24 tenets of adult learning, a related action to incorporate into your design is

included.

(Visit

thepeakperformancecenter.com/educational-learning/learning/

principles-of-learning/adult-learning.)

“Adult Learning Principles” and “Getting Learners to Remember,” ch. 5 and 7 in Telling Ain’t Training, by Harold D. Stolovitch and Erica J. Keeps We are all very much alike in how we perceive, process, store, and retrieve information. Chapter 5 focuses on what the authors believe are the four most applicable and meaningful principles for adult learning: readiness, experience, autonomy, and action. Chapter 7 describes six types of effective cognitive strategies for organizing information so that learners can internalize and recall it more easily.

“How Do You Learn?” ch. 2 in The Art and Science of Training, by Elaine Biech Learning is not an automatic consequence of pouring information into another’s head. Trainers who facilitate learning in line with how adults learn will create learning that lasts. This chapter provides overviews of several key learning techniques from cognitive science, neuroscience, moderate stress, spacing, and David Rock’s AGES model.

136  •  Challenge 17

18

Challenge:

I want to design interactive training, but I’m not that creative

Description Spend enough time working, and you’re bound to attend a training session that is lively; one in which the time flies by, and participants engage with the content during the session and then remember it afterward. Of course, you want all the training you design to go like that, but it can be easy to get stuck using the same types of games or activities over and over again (Jeopardy!, anyone?). Or maybe as a new trainer, you haven’t been exposed to enough good training to have a storehouse of activities to pull from. Maybe you don’t see yourself as capable of producing such lively and interactive experiences— you’re just not that creative.

Solutions To approach training design creatively, you’ll need to start thinking differently about creativity and about your learning activities. Here are some strategies for both.

Change Your Mindset Instead of thinking about how to make training fun, think about how to make it instructionally sound, and creative ideas and activities will follow. You don’t have to be capital-C creative to design training that engages learners. Don’t get hung up on whether you are or aren’t; just focus on what will bring the content to life for your participants. Before you write yourself off as not being creative, you may wish to get a more objective view of whether this is indeed the case. Tool 18-1 at the end of this challenge is an adapted version of quiz I developed for the 1996 ATD Infoline “The 3-5-3 Approach to Creative Training Design,” which you can use to assess how creative your current training design is.

Challenge 18  •  137

Utilize Cognitive Strategies Cognitive strategies are those that most effectively present content so you can capitalize on how people learn. Let’s say the topic is the importance of having hard conversations. Here are how four common cognitive strategies can make that topic “juicy”: • Make content-to-self, content-to-content, or content-to-world connections. For example, asking: “When was a time that a conversation changed your life?” (content-to-self), or “What news story this week would have gone a whole different way if a hard conversation had been had?” (content-to-world). Make inferences and predictions. Read the first part of a case study and ask participants to predict how it will end if a hard conversation happens and if a hard conversation doesn’t happen. • Summarize. Have participants turn the key points you’ve covered about the importance of having hard conversations into a public service announcement poster promoting difficult conversations. • Mnemonics. Share an acronym, an acrostic, a rhyme, or a key word (or ask participants to create their own) to remind them of the importance of hard conversations, like the acronym “Relationships are DEAR (deep, energized, actionable, and real) when you have difficult conversations.” Cognitive strategies are based on how the brain processes information, so they are effective in transmitting knowledge, skills, and attitudes. And a side effect? They are usually more engaging, too. Get a list of cognitive strategies and build some ideas off of them as I did in the difficult conversations example. •

Write Compelling Questions Questions generate participation and inspire creativity. Nothing has the power to bring about a complete mental turnaround like a good question. Questions are an effective technique for cognitive mental processing and produce the interactivity you are seeking as a facilitator of adult learning. In a recent conversation about the value of questions, a new trainer told me, “Even though the content I deliver is mandated by federal regulation, I try to sprinkle in reflective questions like, ‘How is this relevant to you?’ or ‘How do you imagine this federal policy connecting to your life?’ It makes the content more meaningful to participants, and they seem to engage more.”

138  •  Challenge 18

As, or more, important than asking participants questions to engage them in the material is having them create questions of their own. This is an effective, active technique that taps into adult learning principles like focusing content on real-life problems, or directing and customizing their own learning. So, for example, you might stop before the end of a module and ask participants to work with a partner to write three questions they can ask you during the Q&A, or that they might ask each other as a recap of the module.

Ensure Variety One way to ensure that your training is energetic and creative is to have a variety of activities throughout that span a spectrum of participation levels. In How to Write Terrific Training Materials (2013), author Jean Barbazette proposes that the activities in Table 18-1 are at certain levels of participation. She suggests varying the level every 15 minutes for classroom training, every two minutes for a webinar, and every five minutes for virtual instructor-led training. She also believes that you should have an activity that is above a five at least once an hour before lunch, and at least twice an hour after lunch. Table 18-1. The Different Levels of Participation 9 Practice

8 Selfassessment

4 Large group discussion

7 Role play or skill practice

3 Participative lecture or poll

2 Lecture or video

6 Case study or exercise 1 Reading

5 Small group discussion 0 Being read to

Source: Barbazette (2013).

Utilize Multiple Intelligences Howard Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences theory is a useful framework for thinking about different ways to present information. His model is different from the prevailing (and debunked) learning styles approach, which classifies students as being a specific type of learner, or as having an innate or fixed type of intelligence (for example, “I’m a visual learner”). The truth is, people can learn effectively using all sensory modalities, so training should tap into all of them (or as many of them as possible). Learning styles theory is about how people take in information; multiple intelligences is about the many ways information can be presented. So, how can you use this theory to make your design more creative? Take your content—maybe citing the benefits of a Challenge 18  •  139

new product you need people to sell—and try to design an activity to connect learners to those benefits using at least four of the eight intelligences listed below. Here’s how that might look in our example: • Musical: Write a jingle highlighting the product’s benefits. • Kinesthetic: Put the benefits on cards and have participants match them to the products. • Visual/spatial: Have learners create and use flash cards to review the benefits. • Interpersonal: Have learners test one another on the flash cards they created together. • Naturalistic: Have learners create an icon using an image from nature to represent each of the benefits. • Intrapersonal: Let participants take some quiet time to think about how important each of the benefits is to them personally. • Logical/mathematical: Have participants determine the cost savings that the different benefits afford, or match up different types of customers with the benefits that would most appeal to that particular type and explain why they made the matches they did. • Verbal/linguistic: Have participants verbalize the benefits in a roleplay scenario, whether that is just reading the scenario from a script, or making up a script as they go.

Modify Existing Training Activities Good news! You don’t have to create new training activities. They’re already out there. You can find them in books, from professional associations, on discussion boards, on Pinterest, or by “borrowing” from workshops you attend. You can use existing formats as skeletons for a new activity, like game shows. When you get exposed to fun, effective activities that you like, keep track of them in a centralized place so that you can look to them when you need ideas, whether that’s a manila folder, a spreadsheet on your laptop, or notes on your phone.

Think Past Your First Solution That publication I wrote for ATD back in 1996 was really just a reminder to trainers to think beyond their first good idea. (It had you think of three ideas and then five more, and finally had you pick your favorite of those eight ideas, and think of three ways you might go about doing that). An example is 140  •  Challenge 18

provided in Table 18-2. In the example, I was trying to figure out how to get participants to share their expectations at the start of a training program on coaching. My first idea was just to go around the room asking for these. The model had me think of seven additional ways that I could accomplish this. For the final three ideas, I went back to my favorite idea, which was to have participants interview each other for common expectations (idea 5); and then I had to think about three different ways those interviews might look. Even if you don’t use 3-5-3 or any formal exercise to stretch your thinking, it’s a good idea to force yourself to go beyond the first thoughts that come to your mind, which are generally not your most creative. Table 18-2. 3-5-3 Example for Expectations for a Coaching Program 3 The first three ideas that come to your head

5 Five additional ideas beyond your first three

1. Go around the room asking for expectations and chart them 2. Create index cards of hopes and fears 3. Visualize the end of the session

4. Brainstorm what a coach does and prioritize parts they want to learn 5. Interview each other for common expectations 6. Create ad for course they really want to take 7. Have group write objectives for the program 8. Play “expectations” bingo

3 Three ways to approach your favorite of the prior eight ideas Expanding on idea 5: Interview each other to identify differences in expectations • Interview each other and ask, “How could this program fail?” • Interview each other and ask, “Why are you here today instead of being anywhere else?” •

Bottom Line You don’t have to be creative to provide learning that is interactive and engaging. Focus on making your learning instructionally sound—and lively training will follow.

Go Deeper “What Are the Best Training Methods?” ch. 4 in How to Write Terrific Training Materials, by Jean Barbazette Selecting the best training methods is easy, Barbazette suggests, when you first identify the learning objective. This chapter then presents some examples of the best training methods aligned with objectives, facilitator style, and methodology.

Challenge 18  •  141

Multiple Intelligences for Adult Literacy and Education This site provides an overview of Howard Gardner’s work, as well as an assessment of “how you are smart,” and an extensive list of related resources. (Visit literacynet.org/mi/intro/ index.html.)

“Designing Active Training Activities,” ch. 7 in Active Training, by Mel Silberman and Elaine Biech Creative trainers are not a special breed; they work at being creative. This chapter includes three tips for creative design that involve repurposing, modifying, and creating activities that accomplish multiple objectives in one.

142  •  Challenge 18

Tool 18-1. How Creative Is Your Training? Complete this self-assessment to get a sense of how creative your programs are now. Scoring and suggestions follow. 1

How would you describe your own creativity? Not at all creative

2

1

2

3

4

5

6

Extremely important

1

2

3

4

5

6

Completely true

1

2

3

4

5

6

Completely true

1

2

3

4

5

6

Completely true

1

2

3

4

6

Completely true

5

I can be comfortable when I do not have an answer in a problem situation. Not at all true

8

Extremely creative

6

The harder you work at something, the better you are at it. Not at all true

7

5

In general, trying new things is stressful for me. Not at all true

6

4

You can learn new things, but you can’t really change how creative you are. Not at all true

5

3

Creative training design means creating training that is fun. Not at all true

4

2

How important do you think creativity is when designing a workplace training program? Not at all important

3

1

1

2

3

4

5

Completely true

6

Which of these statements are true for you? (check all that apply): ____

I have been told by others that I am creative

____

I know someone who is creative whom I can emulate

____

When designing a program, I seek out more than two sources for content

____

I attend workshops and programs on topics similar to those I am designing

____

I refer to sourcebooks (or some sort of suggestion list) for creative training activities

____

I have taken workshops on creative or critical thinking

____

I have completed a profiling instrument (e.g., MBTI, Strengths, HBDI) that indicated I have a creative or entrepreneurial mindset

____

Participant evaluations of my training have included comments indicating training activities were creative.

Challenge 18  •  143

Tool 18-1. How Creative Is Your Training? (cont.) 9

10

11

Which of these things do you do regularly? (check all that apply): ____

Read or write fiction, poetry, songs

____

Make art

____

Dance, exercise

____

Play an instrument

____

Attend artistic programs (museum exhibits, performances)

____

Watch, or participate in, comedy or improvisational theater

____

Tell stories, jokes, or share analogies

____

Go out in nature

____

Journal, meditate, or practice mindfulness

____

Do crosswords, Sudoku, or other mental puzzles

____

Speak another language

Thinking back on the last training program you designed, which of the following were included (check all that apply): ____

Behavioral learning objectives

____

A video, audio, or music clip

____

Participants stood up at least once

____

Participants worked in pairs at least once

____

Participants worked in small groups at least twice

____

At least two slides had images rather than words

____

Multiple, scaffolded activities for at least one learning objective

____

At least one new activity (not a repurposing of an activity you’d already used)

____

Participants were assessed on how well they achieved behavioral learning objectives

List as many ways you can think of to review content at the end of a program (for example, you could present a recap of the top takeaways from the program):

144  •  Challenge 18

Scoring Answer

Score

Explanation

1

1 2–3 4–5 6

0 points 1 point 2 points 3 points

Your own perception of how creative you are can have a strong positive or negative impact on the programs you design and on your creativity. If you scored 0 or 1 points on this item, remember you don’t have to be capital-C creative to design training that engages learners. Don’t get hung up on whether you are or aren’t; just focus on what will bring the content to life for your participants.

2

1 2–3 4–5 6

0 points 1 point 2 points 3 points

You won’t bring creativity to the design table if you don’t perceive a need for it (Challenge 17 talks about the link between perceived value and motivation). Even if you do think it is important, many creative people fight off their own creative impulses under the assumption that the work environment is not the place to exhibit these. If you scored 0 or 1 points on this item, you might read Challenge 8, on the value of active learning, to see if it affects your perception.

3

1 2–3 4–5 6

0 points 1 point 2 points 3 points

As mentioned throughout the challenges in this book, fun does not equate to learning. Creative training design is not about creating fun (though fun can be a positive outcome of designing creatively). Creative training design is about engaging participants and capitalizing on adult learning theory. If you scored a 0 on this item, you may want to examine what assumptions you are making about creativity and fun in your learning design.

4-6

1 2–3 4–5 6

0 points 1 point 2 points 3 points

Do this for each of questions 4–6, which focus on whether you are approaching creativity from a growth or fixed mindset. As we discussed in Challenge 1, we want our learners to understand that the brain is elastic and that even if you’ve not been proficient at something your whole life, if you put enough energy in and get the right instruction, you can become great at that thing. Not only artists and musicians with natural-born talent are creative. If your score on this item is 0 or 1, remember that creativity is a learned skill that can be honed over time.

7

1 2-3 4-5 6

0 points 1 point 2 points 3 points

Creativity flourishes when one is able to function without all the answers. The need to be right all the time is the biggest obstacle to new ideas. If your score on this item is 0 or 1, you may want to practice deferring judgment and living with uncertainty for a time until the right approach presents itself.

Challenge 18  •  145

Checks or Ways

Score

Explanation

8

1–2 3–5 6–8

1 point 2 points 3 points

This item describes some of the ways that creative training designers I know go about honing their craft. If your score on this item is 1 (or 2, or 3), try incorporating one more of these the next time you are involved in a design project. A few of the options here ask you to think about how others perceive your work. If you haven’t asked others to rate the creativity of your design, this might be a good first step, and a way to track your progress over time.

9

1–3 4–7 8–11

1 point 2 points 3 points

While regularly indulging in creative pursuits or diversions is not a requirement to be creative in training design, it can open your mind to new ways of doing things. The activities listed in this question align with Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences. As described in Challenge 18, we want to engage in as many of these in our training design as possible in order to tap into all of a learner’s sensory modalities. If your score was 1 (or 2, or 3), try checking off just one more item this week.

10

1–3 4–6 7–9

1 point 2 points 3 points

Perhaps your training design is more creative than you think it is. This item lists some (but certainly not all) clues that you are already on the right track in designing creatively. If your score on this item is 1 (or 2, or 3), try checking off just one more item the next time you are asked to design training.

11

1–2 3–4 5–6 7 or more

0 points 1 point 2 points 3 points

This question was to help you start using the 3-5-3 approach described in this challenge. If your score on this item was 0–1, you might try using this, or a similar approach, to challenge yourself to think past the first ideas that come to your mind, which are not always your most creative. These are often the old standbys, and you might want to consider the next ideas that are just beyond them. Try thinking up just one more approach the next time you are designing a training activity.

Adapted from Oberstein (1999).

146  •  Challenge 18

19

Challenge:

I want my materials to look good—and be effective

Description Today’s learners have a high standard for the look and feel of their training materials or interactions. They are used to glossy campaigns, seamless internet navigation, and on-the-go delivery of products and services. When they attend live training, they look for elements of interaction that they are used to from social media, including YouTube-like videos, GIFs, and online polling. Your materials need to reflect a high production value, and you need to make sure that they retain instructional integrity. So how do you make materials appealing, while at the same time maintaining instructional standards?

Solutions With pressure on you to develop training assets that “pop,” it’s up to you to design materials that look good, but also are effective. Here’s how to merge those two desires.

Know the Purpose of the Item You Are Producing Often, one PowerPoint deck is created for a classroom or virtual training and it is used as slides, a facilitator’s guide, and a participant handout. In reality, these three documents serve different audiences with different purposes, which will affect what they should look like. Facilitator’s Guides Facilitator guides are important whether you are creating training that you will deliver yourself, or that you will hand off to a facilitator or subject matter expert. Obviously, the format will vary depending on whom it’s for, from bulleted notes on a PowerPoint deck to more robust outlines in a separate document. Facilitator’s guides should not be scripted, but contain an outline of the main ideas that facilitators will convey. If a script is needed, it might be the case that the learning should be asynchronous. Icons that the facilitator can see at a glance are helpful. I’ve seen icons included for advancing a Challenge 19  •  147

slide, referencing a participant handout, questions, transitions, launching an activity, and key points. Facilitator’s guides should also include approximate timeframes for each discussion and activity. Facilitator’s Slides Slides are an aid for the facilitator to convey content during live training. We all know how deadly it is when slides or screens contain lengthy information that presenters simply read out, as in the example on the left in Figure 19-1. Complex content belongs on a handout, not a slide. A helpful guideline here is the “Rule of Five”: Slides or screens should include a maximum of five lines or bullets and five words per line. Fewer is even better. More than that creates extraneous load and sensory overload, and leads to attention issues when a particular slide or screen is shown for too long. Slides should also contain a reference to the relevant page numbers in the participant materials. A better facilitator slide is shown in the example on the right in Figure 19-1. Figure 19-1. Bad and Good Presentation Designs

Participant Handouts The design of participant handouts depends on their purpose—whether they are places to complete in-class exercises, reference materials, job aids, or all three. Facilitator slides are not suitable for participants, who need more than just a few bullets and icons to recall the information. And they don’t need to have copies of slides that are actually placeholders, like “Break” or “Debrief.” So, if you are giving participants copies of your facilitator slides, they should be abbreviated. And, they should be supplemented with more detailed handouts. When sharing PowerPoint slides with participants, ensure all your facilitator notes have been deleted. Be aware of when handouts provide answers to activities before you’ve conducted them. Though, in my experience, participants usually don’t reference these during group activities.

148  •  Challenge 19

When handouts are used as workbooks, there need to be charts or blanks to fill in, and plenty of room to write and take notes. Some participants like to mark up their workbooks in class, but take a clean copy with them back to the workplace (perhaps on a memory stick that you give them during class). Job Aids Job aids, which provide documentation of the steps to follow when performing a task, should be available during the class session to practice with. That means they should be separate from any bound materials. Make sure your job aids serve as a refresher for individuals who know how to do the steps and as a resource for those who don’t. See an example in Tool 19-1, which shows the at-a-glance steps on the left and the more detailed tasks and descriptions for each step on the right. Finally, practice using job aids should be provided during a class, but job aids should be designed for the environment in which they will be used. For instance, if the learner might need to reference content about equipment they are operating, they may need a more durable, pocket-size job aid. If they may need to remember the three responses to give a customer on the phone based on a response the customer gives, that job aid might be a poster that hangs prominently in the workspace, or in a spiral bound booklet that can lay flat or be propped up by the phone as a tent. Before you produce a job aid, find out about the space where it will be stored and where it will be used.

Use Only Relevant Graphics Images are not all created equal. Whether or not they promote learning has a lot to do with the type of graphic: • Relevant images are images that relate to the instructional goal. For instance, if a module’s objective is to identify a customer who’s frustrated, or a plant that is dying, an image of an angry customer or a sick plant is relevant—and effective. There is a positive correlation between learning and relevant graphics in novice learners; experienced learners probably already have their own image in mind that they can relate to, so relevant images neither help nor hurt their understanding (Clark 2015). • Decorative images may relate to the topic, but not to the instructional objective. This would include factoids and anecdotes related to the topic but irrelevant to the learning goal, or images related to Challenge 19  •  149

•

the content but not to the learning outcome, like this graphic on a slide about the topic of practice (Figure 19-2). Decorative images like this one of the child practicing the violin have been shown to have no impact, or a negative one (Clark 2015). I experienced this firsthand when I used this slide in my Learning Design Fundamentals course, and a participant who had been a violin player as a child told me that her negative connotations of that experience caused her to lose focus. Distracting images do not relate to the instructional goal or to the content and have a negative impact on learning (Clark 2015). Distracting images include fancy borders and company logos, overly elaborate templates, pumpkins at Halloween, and cartoons intended only to add humor or interest.

Figure 19-2. An Example of a Decorative Image

Practice

Deliberate activity designed to promote a behavioral or psychological response that will build goal-relevant knowledge or skills.

Utilize Spatial Representation Being able to represent content visually is an effective cognitive strategy, because the more of a learner’s senses we engage in thoughtful and meaningful ways, the more easily learning can occur. The majority of the sensory information we take in comes to us through sight, so making effective use of visuals is especially important. Spatial representation is a cognitive-processing strategy that entails presenting information in some graphic form that helps learners see how things relate—the distance between them, their sizes, where they are located in relation to other objects, and so on, like the deep sea creatures on the chart in Figure 19-3. Pie charts, graphs, maps, flowcharts, and infographics are also examples of spatial representation. 150  •  Challenge 19

Learners can help create spatial images related to the content (participate in constructing them), and then use them for studying, recall, or as a job aid for application. Just make sure that the spatial images they create are correct before they use them for any of these purposes. For example, participants in a session covering how to set up their voicemail accounts might create their own flowcharts of which buttons to press on their keypads, and in which order. Before they take that back to work with them to use when setting up their account, you’ll want to post something for them to compare with to make sure it is correct.

Figure 19-3. An Example of Spatial Representation

Keep It Simple Extraneous load is the burden trainers can place on learners through poorly designed content and materials. To reduce the load on your learners’ working memories, you need to keep your materials simple in the following ways. Limit the Number of Fonts and Text Treatments Too many fonts, underlines, italics, and other treatments on a PowerPoint slide can drive people crazy. Keeping your styles to a minimum is about more than just keeping your audience sane. Sans serif fonts (like Arial) are cleaner and easier to read when projected, and that speeds up eye movement. Every time a font or treatment changes, it slows down reading speed and comprehension. It’s recommended that you use only one font for your entire session, two at most. Leave Plenty of White Space White space is literally the empty area on a page, screen, or slide between paragraphs, between lines, in the margins, and so on. Be sure to leave lots of blank space to not overwhelm your learners.

Challenge 19  •  151

Use a Large Font Make text large enough for people sitting at their computer screens, or sitting in the back row of your classroom, to see. Print out your screen or slide and put it on the floor. If you can’t read it, it’s got too much information on it (or the font is too small). Use lettering that is bold and sharp so that it can be read from far away. Avoid Icon Overload Too many arrows, buttons, shortcuts, and symbols per screen are not only visually cluttered, but limit interaction when learners can’t easily find them. Avoid Excessive Animation Too many moving parts can give learners a headache and make it hard for their eyes to focus on what you need them to. Limit Dramatic Exits When text and images swipe away or dissolve into bits before falling off the screen or slide, it can distract the audience. I’ve seen a general guideline that you limit these types of transitions to three per session—maybe just where you want to make a very dramatic break from one section of your program to another, or where it fits with the concept being described (for example, if you’re talking about a myth that must be dissolved). Limit Build Effects Having each bullet enter the screen or slide as you talk about it is only necessary when your ideas are complex and you need to explain each bullet separately. Don’t use builds on every single slide, because too much of any effect makes participants zone out. Consistency Is Important Remain consistent throughout your program in where buttons are located, what color palette is used, and so on. Use the Simplest Image That Makes Your Point When researchers tested which type of graphic was most effective between a simple diagram, a photograph, a detailed sketch, or an animated image, the simple line drawing produced the best results. Of course, a simple line drawing won’t work if your objective is to teach advanced anatomy, but these 152  •  Challenge 19

experiments suggest that you are better off using visuals in the simplest form congruent with the intended learning outcome (Clark 2015). Keep Visuals and Related Text Close to Each Other. Text should be placed as close to the visual it describes as possible; otherwise, you are placing a burden on your learners’ working memories, because they are forced to hold the image in their brains while searching for the text elsewhere on the page, or vice versa. Stick to One Idea per Slide or Screen Some new trainers are given a guideline of how many slides should be included in their training deck or e-learning program based on its duration. That leads to trainers overloading slides and screens to keep below the suggested maximum. Better to have 100 slides or screens with one image or idea on each than to have 20 slides with the same content crammed into one-fifth the space. It’s not about limiting the number of slides in your deck; it’s about limiting the amount of information on each slide. Whether you have 100 slides or 20, I strongly suggest eliminating slide numbers. Slide numbers may be useful for instructors, but not for participants, who are not referring to slides by their numbers even when they exist. In fact, seeing a high number on a slide might actually turn a participant off, when really having more slides with less on them is a best practice.

Address Diversity and Inclusion If adult learners need to be able to connect the information you are providing to their own experience (and they do!), and if social inclusion is a critical need (it is!), they need to see themselves in your materials. This means that if you include images of individuals, you want people to be able to find themselves in those images. Make sure that you are displaying a mix of people across genders, ages, races, disabilities, and other identifiable factors. You’ll want to do this even if the diversity on your slides is more aspirational than the diversity in your existing audience. Inclusion doesn’t just matter visually, of course. For example, make sure you use names that represent a diverse population, that supervisors and leaders in your examples are women and people of color, and that traditional European male names are used just as often for administrative positions as are female or ethnically diverse names.

Challenge 19  •  153

Adhere to Graphic Design Principles When I was a new trainer, I was sent to a workshop on basic graphic design (a topic I highly recommend as part of your ongoing development). Here are some of the tips that I still utilize to this day from that long-ago session. Follow the Eyes When you include relevant images of people in your materials, your viewers’ gaze will follow the eyes of the person in the image. So, you want people in your images to be focusing where you want viewers to look, not looking off the screen or straight ahead. That’s why the e-learning screen on the left, in which the eyes are facing the text, is more effective than the one on the right, in which the eyes are directing you off the screen (Figure 19-4). Figure 19-4. Follow the Eyes Graphic Design Principles 1. Keep it simple 2. “Rule of five” 3. Big and bold 4. Learners follow the eyes 5. Z-pattern

Graphic Design Principles 1. Keep it simple 2. “Rule of five” 3. Big and bold 4. Learners follow the eyes 5. Z-pattern

Follow the Motion Just as viewers’ gaze follows where the eyes are looking, they also follow the direction of motion. So, if your materials include relevant images of someone driving, biking, or walking in a particular direction, those, too, need to be moving toward where you want learners to look, not away from your text (Figure 19-5). Figure 19-5. Motion Toward Where You Want Attention Buying a Mountain Bike ° Ensure proper size

° Ensure proper size

° Consider wheel size

° Consider wheel size

° Align storage with

° Align storage with

weight ° Beware flashy decorations ° Check repair records for model

154  •  Challenge 19

Buying a Mountain Bike

weight ° Beware flashy

decorations ° Check repair

records for model

Use Color Color is one of the most powerful tools graphic designers use. To maximize the contrast between colors and make your visuals pop, select complementary colors, which are those that are situated across a color wheel from each other, like blue and orange or purple and green. If you read blog posts from website designers and accessibility experts, they’ll tell you that text and background combinations with too low of a contrast can lead to eye strain. This is why we used to write on black boards with white chalk and now write on white boards with dark colors. Lighter colors—like pink, yellow, and orange—can’t be seen well from afar, and red can’t be distinguished by many color-blind people. When your e-learning buttons and arrows are in lighter colors, they can be easily missed, leaving participants unable to figure out how to navigate your program. Alternate colors for alternating bullets or alternate shading to distinguish separate rows in a chart. This helps the eye travel from one to the next while reducing overload from being unable to distinguish one point from another. Finally, understand that colors can convey emotions, so be careful of eliciting associations with certain colors. For example, black feels serious and sophisticated, blue makes you feel safe and relaxed, green makes you feel optimistic and refreshed, and purple makes you feel creative. Red reminds you of the teacher’s editing pencil in school, or signifies that you should stop doing something. Only Use Numbers With Steps in a List There are only three times to use numbers in a list: If you have to do the listed items in sequence, if it’s a top 10 list, or if you want to assign different items to different small groups to consider during an activity (for example, “Your group will brainstorm options for item 3”). Steps take numbers; tips take bullets. Use a Style Guide Once you have a look and feel that conforms to these principles of graphic design, and to the instructional research findings cited in this challenge, you’ll want to continue to reduce extraneous load—and to build a brand for your training function—by creating templates and style guides that your team can use for all of its learning assets. No matter which online course, which trainer’s classroom, or which promotional materials, your learners Challenge 19  •  155

should recognize it all as the work of the same department. At the same time, make sure there is some variety in your templates, so learners don’t get bored with your style and check out. That is why choosing a palette of colors is better than identifying just one or two colors and why having a few slide layouts is better than only one. Sometimes you will want to use the same brand book your company uses as a whole to be cohesive with the external voice and mission of your organization. This is especially relevant for your onboarding materials.

Use Your Resources There are high- and low-cost options to help you in producing materials with visual components. Get a Stock Photo Subscription Stock photo services are storehouses of graphics, audio clips, photographs, symbols, and charts that you can import into your materials. Some of these services are free—like clip art on your computer or Pinterest—and some charge an annual or per-use subscription fee. Examples of both types are listed in Tool 19-2 at the end of this challenge. Be sure that if you are not using a stock photo service, the images and clips you choose are not copyrighted. Another safe option is to go around your workplace and take photos on your own. You just need to get permission from the people in your photos and be prepared to explain if you have photos in your programs of employees who no longer work at your company. In lieu of taking your own photos, contact your organization’s communications or publications teams, which will already have a library of photographs of employees and buildings at your company. Get Help If graphic design is not your forte, and if there is no marketing or communications team in your organization to assist, you may want to hire a design firm to help create your templates. I’ve also enlisted grad students, design school students, even high-school students, to help me create visuals, templates, and style guides. There are also online tools that can help you come up with color palettes for your materials (Adobe has one, for example). The point is, you don’t have to figure this out on your own. There’s nothing wrong with needing some help with the visual aspects of your programs so you can focus more on the instructional components.

156  •  Challenge 19

Bottom Line Use those design principles for your materials that have been shown to correlate positively with learning.

Go Deeper “Design Effective Visual Support,” ch. 12 in How to Write Terrific Training Materials, by Jean Barbazette This chapter includes a discussion of the advantages and disadvantages of various media, as well as tips for designing slides for e-learning or classroom display and video scripting.

“Evidence-Based Use of Graphics, Text, and Audio,” pt. 2 in Evidence-Based Training Methods, by Ruth Colvin Clark Adding visuals to text promotes deeper learning—if the visuals are relevant and contribute to germane cognitive load. This section summarizes evidence and guidelines for use of graphics alone, and in combination with text and audio. This section is a must for anyone who wishes to create materials incorporating visuals that have been proven effective.

“Vision,” ch. 10 in Brain Rules, by John Medina This chapter posits that we learn and remember best through pictures, not written or spoken words. Once this premise is established, Medina provides a fascinating description of how our brains see and a simplified explanation of visual processing, with some tips for application in a learning event.

“Render: PowerPoint Tips, Tricks, and Secrets” and “Render: Design Principles for Professional Slides,” ch. 4 and 5 in A Trainer’s Guide to PowerPoint, by Mike Parkinson The quality of your presentation represents the quality of your content. Whereas I have briefly touched on some elements of graphic design in this challenge, Parkinson provides details of every aspect of fonts, backgrounds, colors, and layouts, as well as integrating video, sound, animation, and more. By the way, the book’s title implies these tips are for classroom training and the design of slide decks, but all of the tips, at least in these two chapters, also apply to the design of e-learning screens.

“How to Avoid Death by PowerPoint” a TED Talk by David JP Phillips Phillips combines his passion for the brain with his passion for how we do PowerPoint for an engaging, illustrated 20-minute talk on how excellent presentations should look.

“Colors and Emotions: How Colors Make You Feel” by Allison S. Gremillion Colors evoke various emotions rooted in psychological effects, biological conditioning, and cultural imprinting. This article explains how different colors can make you feel.

Challenge 19  •  157

Tool 19-1. Sample Job Aid Adding a Goal Into Our Performance Communication System



Log into PCS



Click on the “Performance” icon



Click the “Edit” button

The “Edit” button is under the heading “In-Progress Goals.”



Click the “Add” button

The “Add” button is at the bottom of the screen. You may have to scroll down to see it.



Fill in the “Goal” field

Give your goal a brief title.



Fill in the “Description” field

You might include any of the following in your description: Scope, affected departments, impact on organizational results, interdependencies, or progress required to achieve goals.



Click the calendar icon to select a “Due Date”



Select a “Status” (optional)

From your homepage, type “PCS” in the search field. When prompted, enter the username and password associated with your email account. Click “Enter.” Click this icon in the upper right corner.

Click this icon in the middle of your screen, and a monthly calendar will appear. Find the date on which you wish your goal to be complete. Click the downward-facing arrowhead to the right of the empty status field to bring up a list of status options to choose from. Status options are incomplete, partially complete, or completed. You can also leave this field blank.

Is this goal exactly as you’d like your manager to see it? If so, continue to the next step.



Click “Submit”

The green “Submit” button is on the bottom left of your screen. Clicking “Submit” will send the goal to your manager for review, edit, and approval. Once you click “Submit,” your goal will be listed under the “In Progress” heading and noted as “Pending approval.”

158  •  Challenge 19

Tool 19-2. Stock Photo Options Free Sites These sites provide searchable databases of thousands of free high-resolution images, videos, and illustrations. Be sure to read the licensing requirements on each site, which generally suggest that visuals can be freely used, or altered, without attribution, so long as you do not sell or redistribute the images; use them in connection with pornography, hate speech, or other illicit content; or in a manner likely to defame, insult, or embarrass the model or author. • unsplash.com: Photos across multiple categories, including business and work • pexels.com: Photos and videos, including of business and offices • pixabay.com: Photos, videos, and illustrations • barnimages.com: High resolution photos • affecttheverb.com/collection: Photos featuring people with disabilities, indigenous people, and people of color • broadlygenderphotos.vice.com: Photos featuring trans and nonbinary models • opendoodles.com: Sketches you can customize • undraw.co: Illustrations that you can automatically adjust to your color scheme • https://pngtree.com/free-png: Millions of .png transparent images and other graphics resources • slidescarnival.com: Free PowerPoint templates and Google slide themes • fontsquirrel.com: Free downloadable fonts Paid sites istockphoto.com: Pay per image or on a subscription basis for access to a vast library of royalty-free photographs, illustrations, and video (with links to royaltyfree audio clips) • Nounproject.com: Access more than 2 million curated icons for free (include attribution each time you use one) or for a low annual membership fee • Canva.com: Online design tool with free and paid templates for classroom and e-learning projects •

Other whocanuse.com: A tool that brings attention and understanding to how color contrast can affect people with different visual impairments

•

Resources were compiled by the Center for Leadership and Organizational Change at the University of Maryland, College Park.

Challenge 19  •  159

20

Challenge:

I’ve been asked to convert training from classroom to e-learning, and I don’t know where to begin

Description Classroom training is still the most utilized platform for distributing learning, according to the Association for Talent Development’s 2019 State of the Industry report, but more and more companies are enamored of asynchronous (non-real-time) online learning because it can be widely distributed, takes less time than classroom instruction (I’ve heard estimates that range from it taking half the time to one-third the time), and is thought to appeal to a more technologically savvy generation in the workplace. Asynchronous learning can be provided to employees on a just-in-time basis, unlike synchronous (live) training. Additionally, companies that have made an investment in e-learning distribution systems or authoring tools want a payoff in the form of lots of e-learning. Not all training is suitable for e-learning. Just because you can turn almost any classroom learning into e-learning doesn’t mean that it is the best instructional solution. So, how do you respond the next time someone asks you to take that existing classroom training and just “turn it into” e-learning?

Solutions Before you embark on converting existing training content to asynchronous e-learning, consider these tips.

Ensure the Underlying Instructional Design Is Solid When considering a conversion project, Howard Lewis, principal at Integrated Performance Solutions, first takes a good look at the program’s objectives. He checks to see if they “tell me what the program is there to accomplish; what you’re attempting to do with this training.” Additionally, he looks to see whether those objectives are clearly behavioral, so that the success of the

160  •  Challenge 20

program can be measured. If the objectives are fuzzy, it’s best to go back to the drawing board and speak to program sponsors and organizational leaders to get a better sense of what learners need to do upon completion, which could result in the creation of a completely revamped course.

Make Sure the Nature of the Content Is a Good Fit for E-Learning Some topics may be more well suited to an asynchronous e-learning format than others (though there are many “soft” topics that used to be considered a poor match for e-learning that can now be done quite well, like certain aspects of communication, including active listening). If, ultimately, what you want your learners to do is to run an effective meeting or offer constructive feedback, a live training event where they can actually try out those things with other people may be best. “Online learning can provide a simulation of how to operate an aerial work platform, for example” Lewis points out. “But eventually you’ll have to get your hands on the machine. E-learning can provide a lot of background information about the machines and how to operate them safely first, so that the time learners have to spend on the machine, or working with a mentor, can go much faster.” Often, instead of converting an entire classroom training to online, you will end up converting a portion of it as part of an overall blended approach to the topic, reducing live instruction time. Overall, you want to utilize the format that is the best fit for function. This may mean turning some of the proposed e-learning content into on-demand resources, like job aids, articles, or something else that delivers on the same benefits as e-learning, but is easier to maintain.

Segment the Content There is general agreement among those writing about e-learning that a participant should be at a computer completing asynchronous e-learning for less than an hour, and the vendors I work with suggest closer to 20 minutes. So, you have to determine whether your content can fit into shorter segments and whether it’s OK if learners walk away between segments. If not, a live option for training is probably preferable. One minute of synchronous training is not equal to one minute of asynchronous online training, as indicated in the description of this challenge. Asynchronous e-learning will be shorter because there is less time spent on Challenge 20  •  161

Q&A, introductions, and instructions, but you don’t want to end up with only lecture-style presentation of content. You still have to engage your learners.

Consider Users Not everyone in your organization may be able to take advantage of online learning. Make sure your learner analysis (see Challenge 16) uncovers issues that may have an impact on the effectiveness of e-learning as a solution, including whether learners will be non-English speakers, whether they will have access to technology and reliable internet, and what their overall literacy and technological literacy levels are. While virtual learning is one effective platform, we can’t assume, even today, that it is the best option. As one training professional from the transportation industry told me, “My bus drivers need to complete training. It can be done asynchronously, but there is only one driver’s lounge and some folks lack the technological literacy to complete the programs on their own.”

Consider User Environment Some organizations are eager to migrate classroom learning to e-learning but have not considered when and where their employees will complete this e-learning. If they are salaried employees, has the organization given explicit permission for them to complete the learning on work time? If they are hourly employees, is the organization prepared to pay them if they complete the training when they are off the clock? If not, you will be asking them to complete it while working, and is that even possible? I remember working with a national bank where all tellers were required to complete online learning during working hours. The bank first had to invest in hardware—headphones—for all employees so that they could hear the training and so that customers and colleagues couldn’t. Then, they had to consider where the tellers would sit to complete it. They tried having them do it at their stations, but customers didn’t really like seeing tellers at their stations staring at computer screens and not helping them. So, they made signs for them: “I’m in training right now.” This didn’t go over so well with customers either, which led to another investment in computer labs in several branches. Another organization was going to pay their employees nationally to complete the training on their own time; they just didn’t account for the fact that many of these employees lived in areas with spotty Internet coverage and could not access or complete the program as it was first produced. As these stories illustrate, 162  •  Challenge 20

all of the decisions you make about asynchronous learning need to consider the learner first.

Consider Your Timeline Developing e-learning takes longer than developing live training. Imagine, for example, that you were being forced to develop training to be delivered at the end of this week (and if that is happening, look to Challenges 8 or 15). If you were creating basic classroom training, you’d need only create your slides, participant handouts, and facilitator notes. If you were creating basic e-learning, you would need to create all of that, plus build audio files, select graphics, sync the two, load it to your LMS, and test it. And those are just bare-bones efforts. If you need to launch your program immediately, it may not be a good candidate for e-learning. A rough guideline I use to determine how long development will take, which was given by an e-learning vendor I’ve worked with, is 100 hours to design and develop one hour of level 1 e-learning (no video, low interaction) from scratch (that is, not converting classroom-based instruction). Level 2 e-learning (more interactive) can take about 200 hours. A more rigorous survey conducted by Karl Kapp and Robyn A. Defelice in 2017, which updated their research from 2003 and 2009, revealed these estimates (Table 20-1). Table 20-1. How Long to Develop One Hour of Training? Type of Training (per 1 hour)

Number of Respondents

Total Hours

Average

Traditional

136

5,175

38

Live, Instructor-Led (Virtual)

87

2,450

28

Level 1: Passive

87

3,693

42

Level 2: Limited

88

6,266

71

E-Learning and Level of Interaction

Level 3: Complex

53

6,864

130

Level 4: Real Time

21*

2,997

143

*The presented average for Level 4 should be used with caution as it is based on the input of 21 respondents.

Your requester may encourage you to cut corners given these estimates, such as cutting out testing time so long as the platform has worked

Challenge 20  •  163

to distribute similar training in the past. However, that’s not a good idea, because bugs are going to be program- and designer-specific, not related to the distribution method. If your time for development is limited, set expectations around a realistic level of interactivity and production value. Better yet, suggest a different format that is not as time intensive to develop, like job aids, video demonstrations, SME-moderated discussions, or something other than developing fullblown e-learning from scratch.

Determine What Types of Assessments Are Needed Lewis’s final consideration is what kind of assessments are needed. If a classroom course culminates in a role play that is evaluated by an observer with a checklist, there may not be a suitable equivalent online. “I look for a nice one-to-one transfer,” Lewis suggests. “Instead of the participant enacting a role play, I can create a simulation of that role play, and they can either fill in the blanks for some of the character’s responses or critique the simulation. But these adaptations need to be sufficient as replacement assessment tools.” In addition, the software you utilize for your training may or may not have reporting capabilities for testing results. If a formal assessment score is needed for the training, the determination of whether you can move the training online is aligned with whether your software can capture it.

Create a Maintenance Schedule If your content is information-based, it can become outdated quickly. Thus, it may be an expensive proposition to produce it as e-learning. If your program focuses on skills, it will have a longer shelf life. When you publish a new e-learning course, establish a regular schedule for when you’ll review (and potentially update) it in the future.

Assess Capacity and Capability Once you determine that a live training program is a good candidate for conversion to an asynchronous online format, you’ll need to determine whether you have the capacity and capability to develop and produce the e-learning in-house. For example, when I was at Columbia University Irving Medical Center, I was perfectly capable of creating a quick, unpolished three-minute e-learning module on a time-sensitive topic for managers to show at their staff meetings. But when it came to developing a change

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management course for 8,000 employees at all organizational levels, we decided to hire a vendor. One obvious determinant is how many hours of training you will be producing and how many instructional designers with the skills to produce it are available internally. Another factor to consider is the complexity of the content and whether you, as an internal resource, would require less effort on the part of your SMEs to understand the material, than an external provider might require. Those who know the basics of designing for online learning have a range of software for do-it-yourself “rapid development,” like the iSpring Suite, Adobe Presenter, Articulate Rise, interactive e-books, or PowerPoint add-ons, but this will only work for very basic online interactivity. What you need to watch out for is what Lewis calls “the critical break point,” when what you’re attempting to do in your course exceeds the ability of those tools. Now you need to know the capabilities and limitations of the software and how to develop storyboards for e-learning. You have to know how to use the more sophisticated software programs like Lectora, Captivate, or Storyline. And you may need other resources like graphic designers, professional voice talent, and camera crews for video shoots. If you decide to go with a vendor, see Challenge 13. If you decide to develop it yourself, flip to Challenge 21.

Bottom Line You shouldn’t convert all of your training to e-learning just because of its benefits and ease to produce.

Go Deeper “Design Content,” ch. 4 in The Virtual Training Guidebook, by Cindy Huggett Four main questions to ask when choosing whether to develop e-learning are: What is the type of learning objective? Is togetherness required? What are the technology capabilities? And, what are the trainees’ backgrounds? This chapter details these four decision points.

“What’s Your Design Approach?” ch. 4 in The Accidental Instructional Designer, by Cammy Bean Before you choose to develop e-learning, ask: Is this program mainly about sharing information, building knowledge and skills, or solving complex problems and creating a change in attitude or behaviors? The first half of this chapter focuses on how to use these questions to determine whether e-learning is the correct approach.

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“Basics of E-Learning Revisited” by Manjit Sekhon and Darin Hartley With the advent of e-learning authoring software, it has become simple to create quick courses by taking slides from PowerPoint and turning them into SCORM-compliant course packages that can be rolled out on any LMS. This issue of Infoline focuses on when to use e-learning and whether to do it yourself or with a vendor, and provides the historical evolution of e-learning and definitions of important e-learning terms.

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21

Challenge:

I don’t know how to produce asynchronous e-learning

Description Once you determine asynchronous e-learning is the answer (see Challenge 20), how do you produce it? Whether you are being asked to create e-learning on your own, or to manage an e-learning vendor, producing e-learning taps into a different skill set from the one required for developing live training, one you might not yet possess.

Solutions When it comes to asynchronous e-learning, the good news is that there are some really nice tools that nonprogrammers can now use to create content, and that learning content management systems can also be leveraged by individuals without extensive technological know-how. Here’s how to use these new tools to create sound asynchronous e-learning.

Stick to the Basics of Instructional Design There are actually more similarities between designing synchronous (learning events in which students are engaging in learning at the same time) and asynchronous (instruction that is not being delivered in person or in real time) learning than you might expect. Studies by the Department of Education (2010) indicate that it’s the psychologically active ingredient of your lessons that are causing people to learn, regardless of what media you’re using. So, as with any training, you must focus on: • The right content. In this instance, is the content a good fit for technology? • Strong alignment between course and business goals. • True interactivity. Aim for highly interactive experiences that let the learner exercise their brain and mouse-button finger. Some vendors have told me that their programs are highly interactive

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because they involve clicking on menu options. Not so! Interactive doesn’t just mean there is some physical activity involved, or that the learner must click to advance the program. Roger Courville, who’s been called “the Michael Jordan of online presentations and virtual classes,” suggests that virtual learning engage participants every four screens, and he’s clear to distinguish that engagement doesn’t mean simply pressing a button or making a menu choice. It doesn’t even mean responding to an obvious multiple-choice question. He suggests engaging participants at least every four screens by asking them to read through and really consider test questions that were written at an appropriate level of difficulty (Challenge 34). Valued experience. As with any training, you want to give participants what they need in the shortest period of time. E-learning does reduce instruction time, but make sure that it is still a valued experience, not a “talking head” (basically, a filmed lecture). Additionally, you’re going to have to double the effort to provide a “What’s in it for me?” You won’t be present to sell the value of the course to learners, so you’ll have to make sure to add more than you might in a classroom, where your natural enthusiasm and passion can shine through. Few distractions. Technology can do a lot of neat stuff, but solid cognitive strategies still need to rule the day. For example, when you deliver a PowerPoint presentation, you don’t want things spinning and whizzing by; it gives your audience members a headache (and creates extraneous load). Your design needs to be based on an understanding of what these tools can do, coupled with creativity and the appropriateness of the underlying instructional design. Tools for follow-up. Training programs—and the platforms on which they are distributed—should be designed so that users can easily refer back to tools and resources. Safe practice. There should be lots of opportunities for safe practice in your virtual environment, as there would be in a classroom setting. Powerful feedback. A benefit of e-learning is that feedback can be prescriptive. That is, it can be personalized with hints and suggestions that are tailored to each user. This helps ensure transfer of learning back at work.

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Great user experience. At all times in designing e-learning, you must consider the user perspective and try to avoid creating frustration with navigation tools or the program’s interface. Integrated follow-up. As you would do for any training solution, you need to make sure some people back on the job are familiar with what users did online to support their learning.

Select the Necessary Software and Authoring Tools Once you’ve decided to develop asynchronous e-learning, and you’ve decided to develop it yourself, what’s going to determine the success of your project is your knowledge of the software development (or “authoring”) tools you are using. Howard Lewis, principal at Integrated Performance Solutions, explains, “The base of instructional design is agnostic to what platform you are designing for: You have to first write objectives, then organize and sequence your content, then select instructional activities that match your objectives and content. Fundamentally you need to do all of that. The degree of impact comes from creatively leveraging the capabilities of your software.” To get a general sense of what available e-learning development software packages can do, go to their websites and get familiar with their features. Many of these tools offer free 30-day trials that come with free training and supportive user communities. Try it out, ask questions, see what you can do. But don’t stop there: That’s like when you get a new car full of fancy features and all you know how to do is turn on the radio. Find out what it can do that you haven’t even thought of yet. Looking at tutorials, blog posts, and community boards for these tools can spark creativity. For example, many e-learning programs allow you to create “hot spots”—objects or images that display more information when the user clicks on them. From there, you can use hot spots to create interesting quiz questions, like a multiple-choice question from an image, or transforming an illustrated character into a dragand-drop quizzing activity. But you can’t leverage all of these great capabilities if you don’t know they exist. Here are some considerations for selecting a software development tool if your learning team does not already have a license for a particular one: • Will its output format be compatible with your LMS or whatever e-learning distribution tool you use? You may need to confer with your IT partners for this one.

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Can it develop programs for mobile, desktop, and tablet? Do you need it to? Do you need your modules to record and track information, including scores or completion data? You’ll want to talk to the vendor about how it communicates that data with your existing LMS or spreadsheet program. Do you want your program to be fully customized? For example, will you have participants enter their names when they sign in, and will feedback later in the program be personalized by name? Will the program need to “remember” their responses to a question earlier in the program to provide customized feedback later in the program? What is everyone else in your organization using? You don’t want to have to defend being the only one using a particular software, or end up with a program your IT department will not support. Make sure to coordinate your purchases with them. Can you afford it? How easy or complicated is it to use? What support is available from the company, or its partners, to get you up to speed, or to help you out when you need to program something and you’ve forgotten how?

Make Navigation Decisions Whether you are working with an e-learning vendor or are developing e-learning yourself, there are some questions you’ll need to resolve when it comes to how users can move through your program. For example: • Can users advance to the next slide or section without listening to the entire current slide or section? Consider that some users will read the closed captions and that reading is faster than listening, or that some learners may come to the section with prior knowledge. Weigh those considerations against the potential liability if they don’t listen to the entire section. • Does the program need to be completed sequentially, or can users jump from section to section as desired or as indicated? Can they go backwards? In other words, is your menu going to be partially locked, fully locked, or open? • How many slides will users need to listen to in order to be marked complete for the program? For example, at Columbia, I had users

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marked complete in a stress management program if they looked at even one screen, because that course was entirely optional, but had users review 80 percent of the screens for a mandatory change management program. (Why 80 percent, not 100 percent? One, our LMS tended to have problems recording completion if it was set higher than 95 percent. And two, I want to give adult learners some wiggle room.) How many tries will participants have to complete exercises and tests? After how many tries will there be hints or feedback? Will you provide an (optional) module for those who are uncomfortable with technology generally, or who might need an orientation for the navigational aspects of your e-learning? Will there be customizable pathways through the program, or must all learners, regardless of skill level, complete the same sections?

Determine Audio Requirements You have a few options when it comes to audio production: professional voice talent (can be costly, but it is the cleanest recording with the most professional speaking voice), text-to-audio options (where you type text into your authoring tool, and a high-quality robotic voice provides the audio), or amateur voice talent (which you can record on your phone, or using a professional-grade microphone in a soundproof studio somewhere on-site). Your considerations may include cost, turnaround time, type of sound files your authoring tool allows, and how critical the training is. Regardless of which option you select, there are a few research guidelines about the interaction of text (what’s on your screens) and audio that you should be aware of. For instance, our brains have the capacity to process content simultaneously on visual and auditory tracks. (This is called the modality principle by instructional scientists.) Additionally, quite a bit of evidence shows that in most situations, learning is depressed when you deliver the same words in text and audio (Adesope and Nesbit 2012). The text on your screen should not match your audio word for word (and it would be deadly dull if it did). The exception is with closed captions for individuals with auditory needs. I suggest that those don’t appear automatically, but that they are available for those who wish to turn them on.

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To take advantage of the two separate channels that transmit information to memory: • Explain visuals on the screen with audio narration, rather than text. • Keep audio narration brief. • Use text on the screen when: ° New technical terms are being introduced. ° Learners need to refer back to the words, such as for directions to complete an exercise. ° There are no visuals on the screen or slide. ° Your learners are using their second language. ° The audio explanation is lengthy (more than five sentences). In these cases, you can put a few words from the explanation on the screen, but not the entire scripted explanation.

Determine Video Requirements Multiple studies have shown that video, specifically, can be a highly effective educational tool (Kay 2012; Allen and Smith 2012; Lloyd and Robertson 2012; Rackaway 2012; Hsin and Cigas 2013). Audiences are used to short, informal videos on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube to solve their problems as they experience them. As such, your asynchronous learning is likely to include either a stand-alone video (the video is the training) or a video segment. Just as you need to determine the right level of audio production for your project, you will also need to make those considerations for the video components of your training: Will these be professionally produced, or will you point your phone at a subject matter expert and let them speak briefly on your topic? Will your video be interview (“talking head”) style, live action (acting out a scene), animated (illustrated characters acting out a scene), or a screencast (when learners see your computer screen, while you narrate which buttons you are pressing)? There are different tools available to help with different formats of video you are producing. While we’re on the subject of tools, you’ll also need to consider whether you have the necessary video-editing software and know how to use it. Even if you are producing a brief interview-style video, it isn’t as simple as pointing your camera and “rolling film.” You need to create bullet points or an outline of what you want your “talking head” to say. Before the scene, you’ll want to craft questions to ask that will solicit those points. For longer videos,

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you’ll want to write a script that might roll on a teleprompter or a storyboard (a document that shows the visual sequence of your project) that aligns the script with the images or action that will be showing at the same time. Beyond those tips for production value are some considerations to ensure your video is instructionally sound. For example: • Even if it is a part of a formal learning program, your video should use a conversational style, with casual language and a regular rate of speech. Cognitive psychologist and author Richard Meyer calls the use of conversational language in technological instruction the personalization principle and has shown its positive effect on students’ learning (Meyer 2011), perhaps because it draws the learner in to want to engage with the narrator. • Avoid the extraneous load (Challenge 19) that is created when too many extra features are included, like music, complicated backgrounds, and loud clothing. Keep your video—and its set—simple. • Create germane load by signaling when something is important that you want viewers to take note of. You can do this when editing your video with text overlays or icons. • Make sure that watching a video doesn’t become a completely passive experience. If it is part of a learning program, active approaches are still most effective (Challenge 8). When it isn’t part of a larger program, build in questions or pauses for reflection.

Involve Users All training design should be informed and vetted by members of the target audience. With online training, this involvement should be even greater. User acceptance testing, a process in which the interface and functions are tested by real users who complete it in realistic conditions, is critical before launching an e-learning initiative. Whenever possible, watch your learners go through the program. See how they move through it and where they get stuck or where menu or navigational options are not intuitive. Ask your user testers to try to break the course (you should be doing this too, as you review each version) by: • Going through the program nonsequentially and seeing if they get back to where they need to be • Purposely getting answers wrong

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Opening the closed captions and testing how they work (I’ve seen the closed captions open in such a way that they covered the “Next” button, so those reading captions could not advance to the next slide) • Trying out all the links • Ensuring menu headings and screen titles are correct • Closing the program before they are finished and trying to come back to it later • Checking that course completion is properly recorded where it needs to be Create a user acceptance testing checklist and an evaluation and reporting document. •

Bottom Line Solid instructional design still rules the day, but some technological considerations will ensure that your efforts with online instruction promote learning.

Go Deeper “The Effectiveness of Online Learning: Beyond No Significant Difference and Future Horizons” by Tuan Nguyen Overall, there is strong evidence to suggest that online learning is at least as effective as the traditional format, but the evidence is, by no means, conclusive.

“Design Content,” ch. 4 in The Virtual Training Guidebook, by Cindy Huggett Providing interaction in an e-learning program is not just about keeping participants busy; it’s about engaging them in their own learning. The second half of this chapter describes Huggett’s three-step e-learning design process, which includes selecting the best format for each learning objective, shaping appropriate learning activities, and structuring a logical flow.

“Building Activities,” ch. 7 in E-Learning Department of One, by Emily Wood No modality is optimal for every person or piece of content. When developing activities for e-learning, you should frame them in a variety of ways to allow learners to connect with them. Activities might include branching scenarios, simulations, interactions, and games. This chapter provides tips for when you’re developing each, and touches on how to capitalize on the opportunity that e-learning provides to offer immediate feedback.

“How to Make Great Training Videos” by Guy Larcom An informative article (with an embedded video tutorial) on the six steps to creating great training videos: Pick a topic, choose a format, storyboard, record and edit, review and iterate, and distribute. Considerations at each step are concise and practical.

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“Effective Educational Videos” by Cynthia J. Brame For video to serve as a productive part of a learning experience, it is important to consider three elements: Cognitive load, noncognitive elements that impact engagement, and features that promote active learning. This article is a perfect companion to pieces about how to produce video, because it looks at video production for training through a learning lens.

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22

Challenge:

I’m not sure my training is “sticky”

Description Transfer means putting learning to work in a way that improves performance. It’s when your learners apply the knowledge, skills, or abilities (KSAs) from a training when they are back on the job. Without transfer, training is ineffective and costly for organizations. But you may not know which techniques or approaches contribute to transfer of learning (or, as some people say, to “stickiness”) or how to help learners fight back against the lure of the ease and comfort of doing things the way they always have.

Solutions There are things a training professional can do before, during, and after a training event to encourage application, including the following suggestions.

Capitalize on Learner Characteristics That Make Learning Stick While some learning techniques will help ensure transfer, part of transfer lies in the individual learners themselves. There are five learner characteristics associated with transfer that you can enhance and promote to design “sticky” training: • Cognitive ability. People with higher general mental ability are better able to retain information longer. There isn’t much you can do in response to this characteristic—you may not even be aware that someone in your audience has greater cognitive ability, but it’s good to be aware that it is one of the factors that contributes to transfer. • Self-efficacy. People who believe they have the ability to perform a task will be more likely to try it out and use it on the job. The higher the self-efficacy, the more likely the learning is to transfer. What does this mean for you? Simply that you need to provide opportunities for learners to try out new skills and be successful at them.

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Learners need to walk away from your program feeling that they can do whatever it is you are training. This includes using language and examples that promote this belief, rather than language focusing on how complex or challenging tasks are. Motivation. If learners who are motivated are more likely to apply their learning on the job, what can you do to affect motivation? This was covered in Challenge 17 and includes piquing their interest before training, increasing the perceived value, and creating a positive emotional state. It’s asking them to articulate their personal motivation to apply what was learned. Personal career plans. When learners have career plans that they update regularly, it’s been linked to their increased likelihood of trying to utilize whatever they learn. To tap into this characteristic, help learners tie the KSAs you will impart to career progression inside (or external to) the organization. Share how these skills are valued by their current—or future—employer. Commitment to the organization. I had no better demonstration of the idea that those who are committed to an organization will more readily transfer KSAs from training than when I worked at Weight Watchers (now WW). The meeting room staff that I trained all started out as members. They’d changed their lives using Weight Watchers and were passionate about helping others to change their lives, too. If I told them that we were learning a new model or a new skill to help the organization that they loved, they were 100 percent on board, not just in the classroom, but following it as well. What do you do as a trainer to lock in employee commitment to the organization? That will vary depending on your role, your department, and your organization, but know that this is a factor that ensures stickiness.

Help Build the Transfer Climate If you want training to live past the event, you need to design the complete experience, not just the event itself. That is because you have to fight against Ebbinghaus’s forgetting curve. Ebbinghaus realized that immediately after a learning experience, recall is 100 percent, but it drops steeply for the first 30 days, until it flattens out after about 30 days to somewhere between 0 and 30 percent retention. However, you bring the curve back up to the 100 percent mark if you provide review or reinforcement within those first 30 days. And, Challenge 22  •  177

not only does reviewing the material bump retention back up to 100 percent, the rate of decline is reduced each time the material is reviewed, so that after 30 days, the overall percent of retention will be much higher than if you let it fall to 0–30 percent with no review. You need to help put organizational supports in place in the work environment. Otherwise, your efforts will likely remain behind when participants leave the room. The following six factors related to the larger work environment will promote learning transfer. Supervisory Support In her book Making Learning Stick, Barbara Carnes (2009) writes: Few workplace learning professionals argue the importance of the boss or trainee’s supervisor in making learning stick to the job. The trainee’s supervisor can link and communicate how specific skills, techniques, and knowledge can be applied to a participant’s particular job. The trainee’s supervisor can set the stage for training by building positive expectations and reducing distractions and work expectations during training. Afterward, the trainee’s supervisor can provide or assist with opportunities to use what has been learned in training. The trainee’s supervisor can model the skills being taught. And the trainee’s supervisor can support and assist with post learning challenges as well as celebrate successes. The flip side is also true: If you’ve taught one thing and the participants’ manager negates it, participants are incredibly unlikely to go against their manager’s advice or behavior. To give a specific example, at one organization where I worked, it was an organizational imperative that customer service representatives give customers updates when their wait time for service increased, which was a concept we hammered home during training. During the training, however, several participants told me that their bosses had specifically told them not to inform customers of further delays. In these cases, you have to manage the ground rule of confidentiality very carefully, as you consider whether to report some of this feedback in order to intervene with these bosses. You may have to hold on to information like this until you have a critical mass of attendees from a particular area so that you can deliver the feedback anon-

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ymously and not violate confidentiality between you and your learners, which would have a detrimental impact on your efforts going forward. Your work includes enlisting the support of managers before and after training. Involve them in the design of the program. Inform them of what the program includes via a “cheat sheet” like the one in Tool 10-1 following Challenge 10. Have participants and their supervisors meet to discuss the training prior to attending and fill out a learning contract like the one in Tool 10-2 following Challenge 10. Or, give the supervisor ideas about how to keep the content fresh through monthly manager meeting guides, like the one in Tool 12-1 following Challenge 12. Peer Support Just as learners will stop doing something they learned in training if their boss doesn’t support it, they will respond similarly when their colleagues don’t. Prepare learners for this by giving them a vocabulary to respond to their disbelieving peers. Train intact work teams, because there is strength in numbers. Use buddies because having even one like-minded colleague once back in the workplace is helpful. Accountability If employees are held accountable for implementing the models and processes they gather from training, they are more likely to do it. More often, there are no appropriate consequences if learners neglect to employ their new knowledge, which leads them to feel that “nobody really cares,” which leads them to drop the activity. Training should have a direct link to strategic outcomes. Work with organizational leaders and managers to implement positive consequences when they apply their training (or negative ones when they don’t) and achieve these outcomes. Opportunity to Perform Ebbinghaus’s work on memory can be summarized by the expression, “If you don’t use it, you lose it.” This is a simple reflection of the forgetting curve that is natural for all humans, who need to perform a task to move it to long-term memory. Make sure that once they leave training, employees will put their skills to use. Promote just-in-time training wherever possible so that people are being trained when the skills are needed and will be put into practice, rather than weeks, months, or years ahead of when they need them. When

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you know that they will not have opportunities to perform immediately, send them exercises or challenges they can do to keep their skills sharp in the interim. For example, I once coordinated Excel training in advance of budgeting season. In the period between the training and the start of the season, I sent weekly Excel problems to users before crunch time, when they’d need to use those skills again. As another example, Cargill has an “application challenge” after training events, in which employees apply a concept or small lesson immediately. Then they complete a field report describing how things went, what they learned, and what questions they have, or present a sample work product and solicit feedback from their cohort. Assistance When They Forget Learning and practicing a skill once, or during one concrete event, will be enough for some learners, but not all of them. The likelihood that skills will be employed on the job increases dramatically if employees have supports after training when they forget, or when they struggle with the knowledge or skills from the training. Support can be formal or informal. You may provide ongoing tutorials for those who need help. You may assign participants a buddy or a coach to help them work through the action plan they created during your program. You might make online resources available to them, or provide refreshers of important content via doses of microlearning. You might invite graduates back for a focus group or reunion where they can share the struggles they’ve faced in implementing some of the concepts and where they can talk one another through those obstacles. Refreshers and Ongoing Communication Keeping in communication with learners following the training event helps to ensure application, because ideas and connections they made during training stay fresh in their minds. Those factoids, articles, objects, and tips that you sent out before the program are as important following the program (see Challenge 10). There are shortcuts to help make this communication easier when your capacity is low. For example, you can have the participants themselves create the follow-up: Have attendees write a note to themselves at the end of your program reflecting on the training and making a commitment. Have them seal their thoughts in an envelope and address it to themselves. Wait four weeks and drop the envelopes in interoffice mail.

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Another tried-and-true technique is the 2-2-2 approach, which some have attributed to neuropsychologist Arthur Kohn. In it, you reconnect with learners three times—after two days, two weeks, and two months. Two days after the session, simply quiz them on their recall of a critical piece of information. Two weeks afterward, give them a brief case study and ask them to apply a concept from the session to that case. It is suggested that the two-day and two-week follow-ups be in multiple-choice format. Two months afterward, ask them for examples of how they’ve used the content in their organizations. At one organization where I worked, to ensure participants went through the 2-2-2, they were not marked complete for the course until they had responded to all three.

Use Instructional Strategies That Lead to Retention There are hundreds of cognitive-learning strategies or activities that can increase learning and retention. I want to focus on three that are really the powerhouses—the workhorses—of increased ability to transfer learning: • Behavior modeling is showing learners the desired performance or behavior, while error-based modeling is the flip side. Programs that provide these models are more effective at transfer, particularly when the models are shown in the actual work environment or with actual customers. I know this was true for me when I was getting trained as a coach. The more coaching sessions I observed, the better my own coaching got. Behavior modeling aligns with social learning theory, which suggests (in brief) that new behaviors can be acquired by observing and imitating others. It states that learning is a cognitive process that takes place in a social context and can occur purely through observation. • Self-management strategies allow individuals to monitor and improve their own performance. When they see that they are not utilizing the skills, they have the ability to course correct on their own. Two of these strategies are goal setting and relapse prevention. During your session, make sure to give participants the opportunity to set real workplace goals and to have a structured discussion of the obstacles they might face in implementing them, and how they’ll get past those obstacles. That way, when those obstacles they anticipate do pop up, they have a plan to face them and persevere in applying their learning.

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Practice is your main engagement and retention tool. Practice lets learners store and recall what you’re learning, whether it’s declarative (capitals of Europe, multiplication tables), procedural (run an air-brake test on a locomotive, dance a tango, verify an audit report), conceptual (coaching), or even problem solving. Practice aligns with desired outcomes—for the organization and the learner. And practice takes a lot of time—to conduct and to debrief, which is why many new trainers aren’t utilizing it enough. When it comes to practice, set up learners to try new things. If, during practice activities in the safe, supportive classroom, they don’t take risks and they do things the same way they always have, you can be sure they will not take those risks once they leave that space. Talk to them about practicing “by the book”—they can jazz it up later. I often tell the story about how I took a ballroom-dancing class once, and although the steps were uncomfortable and awkward at first, I had to learn them the way they were taught before I could go back to the real world and add my own twist and pizzazz to them on a dance floor (not that I have much pizzazz, to be honest). Many new trainers will ask how much practice you need to provide for participants. There is no universal rule, but these three factors can help you to determine the right amount: • Consequences of errors. If the task you are training people to do would have serious consequences if done incorrectly (think performing surgery or piloting a plane), err on the side of more practice. • Acceptability of a job aid. If learners will be able to do the task with some support, then fewer practice exercises, using the job aid, are needed. • Complexity of the work. If the content is highly complex, drill and practice might be needed to automate the skills. When some skills are automatic (like typing), you can devote your memory resources to the entire task (of writing), but to make it automatic requires hours of practice. The spacing effect says that when practice opportunities are distributed over time, learning—especially delayed learning—is better. What makes spaced practice difficult? The organization wants everyone to know how to do this thing yesterday and doesn’t want to delay training on it. And, because most organizations don’t evaluate learning over time, the benefits of spaced •

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practice are rarely seen. So, that means that often all we can do is space out practice throughout our single training event. Rather than providing three practice exercises on a given topic immediately after presenting on that topic (blocked practice), spread those three exercises out across the remainder of the training program. This is called mixed (interleaved) practice, and has been shown repeatedly to result in better learning. A simplified comparison of the two approaches is shown in Table 22-1. Another way is to use a blend of media to spread learning events over a longer timeframe. Rather than an event, learning becomes a process. Table 22-1. Blocked vs. Interleaved Practice Blocked Practice •

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Following a module on telling time, participants are asked: ° What time is it when the big hand is on the 3 and the little hand is on the 12? ° What time is it when the big hand is on the 5 and the little hand is on the 3? ° Draw 6:30 on this clock face. Following a module on time zones, participants are asked: ° What time is it in California when it is 3 p.m. in New York City? ° What time is it in London when it is 3 p.m. in Chicago? ° What time is it in Singapore when it is noon in New York City? Following a module on military time, participants are asked: ° Is 18:00 in the morning or the evening? ° When it’s 2:15 p.m., what time is it in military time? ° When it’s 18:00 in London, will someone calling a friend in California most likely find them awake or asleep?

Interleaved practice •

•

•

Following a module on telling time, participants are asked: ° What time is it when the big hand is on the 3 and the little hand is on the 12? Following a module on time zones, participants are asked: ° What time is it when the big hand is on the 5 and the little hand is on the 3? ° What time is it in California when it is 3 p.m. in New York City? Following a module on military time, participants are asked: ° Draw 6:30 on this clock face. ° What time is it in London when it’s 3 p.m. in New York City? ° When it’s 2:15 p.m., what time is it in military time?

Bottom Line To design “sticky” training, your design shouldn’t start and stop when the event does.

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Go Deeper “How Can You Guarantee Transfer of Learning to the Workplace?” ch. 9 in The Art and Science of Training, by Elaine Biech. “We do not exist merely to ‘train,’” Elaine Biech writes. “We exist to improve performance in the workplace.” Her suggestions to ensure that training leads to long-lasting learning and change start before training occurs and include additional ideas for during training, at the end of training, and afterward. Key concepts in recall and retention are also presented.

“How to Use This Book to Your Best Advantage,” ch. 1 in Making Learning Stick, by Barbara Carnes This introductory chapter explains the factors associated with training transfer that are strongly supported by empirical research in a Training Transfer Process model, which considers learner characteristics, organizational support provided before and after the learning event, and training design as the elements that ensure learning transfer. The book itself is a thorough, practical, and extremely helpful resource for anyone looking to transfer learning from classroom to on the job.

“Ensuring Learning Transfer” by Roy Pollock and Andy Jefferson The authors cite a study at American Express, which concluded: “Climate factors can quite literally make or break a company’s training investments,” and therefore, “understanding and creating a high transfer climate should swiftly move to the forefront of any training initiative.” This Infoline describes six disciplines for ensuring learning transfer and how these disciplines can be used to make sure learners can positively answer the questions “Can I? and “Will I?”

“Science of Learning 101: How Does Training Stick?” by Patti Shank For learning to stick, people have to create meaning during training by engaging in three aspects of “cognitive” (or mental) processing. This article presents those three aspects and the types of learning activities that exhibit them.

“The Forgetting Curve” from the Flashcard Learner In psychology, the term forgetting curve describes how the ability of the brain to retain information decreases as time passes. While ultimately this article is pitching a product, it first covers some basic components of Ebbinghaus’s work on the forgetting curve and what you (and your learners) can do to improve your memory and combat exponential forgetting.

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23

Challenge:

I’m not sure how to design informal learning

Description Just-in-time training is sticky and therefore more economical. Most learning occurs on the job. Learning should be more than just a one-time event and requires a blended approach. And it’s almost impossible to learn everything in one or two sessions. All these aspects of how people learn clearly make the argument that formal learning programs alone are not adequate. When learning is continuously happening informally on the job, you reap learning and logistical benefits. You eliminate the scheduling conflicts that characterize synchronous training. That’s all well and good, but what is your role in providing this informal, as-needed training? What even counts as training when you’re not talking about formal workshops and programs?

Solutions Trainers and L&D professionals are responsible for informal learning in a different way than they are for formal learning. Your role becomes creating awareness of informal learning opportunities and building an infrastructure to support them. Here’s how.

Make Space for a Blend of Formal and Informal Opportunities Despite the benefits of informal learning listed in the description at the start of this section, dropping formal learning entirely won’t work as an organizational learning strategy, and neither will informal learning alone. What constitutes informal learning varies by organization and by individual, even in the training field. It’s not just that classroom or online training events are formal training, and anything else is informal. That wouldn’t leave room for self-directed learning or on-demand video libraries. Based on my experience, and from the articles, webcasts, and books listed in the Go Deeper section of this challenge, I’ve come up with these as

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my definitions of formal and informal learning: Formal learning is created and delivered by people who know about the content and the best instructional design and have objectives that need to be achieved. Informal learning includes learning that happens organically in meetings, at the watercooler, or during one-on-one feedback sessions, and also learning that is formal except that learners control the objectives, outcomes, location, and purpose. Figure 23-1 illustrates the difference for some training on time management. The formal example is a pretty straightforward workshop that Ming-Ju attends with stated objectives and practice. The informal example includes formal online training that Alberto finds, but he chooses to informally watch when and where he wants to. Figure 23-1. Formal vs. Informal Time Management Training Formal Ming-Ju attends a two-hour facilitated workshop on time management with the objectives to: • Define time management and dispel common myths • Assess your time and priority management skills • Utilize planning and prioritization to assist your time management efforts • Describe tips and techniques for overcoming common challenges to time and priority management At the end of the workshop, Ming-Ju is asked to respond to questions on a case study in which she has to apply the time and priority management tips covered in the session.

Informal Alberto heads a project team whose meetings are constantly running over the allotted time. He decides he needs more support with this topic and asks a manager he’s seen who does exceptionally well with time management during meetings for some tips. He also finds a 45-minute online training to take on the internet. He completes 15 minutes one day and 20 minutes the next week, but never finishes the entire program. He also finds an interesting article on time management posted on a company discussion board.

Informal learning is not infallible. As in Alberto’s case, learners may be self-motivated to find the content, but selective in how they read or apply it, sticking to whatever they see first or whatever aligns with their interests. Many trainers report learners starting informal learning and not finishing it. Because informal learning isn’t based on mastery of learning objectives, content is inconsistent across learners and unpredictable. When learners leave formal training, they can apply a lot of skills immediately; when they learn gradually in small doses on the job, they aren’t necessarily ready to apply new skills right away.

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Educate Your Organization You’ll need to launch an educational campaign to help your organization’s managers and individual contributors appreciate that employee development is broader than the workshops and conferences you send them to, and to help them see the benefits in that. Some of the messages you’ll want to communicate are: “Attention to informal learning will allow us to provide shorter, more relevant, immediate, and global learning opportunities.” • “Learning happens where the work happens.” • “Learning is not an event; it is a continuous, collaborative, community-based endeavor.” • “Learning that happens in your work environment is customized to what you do and to what you need in the moment.” You can share these messages through presentations (like the one found in Tool 6-3 at the end of Challenge 6), on your website, in articles, and via any of the other methods you employ when communicating about opportunities for development (see Challenge 9). •

Create a Storehouse of Growth Opportunities The Center for Creative Leadership’s Eighty-Eight Assignments for Development in Place (1989) offers unofficial, unscheduled, impromptu ways people learn while they go about their lives or their jobs. I like to take the items on their list that are relevant for learners in my organization, supplement those with additional ones we can offer, and post them on our L&D department’s webpage. These might include external volunteer work (I list recommendations of local organizations needing assistance), volunteering to chair a committee (I list all of the committees employees can join), being mentored or becoming a mentor, finding opportunities to teach others, and trying out job shadowing, job rotations, or stretch assignments. Having these sorts of opportunities listed somewhere centrally is a great development tool. Tool 23-1 at the end of this challenge shows what opportunities I included in our list at Columbia University Irving Medical Center.

Build an Infrastructure Even when informal learning is happening more organically and casually than formal learning, you should consider creating some formal structure around it to make it most effective. For instance, you need to create a culture Challenge 23  •  187

that allows work time to study. You need to buy subscriptions to knowledge bases and find a way to share them. You might need incentives to motivate learners or to compensate internal mentors and coaches. You need to vet materials (which is covered more in Challenge 24). Here are some ways you can do that: • Support the mentoring happening on the job with a cache of tools for mentors or mentees, from how to find a mentor, to what to cover in your first meeting, to how to set goals. Create opportunities for mentors and mentees to get together in communities where they can discuss and share what they’ve learned. • If you encourage job shadowing as an informal learning activity, provide a tip sheet for the person being shadowed (should they just sit at the computer and type while someone is watching them? Should they take the person shadowing to all of their meetings? How is confidentiality handled when job shadowing?) and a checklist for the person who is doing the shadowing of things to look for and to ask. • Host brown bag (bring your own) breakfasts or lunches where the sole agenda item is storytelling. Invite senior leaders not only to formal workshops, but to casual gatherings, to share experiences they learned from. Record their stories and post them on your intranet. Or, make these events simply forums to ask whatever questions are on your mind. • Create a database for people to find mentoring or job rotation opportunities. Support these two programs with orientations, checkins, and educational graduation ceremonies. • Provide templates for project-debriefing meetings, for observation and feedback on the job, or for how to give and manage a stretch assignment. • Provide ongoing training to the organization on coaching and the delivery of training, so that coaching and teaching can happen more often, informally and formally, at a consistent level of quality.

Monitor Informal Communities An important role you can play is monitoring some of the social learning that is happening informally, such as on discussion boards, to clear up misunderstandings or to respond to questions. Without supports in place, learners

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may be getting incorrect, or incomplete, information that they will have to unlearn in the future, which is harder than learning something in the first place, because you have to re-program what you already know before refilling the vessel. Where L&D team capacity allows, it is always a good idea to have someone keeping a pulse on work-related informal learning networks.

Equip Learners With Related Skills When learners are seeking their own learning in the moment, when they are utilizing widely available tools from the internet, or when they are meant to reflect on the learning they acquired in passing in the hallway or during a regularly scheduled meeting, you need to make sure they’re equipped with the needed critical-thinking and reasoning skills, possibly through formal training. It’s easy to search for information on a topic and harder to know whether that information is worthwhile or evidence-based. Teaching a class on “How to Search,” for example, becomes more important and appreciated. It’s great to support employees seeking out mentors and tracking down answers from internal experts, but do they have the skills to identify which people are knowledgeable? Do they know how to approach a potential mentor with a request for help? These are skills that formal training might be able to cover to maximize what can come from informal learning.

Equip Managers With Related Skills If you are going to beef up your informal learning opportunities, you will probably want to offer some related training to managers who will need to support that activity in the workplace. For example, the informal learning that comes from receiving coaching and feedback means managers will need ongoing training in these areas. Informal learning comes from having after-action reviews at project milestones, so project leaders will need to be trained on how those might work (or members of your L&D team might be deployed to conduct these so managers can participate in these as equals on their teams). And, informal learning comes from an environment that embraces mistakes as opportunities to improve. Managers will need some guidance on how to create a safe space for taking risks and how to respond when things go wrong. Overall, managers need to understand and embrace the key role they play in the development of their people.

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Reconsider Evaluation As Saul Carliner, author of Informal Learning Basics, pointed out in a 2012 webcast, informal learning is not a fit for Kirkpatrick’s evaluation model (see Section 5). Because there are no formal objectives, and because even an unplanned encounter during which neither party is aware that learning occurred may be considered informal learning, it cannot be evaluated in traditional ways that measure achievement of objectives or tests of learning. Carliner suggests that there are other ways to evaluate informal learning, including analytics and employee surveys. Whatever platform you are using to distribute informal learning resources and tools can track which ones are being used and how long learners are spending looking at them. When this can be correlated with individual or team results, you may begin to see evaluation trends emerge. Questions can be added to regular employee satisfaction surveys about how satisfied employees are with their access to, or opportunities for, on-the-job learning. In short, you need some less-exact measures for less-exact learning. .

Bottom Line L&D professionals don’t necessarily make informal learning happen; they point out when and where it is already happening to extend its utilization and value.

Go Deeper “Informal Learning Basics—What ARE the Basics?” a webcast with Saul Carliner Informal or unintentional learning is already occurring in your workplace; it’s just that you— or your learners—have limited awareness of when and how it is happening. In this one-hour recorded webcast, Carliner defines informal learning, provides examples, and talks about trainers’ roles in promoting and supporting existing efforts. (The webcast is based on Carliner’s book Informal Learning Basics.)

“What About the 90% of Learning That Occurs Beyond the Classroom?” ch. 4 in The Art and Science of Training, by Elaine Biech Our challenge is to move our focus from the classroom to the workplace and to support experiential learning and personalized developmental experiences. This chapter digs deeply into the 70-20-10 formula for learning and development and challenges trainers to concentrate on on-the-job assignments that enable learners to discover, make decisions, and address challenges that ultimately refine their job-related skills. Science that supports informal learning is listed.

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The Introduction from Employee Development on a Shoestring by Halelly Azulay Maybe I’m cheating here by suggesting reading the introduction to this book. As soon as you do, you’ll realize that if you want to develop informal learning, you need to read the entire thing. While the introduction (and the foreword) lay out the case for alternatives to formal classroom learning, the remaining chapters are invaluable in helping readers create opportunities including self-directed learning, volunteering, job rotations, mentoring, teaching others, special teams, or videos and podcasts.

“Surround Learners in the Moments of Learning Need,” ch. 6 in Designing for Modern Learning, by Crystal Kadakia and Lisa M.D. Owens Moving beyond the formal ensures that we design for planned and unplanned learning moments and meet learners at all five of their moments of learning need, described in this chapter. This chapter (and the entire book) presents a new model for thinking about how to design the whole learning experience, not just the formal classroom part, for multiple audience types and across learning assets.

88 Assignments for Development in Place by Michael Lombardo and Robert Eichinger This booklet, produced by the creators of the 70-20-10 framework themselves, describes 88 developmental experiences that can be added to employees’ current jobs, such as small projects and start-ups, small scope jumps and fix-its, small strategic assignments, coursework and coaching assignments, and activities away from work.

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Tool 23-1. On-the-Job Professional Development at CUIMC Research has shown that the most successful managers in organizations learn 70 percent of what they need to know from on-the-job experiences. How can you—or your staff and managers—develop professionally while at work? Here are 24 ideas listed in order from those that take the least time to those that take the most time. Remember, the idea is to learn from these experiences. Make sure that whichever idea you choose includes some way of making sure you are learning the most you can from these assignments, including a way for you to get feedback on how you are doing. Opportunity Ideas Opportunities are listed from the shortest time investment to the longest. Each opportunity also lists skills you might develop, benefits you may realize, and related tips or resources. For further information, reach out to the resource contact listed. 1. Conduct a debrief after a project milestone or project completion, especially if the project was not entirely successful ° Skills: Analytical thinking; public speaking; listening ° Resources: Article: “How to Conduct an After-Action Review” 2. Read an article and share highlights at a staff meeting ° Skills: Analytical thinking; public speaking; visibility; industry knowledge ° Tips and resources: Subscribe to a business-related magazine, and each month have a different team member read it and summarize what they found relevant to your work for the team 3. Attend a conference and share highlights at a staff meeting ° Skills: Analytical thinking; public speaking; visibility; industry knowledge ° Tips and resources: Rotate who attends external meetings and conferences and reports back to the team 4. Write an article for the newsletter ° Skills: Business writing; influencing; industry knowledge ° Resources: Article: “How to Create Awesome Internal Company Newsletters That Actually Get Read” 5. Shadow an individual who is particularly good at something you want to learn, or who has a job you are interested in ° Skills: Job-related skills; career management; organizational knowledge; selfawareness ° Tips: Shadowing can be a quick, onetime activity, or a longer-term experience; make sure to include the person you’re shadowing in a quick summary you provide of what you are taking from the experience ° Resources: Job-shadowing forms 6. Orient a new employee or be a new employee’s “buddy” ° Skills: Organizational knowledge; influence; self-awareness; builds selfconfidence ° Tips: Buddies can be on the same team or from another team or department ° Resources: New hire checklist

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7. Come up with a more efficient, better process ° Skills: Analytical thinking; influencing; listening; time management ° Resources: Process Improvement course 8. Serve on a hiring panel ° Skills: Interviewing and hiring; influencing ° Resources: Online Interviewing and Hiring course; Hiring Manager cheat sheet 9. Resolve conflict among colleagues and subordinates ° Skills: Team building; conflict resolution ° Resources: “Difficult Conversations” with Fred Kofman video 10. Write a proposal for a new system, product, or expense ° Skills: Analytical thinking; influencing; listening ° Resources: Project Planning course 11. Present a report to top management ° Skills: Analytical thinking; influencing; public speaking; visibility ° Tips: Remember to ask for feedback from someone present after the report to refine your presentation skills ° Resources: Article: “The Key to Presenting to Senior Executives” 12. Teach a course or workshop on a topic you’re an expert in ° Skills: Public speaking; job-related skills; visibility; listening ° Resources: Train the Trainer course; list of Training Design Resources 13. Learn another job in your area (cross-train) ° Skills: Job-related skills; team building; career management; listening; organizational knowledge ° Tips: Even jobs that aren’t part of your workflow can provide you with ideas and perspective that might enhance your performance in your particular role 14. Find a mentor ° Skills: Build self-confidence; self-awareness; career management; industry and organizational knowledge ° Tips: Sign up for our mentoring program ° Resources: Article: “How to Find a Mentor Who Can Unlock Your Potential” 15. Be a mentor ° Skills: Build self-confidence; self-awareness; career management; industry and organizational knowledge ° Resources: Sign up for our mentoring program 16. Take on a “stretch” assignment ° Skills: Job-related skills; organizational knowledge; team building, time management; influence ° Rsources: Article: “Use Stretch Assignments to Get a Raise, a Promotion and Anything Else You Want at Work”; Stretch Assignment forms

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17. Study customer needs; interview customers and write a report ° Skills: Influencing; listening; analytical thinking; business writing; organizational knowledge ° Tips: Before speaking to customers, confer with senior leadership and the communications team 18. Join a committee or task force related to a pressing business problem ° Skills: Public speaking; analytical thinking; visibility; organizational knowledge; influence ° Resources: List of committees and task forces that include employee members 19. Join or start a professional book group ° Skills: Industry and organizational knowledge; listening ° Resources: Article: “The Ultimate Guide to Staring a Book Club at Work” 20. Represent the organization in the community or politically ° Skills: Build self-confidence; organizational knowledge; visibility; public speaking ° Resources: Office of Government and Community Affairs website 21. Chair a committee ° Skills: Builds self-confidence; organizational knowledge; visibility; public speaking; leadership ° Resources: List of committees and task forces that include employee members 22. Become active in a professional association ° Skills: Builds self-confidence; industry knowledge; career management ° Resources: List of associations our employees belong to 23. Work with a charitable organization ° Skills: Influencing; build self-confidence ° Resources: List of local organizations seeking volunteers 24. Coach children’s sports ° Skills: Leadership; influencing; build self-confidence ° Resources: Article: “11 Youth Coaching Tips, The Dos and Don’ts of Effective Coaching” Used with permission of Columbia University Medical Center. (The “linked” resources were operational on the website on which this tool appeared.)

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24

Challenge:

My learners are overwhelmed with digital information

Description In today’s technological world, having access to learning material 24/7 is critical. Knowledge exists and is distributed on networks. Learning encompasses connections to specialized information sets that we, as training or L&D professionals, need to put together. This role is new for many of us, even those with years of experience in the field. How do we help learners locate and assess digital information? How do we keep them connected to content and to one another?

Solutions Tips from the emerging field of learning curation can help connect your learners to information they need when they need it.

Curate Content A widely shared 2017 report from IBM Marketing Cloud estimated that the amount of digital information available doubles every 18–24 months, with 90 percent of the content online in that year having been created since 2015. In light of this, a 2014 report from the Corporate Executive Board noted that “L&D professionals will need to become trusted curators, who find, filter, and in some instances, modify information for employees, while equipping learners to be critical evaluators of the information and content they receive.” This responsibility of trainers aligns to the theory of learning called connectivism, in which learning happens by connecting through your network to access the information you need when you need it. An answer to the challenge lies in the growing role learning professionals are called upon to play as content curators. Curation has traditionally been associated with museum curators, who are responsible for deciding which of the millions of artifacts a museum owns ultimately appear in its exhibitions, and how they get displayed. Museum curators, through their choices, shape a

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museum visitor’s experience. Now L&D professionals are becoming curators of learning solutions—displaying those that are worthy of sharing and shaping a learner’s experience. Resources listed in the Go Deeper section of this challenge will help you embark on these new responsibilities.

Gather Organizational Knowledge At a very basic level, an archive, or collected database, of organizational documents and resources is a form of curation. A file-storage system for documents from different departments allows them to share their knowledge base. Consider a new hire orientation, which involves multiple departments of an organization informing new workers of the policies, procedures, and processes. It’s almost always too much for new hires to take in, and in their first days and weeks of work, they spend a great deal of time searching for information that was discussed during orientation. Aggregating all information that may be relevant to a new hire into a single location could be an excellent resource for new employees. In fact, aggregating data by situation (orientation), or by employee role, is an important component of curation. If you don’t know where to start in determining what resources to include in your database, ask high-performing individuals which tools or documents they find themselves referring to most often and start with those. Another obvious place to start is with compiling resources related to the courses you currently offer and making them available to all on your LMS, or on some other platform your employees know how to access anytime.

Curate Digital Information Finding digital information isn’t complicated. Anyone can do a Google search, or use another filtering engine, to locate resources. What you can add as a learning professional is access to vetted information that is relevant to real-life, time-sensitive employee concerns and that is presented in digestible chunks. Marketing expert Rohit Bhargava defines content curation as “the act of finding, grouping, organizing, or sharing the best and most relevant content on a specific issue” (Zhong 2013). This is what L&D professionals have been doing for decades, and what we are now adapting for a more digital world. You likely have someone providing this service for you already. I’m talking about those daily digests that land in your email inbox and include a roundup of articles, videos, or blog posts related to a particular topic, like leadership, 196  •  Challenge 24

change management, technology, or the day’s news. Usually you get to see a headline and a key point, alongside a link to the full source material. This is one way that curation of digital information can look. You want to create both “push” approaches like that one, where information is pushed to users (at NYU, anytime a department opened a job recruitment, we sent the hiring manager an interview guide highlighting what they could legally ask during job interviews), and “pull” approaches that make searching easier for your users, where you’ve set up intuitive places for them to easily find what they are looking for. You can share that information on your intranet, the internet, a blog, or social media. Digital information you might include are articles, podcasts, videos, wikis, job aids, blog posts, TED Talks, and resources and manuals from government agencies. Here are several important tips when it comes to curation of digital information, which I have adapted from the work of David Kelly and the other authors and curators he features on his website: • Be respectful of copyrights by asking permission of original content creators before posting their work on your website or sharing it in an email to all employees. Rather than reproducing entire articles in your online materials, link to the original. Include attribution whenever you share someone else’s thoughts or works. Give credit where it is due. • Include resources from reputable organizations or individuals that are designed for a professional audience. Make sure the articles themselves are professional—well written and error-free. • Include the most recent resources you can find. Some classics, evergreen content, or industry standards, are fine, especially in the form of books, but most learners want digital articles with up-to-theminute information and consider anything beyond two years in the past to be outdated. • Some sites share content freely; others require viewers to create a membership (free or paid) or to purchase articles and information sources. It can become costly to an organization that allows employees to sign up for paid curated content. Make sure this is part of your overall informal learning plan and budget. • An idea behind curation is to make the vast amount of digital information available less overwhelming and more accessible to your

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learning community. Remember that less is more. Pick a few solid sources, rather than an exhaustive list. When choosing between articles, pick the shorter one that is chock-full of information, rather than the longer, more elaborate tomes. Curating online resources requires ongoing maintenance, because online content on websites and links change frequently. You are not adding value if every link you’ve provided leads to a “Page Cannot Be Found” message. While curating this information is becoming an important L&D function, remember that helping learners know how to critically evaluate the information they can find on their own is another essential competency for the 21st century.

Vet Online Training Some organizations have given employees free access to online learning libraries, like LinkedIn Learning, and left them to fend for themselves in this repository. Not a sound approach. Type a common topic header into the search field on one of these libraries, and you’re likely to surface dozens of options. Your team provides a much-needed service when it provides a short list of which offerings are relevant to your workplace, which are well designed (that is, truly interactive and not just talking heads), and which 10-minute portion of a 90-minute, eight-part online course is really worth looking at. Another helpful addition to these online training catalogs that L&D teams can provide is opportunities to process the online training sessions that are suggested, including adding reflection questions or assignments, conducting discussion groups, or creating a discussion board. In addition to providing access to off-the-shelf online training libraries, you can direct employees to free courseware on sites like Khan Academy, YouTube, or MOOCs (massive open online courses)—courses of study made available over the internet without charge to a very large number of people. Make sure your training library, whether it’s hosted on your own LMS or a commercial library you have a license to use, requires only a few clicks for users to find the topic they want and need. And root out the courses that people aren’t using or that don’t move the needle on organizational initiatives.

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Consider the Environment in Which Information Will Be Accessed Not only do you need to know who your materials are intended for and what their purpose is; you want to consider the environment and conditions in which they will be used. Providing access to digital tools is helpful when participants have access to a computer or a stable internet connection. If computers are located in customer-facing areas, how and when should the employee engage with digital content? When do you prefer that employees interact and problem-solve among themselves rather than individually access information using their computers? Learning can happen through curated technological resources, but be aware of what this means in light of employees’ day-to-day work climate and tasks.

Bottom Line Helping learners make sense of the vast array of digital information and networks that exist is a growing part of our jobs.

Go Deeper “Connectivism: A Learning Theory for the Digital Age” by George Siemens Including technology and connection-making as learning activities begins to move learning theories into a digital age. This article highlights learning trends in our technological times and the limitations of existing learning theories like Behaviorism, Cognitivism, and Constructivism in responding to these trends. Principles and implications of Connectivism are provided as an alternative way to think about learning.

“From Content to Curation,” ch. 1 in Ready, Set, Curate, edited by Ben Betts and Allison Anderson When you juxtapose the proliferation of content with how adults learn, it becomes apparent that creating vast amounts of content for a workforce to remember is not a strategy worth pursuing. Curation adds value from humans who add their qualitative judgment to whatever content is being gathered and organized. This chapter suggests how digital curation can serve four broad functions within an organization: inspiration, instruction, integration, and implementation.

“How to Curate: Putting Curation Into Practice for L&D” by David Kelly Curation isn’t about collecting or filtering information, it’s about adding value by providing digital information that’s relevant to your purpose and context. Kelly has amassed a wealth of resources about curation in the L&D space on this webpage, including a 57-slide presentation that includes an overview of types of curation and a four-part model for how to curate.

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d n u o r A y t n i a t r t e n c e n U surem Mea

5 N O I T SEC

The Problem “We’d love to be able to show that the high-potential managers who went through our program are being promoted, are better leaders, and are not leaving the organization. We just don’t have access to data that would prove that. What data we can come up with feels worthless in comparison.” “The goal of our training initiatives is to change the culture, but how do you measure culture change?” “When we send out an email evaluation after a session, fewer than half the participants fill it out, and those that do seem to skew positive, because only those who were really into it take the time to do the online survey to provide feedback. We got better results when we used paper evaluations at the end of our classes, but we don’t have the capacity to enter and track that data anymore.” “We ask participants a lengthy list of questions about every aspect of our training, get responses that are mostly favorable, and then we forget about them.”

What’s Happening Here? Trainers of all experience levels, including the ones who shared their problems in this section intro, struggle to determine what data is worth collecting and how to do it in their organizations. Some trainers believe that because it is difficult to isolate whether changes to employee behaviors are the result of training, or of other factors in the workplace, that the data they can collect isn’t valuable. Or, because they can’t assign the new employee behaviors any monetary value, that it’s not worth collecting any data at all. Others lament that they are asking participants to complete lengthy evaluations when many of those responses get stuffed into a desk drawer. Finally, others are challenged to create assessments that actually measure whether learning objectives have been achieved. Despite the many challenges new trainers face in the area of measurement, there are three reasons to evaluate your programs: To enhance or improve them—that is, to learn from past mistakes or build on successes. • To maximize the transfer of learning to behavioral and subsequent organizational results. • To demonstrate the value of training to the organization. The Kirkpatrick model is a well-regarded, widely used model for evaluating workplace training. It focuses on four levels of effectiveness: • Level 4—Results. How did the training affect key metrics? • Level 3—Behavior. Did participants use their new knowledge, skills, or attitudes back on the job? Did learning transfer? • Level 2—Learning. What were the participant results? Did they learn what they were supposed to and are they confident doing it? • Level 1—Reaction. Did participants find the program satisfying, engaging, and relevant, and do they intend to utilize what they learned? These are listed from Level 4 to Level 1 intentionally. While the model was orignially created listing Level 1 first, it was later revised to consider the more important levels—4 and 3—first, and to address Level 1 last. Over time, the focus has shifted so significantly to Level 1 that many organizations are evaluating at this level alone. That may be because it is the easiest level of information to collect. However, the creators of this model did not intend for the focus to be •

202  •  Section 5

on the lower levels, and they suggest that when talking about them, we do so in order of importance—reverse numerical order. There are other models for evaluating training. Kirkpatrick’s is a good place to start because it is an industry standard, and because if you can collect solid data on these four aspects of your initiatives, it will reflect well on your efforts and improve your organizational reputation. Other models include a return on investment (ROI) measure, such as the Phillips’s ROI Methodology. To credibly evaluate the impact and ROI of a program requires more robust analysis, which is typically reserved for major training investments. Several of the Go Deeper resources in this section contain best practices for calculating ROI. An evaluation experience in which I was successful at all four levels was with a program to train leaders on how to assign ratings that better distinguished strong performers from weaker ones during the annual performance review. The program involved a small group of leaders from within the same department. The hope was the training would deliver business results (Level 4) in the form of monetary savings and increased productivity. Before training, most employees were rated high across the board and thus received the highest merit increases, despite low performance. It was also believed that after receiving proper performance feedback, employees would perform better. Because this was a small group, and because we had access to all their production and budgetary results, we were able to measure the Level 4 impacts. We also intentionally did not train another group of leaders that year to see if we could detect a difference in results. Costs associated with merit increases went down somewhat in the group that was rated by trained managers. The smaller-than-expected decrease resulted from the fact that we could offer notable merit bonuses to those who got them, rather than the disappointing level of increases we’d been able to provide in the past, when virtually everyone got one. Performance improved across the board among the direct reports who had been properly rated. Our guess as to why this happened was that employees realized they had to produce results to qualify for a merit bonus, and because rating the employees correctly during annual reviews was only the first step in a continuous process of targeted and accurate employee feedback.

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Level 3 was also pretty easy to measure, because we were able to measure the range of ratings each manager had given to their direct reports for the prior five years. We noticed they were applying the learning (Level 3) after the workshop when we saw those numbers change drastically to indicate a real desire to reward high performers. What may have helped us achieve the results we wanted to at Levels 3 and 4 was expanding our Levels 1 and 2 evaluations from the traditional reaction and learning measures to include measures of confidence and intention to make this behavioral change in the next performance review cycle.

The Challenges Feeling uncertain about measurement? Look to this section for solutions to these evaluation conundrums: Challenge 25. I’m not sure how to show the effect of our work on organizational imperatives............................................................................... 205 Challenge 26. I’ve never designed a knowledge quiz before ............................. 213 Challenge 27. I don’t know how to construct valid, reliable test questions...... 218 Challenge 28. I’d like my Levels 1s to be more than smile sheets...................... 228

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Challenge: 25

I’m not sure how to show the effect of our work on organizational imperatives

Description Unless your training function has access to employee and budgetary data, and is able to link that data to specific participants in your programs, the data you have on hand will probably not be what you need. But that doesn’t mean you can toss up your hands and walk away from measurement activities. Accountability is increasing for all organizational functions, not just L&D. As a result, our output is subject to scrutiny. You must do more with measurement to show that your work is having a positive impact on organizational initiatives, even if the data that you have isn’t all that you’d like it to be.

Solutions Evaluation at Kirkpatrick Levels 3 (behavior) and 4 (results) can help you to show the impact of your work organizationally. Here are some strategies to help you assess at these levels.

Pick the Right Metrics Before you sit down at your computer to design or develop a training program, you need to know what outcome that program is intended to achieve and what metrics would determine that an improvement has been made. If you really want to be seen as a partner, use the organization’s existing business metrics as the metrics for assessing impact, such as sales, contributions received, the number of customers satisfied with responses from the tech support team, or the number of tech support callbacks. Table 25-1 is a list of some measures you might consider.

Challenge 25  •  205

Table 25-1. Soft and Hard Data Soft Data Open to interpretation, hard to quantify or track, often behaviorally oriented

Hard Data Objective, easy to quantify, common measures of organizational performance

Work Habits • Absenteeism or tardiness • Safety or rule violations

•

Work Climate Employee grievances • Turnover • Job satisfaction •

Output Units produced • Items assembled or sold • Forms processed • Tasks completed • Calls answered Quality Scrap or waste • Rework • Product defects or rejects •

Attitudes Employee self-confidence • Employee’s perception of job responsibilities • Perceived changes in performance •

New Skills Decisions made • Problems solved • Conflicts avoided •

Development and Advancement Number of promotions or pay increases • Requests for transfer • Performance appraisal ratings •

Initiative Implementation of new ideas • Successful completion of projects • Number of employee suggestions •

Time Equipment downtime • Employee overtime • Time to complete projects •

Cost Overhead • Variable costs • Accident costs • Sales expenses •

Customer Metrics Number of complaints • Number of support call backs • Contributions or donations made •

Collect a Baseline Whatever you are going to measure after training, you need to measure before training as well. Otherwise, it’s impossible to prove that the results you see post-training have anything to do with the fact that people completed it. For example, if you hope that the call center employees who were trained handle 10 percent more calls following your sessions, you need to know how many calls they were handling prior to training. In examples like that one, your baseline can be tied to actual numbers. In some cases, your baseline will be more anecdotal. For instance, upon registration in a coaching program, ask participants to estimate what percentage of their time in one-on-one

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meetings with their staff members is spent on development and coaching. Then ask them again immediately and three to six months after the program. Another inexact technique for measuring the impact of training is a trend-line analysis. This is usually looking at some measure over time and then pointing to where in the timeline training happened to see if there are any significant dips or upticks surrounding the training event. Trend lines require a historical record of what’s being measured, such as the number of customer complaints or product errors, before and after the training.

Use What Data You Can Get Don’t let a lack of data stop you from reporting on something. Maybe you want to know how many people you put through a sales program actually increased their sales compared to those who hadn’t gone through the program, or how many of the managers you trained on leading organizational change had more successful change initiatives in their areas. These data isn’t always easy to get or readily available. Even when your ideal data can’t be secured, there is usually something you can report on. Here are some of the ways the ROI Institute, presenting at ATD’s Core 4 conference, suggests that you collect data about whether your participants are applying their new knowledge, skills, or attitudes on the job (the percentages indicate how frequently organizations are currently utilizing these methods): • Participant survey (74 percent). Ask those who participated in the program to self-report, using a questionnaire, on how they are applying what they learned back at work. • Job observation (60 percent). Spend time in the participants’ workplace following your program to see whether the information you imparted is being utilized. • Supervisor surveys (44 percent). Ask supervisors to respond to a questionnaire about how those who participated in the program are utilizing their new knowledge, skills, or attitudes. • Action planning (39 percent). Compare the plans that participants created during your session with what they have actually accomplished after some period of time back on the job. • Performance records monitoring (37 percent). Compare participants’ performance data from prior to training with their performance data following training.

Challenge 25  •  207

Participant interviews (34 percent). Ask those who participated in the program to self-report on how they are applying what they learned on the job using interviews or focus groups. If nothing else is possible, soliciting self-reports from the people who participated in the program, or their managers, provides at least some anecdotal data you can share. Your questions might first be about job performance following training, like the ones in Table 25-2. •

Table 25-2. Anecdotal Data From Learners and Their Managers Ask the Learners •

• • • •

About how much of what you learned in this course do you think you have applied on the job: 0%, 25%, 50%, 75%, 100% In the three months since your training, have you used X skill? If you did use X skill, what were the results? If you did not use X skill, why not? What follow-up from this training would be useful to you right now?

Ask Their Managers •

•

•

Did the employees change their behaviors following training? Has this change been positive? Has this change been sustained? How have employees’ performance improved compared with that of employees who did not attend training? What has gotten in the way of these employees utilizing the KSAs from training?

And then your questions might try to clarify how much of that current behavior is a direct result of training. The ROI Institute suggests questions like these, which can help you weigh participant and supervisor responses in your calculations of value: • Which factors, including—but not limited to—training, might have created the on-the-job improvements you’ve noticed? • As a percentage, how much of the improvement is due to each factor? • As a percentage, how confident are you in your estimate?

Set Targets for Each Metric It’s not enough to just report numbers. Both you—and the senior leaders whom you will be reporting to—need to know what numbers mean and whether they are reasonable. What numbers are in line with competitors’, or with industry benchmarks? What numbers make your results valid? For example, your organization may consider a 25 percent drop in customer complaints about a certain process, following training on that process, to represent a true success. What number are you striving for? Is that number realistic?

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At NYU, we also had targets for how many people would evaluate our online offerings (and those who did evaluate programs were entered into a quarterly raffle, just to help us get to that target), as well as what the minimum overall satisfaction score should be, based on data a vendor shared with us about what standard satisfaction scores were for online learning. Having targets for the number of responses you expect helps you to get creative in coming up with ways to get to that rate—from prizes (carrots), to not marking completion of courses until learners submit an eval (stick)—and helps ensure that you aren’t just hearing from those whose experiences with the course were the most extreme. Having minimum targets for the percentage of passing or satisfaction scores creates some context for the data you are sharing, such as, “Our goal for this training was to have 80 percent of participants pass with a score of 80 of above. Eighty-nine percent passed with a score of 82 or above.” Help your organizational leaders, who will want to set all targets for improvement at 100 percent, to come up with more realistic expectations.

Get Your Math Right If you are going to report regularly on your outcomes, which will help to communicate your value, that data needs to be reliable and consistent. This means you have to establish some principles on your team about how data will be collected and recorded. For example: • When analyzing data, select the most conservative alternative for calculations. For example, if you have two competing counts of how many people completed a certain online class, use the lower number. • Round up or round down at 0.5. • If no improvement data is available for a population, assume that little or no improvement has occurred. • If there is enough evidence that a participant answered incorrectly (for example, a participant checked all the responses in the far right column going down the page, even though the rating scale for that column flipped a third of the way through—the column started out meaning “strongly agree,” but flipped to “strongly disagree” after a few questions), discard that participant’s

Challenge 25  •  209

responses, as they were likely circling what they thought was one type of response without reading the questions. • Drop outlier scores (those on the extremes). Beyond agreement on these overall principles, you’ll need to know how any metric that you present was calculated. You may damage, rather than enhance, your reputation if you cannot answer a senior leader who asks, “How did you get that number?” Know how your numbers were calculated and use the same calculation and principles month-over-month and year-over-year, so that your results are reproducible and solid. A basic example of how discrepancies in data can affect your reporting comes from two trainers at one organization I worked with, as shown in Table 25-3. Table 25-3. Discrepancies in Data Reporting Would you recommend this course? Yes: 20 people No: 5 people Skipped question: 10 people Trainer 1

Trainer 2

Took the number of people who responded positively (20) and divided it by the number of people who answered this question (25) and reported that 80% would recommend the course.

Took the number of people who responded positively (20) and divided it by the number of people who responded to the survey (35) (because if you skipped the question, you weren’t recommending it). Reported that 57% would recommend the course.

It isn’t as important which number these two trainers reached as it is that they decide whose calculations to use, and use them consistently across programs, courses, and time periods. Document how you compute your metrics somewhere that can live independently of you, in the event that you are not around when someone is making these calculations.

Conduct Higher Levels of Evaluation Selectively If getting the metrics you need is a real challenge in your organization, reserve doing so for your larger training initiatives. Conducting Level 4 evaluation makes the most sense when the program is extremely costly and you want to justify the expense, when a large number (or all) of your employees went through the program, or when the program was implemented to address

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a specific organizational challenge and you need to show how training has contributed to the resolution of that challenge.

Bottom Line More and more organizations are data driven. If training is to be a current and value-added organizational function, we need to be held to the same standard.

Go Deeper “Business Results Made Visible: Designing Proof Positive Level 4 Evaluations” by Ken Phillips According to a 2009 ROI Institute research study, the number-one thing CEOs would most like to see from their learning and development investments is evidence of Level 4 business results, yet only 8 percent of CEOs receive this type of information. This article details how to select business metrics that have a strong relationship with learning program content and how to connect the learning program to the business metrics. This article and several other fantastic resources related to program evaluation are available to anyone who signs up, for free, as a member at this site.

“How to Collect Data” by Malcolm Conway L&D professionals need data to determine more than whether courses provide the required learning: They need data to determine what learning is required and what level of learning employees already possess. This Infoline presents an overview of a five-step model for data collection developed by Greg Kearsley of George Washington University, from identifying your data needs and how you will fulfill them through collecting and validating the data. Strengths and weaknesses of some common types of research are included in a helpful grid.

“Make It Credible: Isolate the Effects of the Program,” ch. 10 in Value for Money, by Patti Pulliam Phillips et al. This book is not focused exclusively on training events, and it can get extremely technical and analytical, but it is thorough and insightful. The review of the myths surrounding why we don’t try to isolate the effects of our programs in this chapter is incredibly helpful.

“Kirkpatrick Foundational Principles” on the Kirkpatrick Partners website The steps to achieving return on expectations, or ROE, are based on the Kirkpatrick Model for evaluating training programs with the four levels used in reverse. This is only one of the many articles on the Kirkpatrick Partners website that can help you to implement the four levels of evaluation in your workplace. The tab for “The New World Kirkpatrick Model” can help ensure that you are applying the levels based on current thinking and data.

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ROI Learning Center The ROI Learning Center provides tools, templates, and case studies to help prepare you for success in today’s environment. Its goal is to take the mystery out of the ROI process. After signing up for a free membership, you’ll have access to webinars, articles, and templates to assist at five levels of evaluation that the center has identified, along with a calculator to help you calculate ROI when you have the appropriate data.

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26

Challenge:

I’ve never designed a knowledge quiz before

Description Are you a trainer who balks at the idea of testing knowledge during your programs? Do you think it feels too much like school to administer a quiz? Many new trainers struggle to figure out how to assess individual learning within a large group, or how to create an instrument to measure soft skills, like listening or customer service. Developing a knowledge quiz is not something you’ve had to learn to do—until now.

Solutions Here are some ways to make sure your Level 2 assessments both test and encourage knowledge attainment and performance improvement. Read this challenge on how, generally, to design and deliver tests in conjunction with Challenge 27, which focuses specifically on constructing effective test questions and scoring rubrics.

Eliminate Negative Associations Asking questions after sharing a concept or an activity—testing—is not merely a way to determine how much has been learned. The “testing effect” is the psychological research finding that testing dramatically alters the learning process itself and promotes long-term retention. In a randomized study by Henry Roediger and Jeffrey Karpicke from Washington University (2006), two groups of college students were asked to study a prose passage for seven minutes. One of the groups then studied the passage for an additional seven minutes. The other group was tested on the passage for those seven minutes. The results are in Figure 26-1. They show that the group that took a practice test initially remembered fewer facts than the group that studied more. But, after two days, and then after one week, the group that had been asked questions about the passage had far better recall than those who had not been asked questions but had been given additional time to review and learn the material.

Challenge 26  •  213

Figure 26-1. Research Results of Studying More Versus Taking a Test

Source: Roediger and Karpicke (2006)

So, testing is important not just to show that your training hit the mark and that people learned, but also to cement their knowledge and to give people the confidence that they can do it (or get support if they can’t). Knowledge-based courses should be assessed with some kind of test administered individually. Courses that focus on performance can be assessed with either an individual test or a performance assessment. A performance assessment might be a tool you’re already using, such as a role play, that includes a thorough rating scale so that its results can be quantified for each participant. Wherever possible, participants should receive feedback on their test results. That is, reveal the answers or performance you were looking for and let them see how they measured up to those expectations. Don’t just share the correct responses, but make sure to provide explanations of correct responses. Letting participants know that you are testing them to help increase their knowledge, not to put them on the spot, can help them feel more comfortable and overcome some of their negative associations with tests. They may see themselves as bad students or bad test takers and feel hopeless before they even try it. Reassure participants that what you are doing is meant to help the learning transfer to the workplace, and wherever possible, refer to it as practice instead of a test or quiz. The obvious exception here is when participants do have to pass a certification or completion exam to either gain a particular

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reward (a bonus, a promotion, to stay in their current role) or avoid a particular consequence (having to retake the training, going on probation).

Make Sure Tests Are Aligned With Objectives Training should be solidly anchored to the criteria for success on the job through learning or performance objectives. This is referred to as “criterionreferenced instruction”—instruction that is closely tied to desired performance. Criterion-referenced testing is the means for ensuring that the learner has met the objective at an appropriate standard of performance. Both written tests and performance assessments should be criterion referenced. That is, don’t test things that weren’t covered in the training or that the learner won’t encounter or won’t need on the job. Criterion-referenced tests are basically mastery tests that show how well a learner knows the subject matter. The other type of reference test, a norm-referenced test, is one in which learners are compared with their peers. Norm-referenced testing happens primarily in educational settings, not in the workplace.

Test for the Right Behaviors How will you know that your test or performance assessment is related to mastery on the job? Poll people who are adept at the desired skill, as well as people who observe others expertly or poorly demonstrating the desired skill, about what mastery looks like, and design your instruction and related practice around their responses. Ask what people who are adept at the task do and what those who are not adept fail to do. Ask peak performers what about their behavior makes them effective.

Test for Understanding, Not Just for Recall What’s ultimately most important is whether learners understood the content, not that they could parrot it back to you. Your tests need to be at an appropriate level of struggle, so they should be associated with tasks that are higher on Bloom’s Taxonomy (see Challenge 17) than just recalling facts. For example, rather than asking learners to name the components of a specific feedback model, like BASIC (balanced, authentic, specific, impact-focused, concise), you can ask them to write a piece of BASIC feedback, or to analyze a piece of feedback to see if it is BASIC (and, if not, to determine which component is missing). Tests should distinguish between who really “got” the content and who was just a good test taker.

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Test Throughout Don’t save your assessments until the end of your program. Use informal, formative methods throughout. That way, if there are issues, you have a chance to fix them. The merits of formative assessment, in combination with formative feedback, have been confirmed through research (Klecker 2007). It makes sense: When learners can receive guidance for improvement as they progress through your content, they will do better than if they are assessed only at the end of a course (a summative evaluation). Formative assessments—including practices, pop quizzes, role plays, or drawing a concept map—monitor student learning and provide instant feedback. Summative assessments evaluate student learning, skill acquisition, and achievement at the end of a course and can create a “cram and forget” situation. Neither of these approaches should be used exclusively. A balance of formative and summative approaches is the best way to support learning.

Provide Supports If learners will be able to use supports on the job—like the internet, job aids, or peers—let them use the same supports when completing the practice or taking the test. There is no need, for example, for a participant to memorize a chart to answer questions on your exam if the chart will be posted in their workplace. In this case, your test just needs to make sure they know how to read and use the information found there.

Make Sure Your Test Is Accessible As with all components of L&D activities, you’ll need to ensure that the test or performance assessment is compliant with the Americans With Disabilities Act, and you’ll need to make accommodations for those who need them, such as extra time to read test questions, someone to read test questions aloud, or questions translated into other languages.

Bottom Line Well-designed tests during and after your training programs help you measure—and promote—participant learning.

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Go Deeper “Develop Assessments and Tests,” ch. 10 in How to Write Terrific Training Materials, by Jean Barbazette For a test to be effective, match it to your learning objectives. This is one of dozens of tips in this very practical chapter on developing a reliable and valid test. Examples of poor and better test questions are provided, as well as sample evaluation checklists.

“The Value of Formative Assessment” by Joan Godbout Educational research indicates that formative feedback enhances learning and is perceived as beneficial by students. This research study suggests 10 characteristics of effective formative assessment, with a number of suggestions for facilitating its implementation. Although the article is geared toward academic scholars, its applicability to workplace learning is clear.

“Evaluation and CRT Development,” ch. 3 in Test Development, by Melissa Fein Two prevalent evaluation frameworks used in training evaluation, the Kirkpatrick model and logic modeling, are briefly reviewed. Fein suggests, however, that you need not align solely with any one model of evaluation and that there is plenty to learn from any of them.

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27

Challenge:

I don’t know how to construct valid, reliable test questions

Description New trainers are often tasked with creating assessments of learning programs with little understanding of how to design one that produces valid and reliable results. Poorly designed test questions are confusing and therefore negatively affect response and passing rates. Compound all this with the fact that new trainers often put off test design until the last moment (instead of creating learning objectives, creating test items to measure those objectives, and then creating content to equip learners to pass the test). All of this leads to some pretty poor testing experiences associated with workplace learning.

Solutions Once you’ve gotten comfortable with some overall concepts in test design and delivery from Challenge 26, you can avoid some common test item design errors by using these strategies.

Choose the Right Question Type Which type of question to include in your assessment will depend on several criteria—from how long it will take you to develop to how likely it is that a learner could guess the answer correctly. Table 27-1 contains pros and cons of several common test question types.

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Challenge 27  •  219

Can cover pairs of items efficiently

Can focus on critical terms or concepts

Can provide more qualitative and thoughtful responses at a higher level of challenge

Can determine a complete understanding of topic nuances

Matching

Fill in the blanks

Short answer

Long answers or essays

* Time-to-answer estimates are from Hill (2018).

Simulates real world Evaluation checklist can become a performance support on the job

Can include more questions, thus covering more topics

True/False

Performance test

Can vary in complexity and level of questions Can include more questions, thus covering more topics

Pros

Multiple choice

Question type

Table 27-1. Common Test-Question Types

Hard to determine level of performance required

Varies

10–30+ minutes

Low to moderate

Moderate to high

2 minutes

Low to moderate

Requires language ability Creates higher level of stress than previous question types Too much like school and causes stress Does not always replicate workplace situations Requires language ability

1 minute

30 seconds per response

Moderate

Moderate

30 seconds

1-1.5 minutes, based on complexity

Time to answer*

Low

High

Time to create

Tests low-level objectives

Tests low-level objectives Restricted to content that can be paired

Without modification, has low level of challenge

Recognizing an answer is easier than recalling it Reading skill required to answer

Cons

None

None

Low

Varies

Subjective

Subjective

Objective

Low to moderate (usually on the spot)

High

Moderate

Low to Moderate

Low (and can be automated)

Objective

Moderate, if elimination isn’t an option Low to Moderate

Low (and can be automated)

Low (and can be automated)

Time to score

Objective

Objective

Score

High, without modification

Moderate

Ability to guess correctly

Ask the Right Number of Questions How many items your test should include depends on a few factors: • Criticality. How important is the material covered on the test? The more critical the information—for example, information related to safety or directly related to the bottom line—will require more questions. •

•

•

Consequences. If the results of the test are tied to merit increases, promotions, or other severe consequences, you should include more questions to ensure that participants have the chance to pass, and don’t fail based on answering just a couple of things incorrectly. Size. How large is the sample of KSAs you’re testing? The more content your test covers, the more questions it needs to have. Time. Do you have time to develop the test, and do learners have time to take it? How much time is there to score it and report results? Limited time will require fewer test items; just be aware how that may limit participant retention or lower their scores.

Create a Question Bank There are several reasons you might want to create multiple test questions that cover the same material—a question bank. There are instances in which you will allow people to retake a test and you don’t want them to have the same exact test, though you want questions to cover the same material. For instance, if you offer an anti-harassment workshop and an employee fails the test at the end, your organization may then be liable should that employee be discovered to be harassing in the workplace. (After all, they failed the test; did you take corrective action after noticing that?) In these instances, you want to make sure that everyone passes the exam by providing feedback on answers and multiple opportunities to retest until they get it right. However, you wouldn’t want people just taking the same test over and over again, because that would only indicate that they memorized the correct answers, not that they mastered the content. A question bank allows you to randomize the order of questions, as well as the specific questions that are asked.

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Use Best Practices for Test Construction An instrument has validity when it assesses the knowledge and skills that learners are expected to gain from the instruction. That is, a valid test of knowledge or behavior covers the content that the course covered at the level of skill that participants will be required to display. For example, in a course where the objective was for participants to determine which situations warrant bringing in a supervisor, these two questions may not be valid: A question asking how to summon a supervisor by phone, email, or text might not be valid, because it’s not aligned with the outcomes for the program. • A multiple-choice question asking, “All of these are situations in which a supervisor should be called EXCEPT: a) The customer asks for a supervisor, b) The customer yells at you, or c) The customer yells at other customers,” isn’t at the right level because on the job, the situation won’t be as clear-cut. A more valid question would be a case study showing a complex customer interaction and having participants evaluate that situation to determine if a supervisor should be summoned. A reliable instrument will result in the same results (or scores) on the same instrument at two different points in time. Instruments lack reliability when the instructions or questions are confusing or can be interpreted differently from one administration to the next, when the learner can guess the correct answers, or when different people would score the test differently, any of which could produce different results on the same test. Help avoid guessing correctly and ensure validity and reliability with these tips: • Make sure instructions are brief and simple. • Allow test takers to use a job aid when taking the test if they will be able to use a job aid when they are back on the job. There is no reason to test material that people are not responsible for memorizing. Even if a test is valid because it tests what learners are supposed to know how to do at work, the results may not be valid if learners are asked to do something on a test that they would never have to do in real life. • Make sure test items are clear and unambiguous. • Make sure that each question serves a purpose. Determining if each question is necessary is a matter of both determining that its topic •

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•

•

•

•

•

•

•

hasn’t already been covered elsewhere, and that each question tests something that the learner needs to know and use. Watch out for what’s sometimes referred to as a “double barrel” question. This is when you are trying to limit the number of questions you have, so you add too many conditions into one question or ask two questions in one, for example, “Should customer service representatives stand and smile to welcome the customer?” The trouble comes when they should smile, but not necessarily stand. It is a best practice to phrase your test questions using positive language. However, if you must use negative wording, be sure to highlight those words to ensure that test takers understand how you want them to respond, such as “Which of these is NOT one of the steps in our delegation model?” or “All of these are ways to do this calculation EXCEPT . . .” Avoid absolute terms like always and never in your test items. Words like these can be a giveaway that an answer choice is incorrect— because most things you’ll be teaching are not absolute—or may cause confusion if people can point to an exception to the rule. Don’t let a question on one part of the test answer questions on another part. For example, I’ve seen tests in which a multiple-choice question asks something like, “Which is the first step in our model?” and a later multiple-choice question asks, “After asking the customer’s name, what is the next step in our model?” or a case study question starts, “The receptionist asked the customer’s name and looked up her chart, as she should, but then she did this. . . . What should she have done instead?” An alert tester can then go back and say the first step in the model is asking the customer’s name. Avoid trick questions. Learners are stressed enough about exams. Don’t try to trip them up or complicate things for them. It erodes trust in the test-taking process and in your relationship with the learners. To ensure that your exam is fair and that it is testing at an appropriate level, include a mix of closed- and open-ended questions, shorter and longer questions, and easier and more challenging questions. Unless you are testing professional writing skills, assure participants that grammar and spelling don’t count on tests.

222  •  Challenge 27

Use Best Practices by Question Type Table 27-2 offers some specific best practices for certain types of test questions. Table 27-2. Question Type Best Practices Multiple choice

•

•

• • •

•

•

Matching

•

• •

•

Fill in the blanks

•

• • •

Make sure responses don’t overlap. That is, there is only one correct answer and no parts of that correct answer appear in other questions. Don’t let grammar give away your answer, e.g., “An animal that lives in the desert is an: a) dog; b) cat; c) iguana.” Without you knowing anything about the inhabitants of the desert, the grammatical construction of this question tells you that the answer is C. Avoid a pattern of correct answers (e.g., A, B, C, D, A, B, C, D, A, B, etc.) or uneven answer frequency (most answers are C). All responses should be about the same length. Avoid answer choices like “A and D only,” or with qualifiers like “A, if X is present.” When you get so specific, responders realize that is the correct answer choice. All responses should be plausible. Don’t throw in funny choices or responses that are obviously incorrect (we often do this so that we can have four possible responses for each question stem). This changes the weight of a correct answer and skews results. Use either “all of the above” or “none of the above” throughout the assessment, or not at all. Don’t include those options only when you need to (i.e., only when they are the correct answer). Make lists homogeneous. That is, if one list is primarily a list of terms, don’t throw a sentence or a definition into that list. For example, make one list consist of all terms and another of all definitions. Avoid more than one correct match. Make sure that only one response satisfies the pair. Always have more items on one list than on the other list to prevent guesses through elimination. For example, if there are eight words to be defined, have nine or 10 definitions to choose from. Limit the total number of pairs to be matched to eight to 10. Research has shown that people can process only about that number of different pieces of information at the same time. Make clear what belongs in the blanks. That is, how specific must the answer be? Are you looking for a specific word, or a sentence? Do you want a first or a last name, or both? Don’t make the blank be the first word in your question stem, e.g. “___ conditions of learning were suggested by Gagné in the 1970s.” Make all your blank lines the same length and don’t have two blanks to indicate two words. Just as with multiple-choice questions, watch out for grammatical construction that gives your answer away.

Challenge 27  •  223

Table 27-2. Question Type Best Practices (cont.) True/ False

•

•

•

Make sure you are only asking about one thing at a time. If your question has two parts and one is true and the other is false, there is no way to answer it correctly, such as, “True or false: Meetings should always start on time and latecomers should be asked for an explanation for why they are arriving late.” Statements must be clearly and completely true or false. Because true/false questions have a 50% chance of being guessed correctly, you may wish to structure them differently to decrease these odds, such as, “If the statement is false, fix it,” Or “Determine if the statement is true or false, and then provide an explanation as to why it is either true or false.” Phrase your questions positively to avoid the confusion of double negatives (e.g., change “True or False—Paris is not a country in Asia” to “True or False—Paris is a country in Asia”).

Analyze Your Questions Before utilizing your test or performance assessments, you’ll want to pilot them. This can be casual—like having colleagues on your L&D team complete the assessment and see if they can answer the questions correctly. Or, it can be more formal, such as testing members of your pilot audience before or after a pilot program. You’ll want to analyze question statistics after you roll out your assessment as well, looking for questions that most people cannot answer correctly. If you discover any questions that are tripping up the majority of your learners, you will need to determine if that is because of poor question construction or poorly designed instruction.

Make Sure Scoring Is Clear and Valid Grading your test needs to be objective and reliable. An instrument isn’t valid if the scoring rubric isn’t the same each time an individual takes it, or each time different individuals take it. Here are some ways to ensure your scoring is fair: • Make sure there is an answer key and that anyone using it to score the exam knows how to do so. If items to be scored are subjective (such as performance assessments, case studies, role plays, or short-answer questions), you must make sure that all raters score items the same way (referred to as “norming” in educational circles). Give a sample student’s exam responses to all your raters and ask them, “Would you rate this as low, medium, or high?” Make sure there is agreement. This includes when you will have peers evaluate one another’s performance in role plays or on similar performance

224  •  Challenge 27

•

•

•

•

assessments. Do a quick norming activity before releasing them to grade one another. Weight scores based on importance and complexity, not question type. That is, don’t simply say all multiple-choice questions are worth two points and all short answers are worth four. Establish a passing score and determine if you are rounding up or down when scoring (so as to cross that passing threshold) or not. Make sure the cutoff score is indeed a cutoff and make people retest if they do not pass. Make plans for additional instruction, or another round of observations, if a respondent is not successful in their efforts on the test. Consider, for a performance assessment, whether learners need to demonstrate a minimum score for each behavior being assessed, or only an overall average. That is, can a learner perform poorly on one behavior—or on one section of a written exam—and still be considered competent? Provide feedback. You will engender the full benefit of testing when your participants receive feedback on their responses. This is true even of correct responses (that may have been the result of good guessing). Feedback can be used to determine what further training is needed.

Create Objective Scoring for Performance Assessments When what you are testing at the end of your training is more behavioral than can be suitably covered on a test, you will need to use some sort of assessment of performance. This may be a role play, a simulation, a demonstration of equipment operation, or any other method of having participants perform the behavior and having an objective observer watch and score them. The easiest type of observation guide for the designer to create, and for the evaluator to complete, is a simple checklist, like the one in Table 27-3. Table 27-3. Sample Observation Guide (Simple) Learner name: _____________________________ Observer name: ____________________________ Did the learner perform:

Yes

No

Comments

Behavior A Behavior B Behavior C

Challenge 27  •  225

However, there may be situations where you require more than just a yes/ no sort of evaluation. You may want to know not only if they did something, but also how well they did it. Or, you may have multiple raters and want to be very clear what a yes or no looks like. (This is true if you will have peers rating one another. They may need more direction in order to give more targeted feedback.) Or, you may be demonstrating a behavior that is more complex than a simple yes or no would indicate. In these cases, a more sophisticated type of observation guide, a performance rubric, will need to be created. Table 27-4 demonstrates two options of how such a rubric might look: For sample A, different behaviors are described as being poor, fair, or good. For sample B, the behaviors to look for are the same across the board, but a better score is achieved the more behaviors you use. It is not a good idea to include both types of scoring on the same rubric. I have included them both here just so that you can see the two different types. Table 27-4. Sample Observation Guide (Complex) Learner name: _____________________________ Observer name: ____________________________ How Well Did the Learner Perform? Sample A: Welcoming customer

Poor Did not look up or was multitasking; did not greet the customer

Fair Greeted customer, but did not use name; made eye contact but did not smile

Good Greeted customer by name; made eye contact; smiled; thanked customer for coming in

Sample B: Discharging a customer

Did 0–1 of these things: • Made eye contact • Thanked them for coming • Thanked them for choosing our business • Provided appointment card • Asked if the customer had any questions

Did 2–4 of these things: • Made eye contact • Thanked them for coming • Thanked them for choosing our business • Provided appointment card • Asked if the customer had any questions

Did all 5 of these things: • Made eye contact • Thanked them for coming • Thanked them for choosing our business • Provided appointment card • Asked if the customer had any questions

226  •  Challenge 27

Comments

The number of columns you’ll have will depend on the intricacies of the behaviors you are observing. Creating a rubric like this one is challenging. You need to clearly distinguish between levels; descriptions in the different columns should not overlap. Doing this correctly, however, shows you know what the business is looking for and that your assessment is criterion referenced.

Bottom Line Be sure to thoroughly review and vet your test questions, because there are many ways to do this incorrectly.

Go Deeper “Stay the Course With Test Design” by Cindy Hill The key to developing a valid test is to create a test plan. This very informative TD magazine article covers each component of a solid test plan, from which type of questions to utilize, to how many test questions to include, to how long it takes participants to respond to each question type.

“Develop Valid Assessments” by Patti Shank Developing good assessments is not easy, but good assessments are an important part of a systematic process of valuable designed instruction. This concise and thorough Infoline describes the interrelated steps for designing reliable and valid assessments within the design of a broader program, including tips for each question type.

“Create Better Multiple Choice Questions” by Patti Shank Multiple-choice questions are the most frequently used question type in test assessments, because they are easy to score and developers think they are easy to write. But in reality, they are typically fraught with problems. Patti Shank’s Infoline covers typical errors in writing this type of question, the various levels of this question type, and how to write a better question (and to test those you’ve written). It also includes plenty of good and bad examples.

“Item Writing and Scoring,” ch. 7 in Test Development, by Melissa Fein The first step in the item-writing process is to consider the appropriate format for each test item. This requires thinking about the fidelity of the assessment task with respect to the actual work task (the higher the fidelity, the more authentic the assessment). This chapter describes major item types, along with guidelines and common flaws for each. Entire chapters are devoted to the concepts of validity and reliability respectively.

“A Better Way to Measure Soft Skills” by Judith Hale Performance checklists and rubrics can help you define soft skills so that they can be measured. This TD magazine article walks readers through six steps to developing these tools, with samples of each.

Challenge 27  •  227

28

Challenge:

I’d like my Level 1s to be more than smile sheets

Description Learner evaluations given at the end of training programs are often referred to as “smile sheets” because there is a belief that when asked about a training they’ve just attended—and about a facilitator who is likely to see their evaluations—people aren’t always honest and tend to just write some nice things that will make the instructor smile. Referring to these Level 1 evaluations as “smile sheets,” however, does everyone a disservice, because they can be valuable tools when designed and used correctly.

Solutions To fully utilize the power of Level 1 evaluations, try these tips.

Make Submitting an Evaluation Easy Learners are already stretched for time, and asking them to respond to your evaluation is asking them for a favor. Help them to help you by making the evaluation short and simple. If it’s printed out, the survey should not exceed one page, with lots of white space. The survey should be clean and attractive (not cluttered), with clear and simple instructions. Ask for a mix of quantitative and qualitative data, and require very little writing. Make sure you are only asking learners for information that can’t be obtained elsewhere. A very simple illustration of how trainers ask for information they could find is when they make learners fill in fields with course name, instructor name, date, location, and so on. You are asking the participants of a particular class to respond—you should already know that information, so take the burden off them.

228  •  Challenge 28

Make Sure Questions Yield Meaningful Data An evaluation at a company where I once worked asked what learners thought of the length of a course, with a scale ranging from excellent, to good, to fair, to poor. The problem: What does poor mean in this case? That the course was too short or too long? The fix, of course, was to change the question to: Was the length of the course too short, too long, or just right? The other problem with that example is that responders struggle to distinguish between terms like good and very good, or agree, somewhat agree, and slightly disagree, on a Likert scale. The solution is to create numeric response scales with numbers at regularly spaced intervals and descriptors or words only at the extreme ends. While on the topic of formatting these scales, the higher numbers on your scales should indicate more positive results and be placed on the right; the lower numbers, less positive results (so a three-star course is more well regarded than a one-star course), and placed on the left. Table 28-1 illustrates what a well-constructed and laid out scale question would look like. Table 28-1. Sample Likert Scale Question I left this program feeling confident I could apply my new skills within 30 days. Not at all true

1

2

3

4

5

Completely true

Ask Questions Beyond Likeability Senior executives are rightly dismissive of much of the data collected using smile sheets because they have bigger concerns than whether the registration process was smooth, or if the instructor was well prepared. These kinds of data may be helpful to you and your team, but be careful about asking too much about the logistical aspects of the training unless you really are planning to make some changes as a result of what you learn. So, is there room for feedback on the instructor, the classroom, the food, or other logistical aspects of the training? Sure. I like to ask that in an open-ended question at the end of the survey that says: “Please provide any comments on the instructor, the classroom, or other logistical aspects of the training here.” The questions you want to collect and analyze at Level 1 are deeper than these. They relate to whether learners see the connections between what was presented in the training and their work, whether they see any payoffs coming from the training, and whether the value they derived from the training was worth their investment of time and energy. This can help you report that they left the course feeling that it was a good use of their Challenge 28  •  229

time and that they intended, or were motivated, to put something from the session into practice back at work. Level 1s are where you can find out whether participants found the program to be related to their goals and realworld situations, which will have a positive impact on our more important evaluation results at Levels 3 and 4. Assuming you used techniques that led to learning transfer in your training design (see Challenge 22), you’ll want to collect data on whether those specific techniques were effectively used, for example, “Practice exercises reflected real-life situations I face: Not at all true–Completely true,” “What was one piece of meaningful feedback you received on your practice activities?” or “I saw an example of the performance I’m expected to demonstrate.” You might notice that the questions about practice exercises and examples of performance relate to whether something was present, rather than whether the responder agrees with something or thought something was effective. As Ken Phillips, chief architect of Predictive Learning Analytics, explained during a session at ATD’s Core 4 Conference, a frequency scale provides more accurate and reliable data than either an agreement or effectiveness scale. Phillips suggested that, even if a participant hadn’t been paying attention to how well a facilitator was doing a certain thing, such as providing relevant examples, when asked afterward if relevant examples were used frequently or not at all, they were able to remember. Agreement and effectiveness scales often produce biased results. For one thing, different raters may define terms like “effective” or “relevant” differently. For another, responses tend to cluster at the high end of an agreement scale. You’ll also want to collect data on the obstacles participants might face in applying this learning, or on the support they think they will need. That way you can go back to the businesses and talk to them about how to assist learners in applying their new knowledge and skills.

Make Sure Learners Can Answer the Questions Making sure learners can answer the questions on your Level 1 evaluation goes beyond just making sure the questions are clear. You also want to make sure the learners are comfortable answering them and can therefore answer honestly. Depending on your organization’s culture and values, you may wish to omit asking for their name on the evaluation so that they feel freer to respond openly.

230  •  Challenge 28

And you want to be sure that they know the answers to the questions. For instance, if you ask them how much of what they learned they can apply, they might not know; that might not be in their control. If you ask them what business results might come from their participation, they might not know that either. Research, like that of world-leading UCLA educational psychologist Robert Bjork, has shown too that learners don’t always recognize their own learning. Bjork reports that instead students assess whether they have learned something based on the ease with which they complete a related task (Bjork, Dunlosky, and Kornell 2013). While you can ask participants to gauge how much they knew of a subject before and then after a program, a Level 2 evaluation is going to more accurately measure this.

Ensure That Questions Are Objective If your questions are subjective or leading questions, your participants may not be able to—or wish to—answer (and, even if they do, their responses may not be valid, because the question wording skews the response to the positive). Questions like, “What was the greatest benefit of this program?” or “How has this training helped you?” don’t leave room for the person who wasn’t helped. A simple fix is adding “if at all” to the end of these questions. Another fix is replacing them with questions that don’t contain any subjective language, such as, “What is one piece of feedback you received on your practice activity?” or “What, if anything, has changed for you as a result of this program?”

Force a Choice—Or Not If you have an even number of choices on a rating scale (1-4 or Excellent, Good, Fair, Poor), you force people to choose a side—the positive side or the negative side. There is no neutral, middle number. I had generally constructed my scales like this. However, data collection experts say that a forced choice is not a real one; there are people who have neutral responses, and making them go to one side or the other either inflates or deflates your scores artificially and therefore invalidates your results. Ranking, rather than rating, is one way to get an answer without having to decide on forcing a choice or not. So instead of asking participants to “Rate your instructor on a scale of 1-5,” you might ask them to “Rank these five qualities of instruction, with a 5 representing ‘My instructor did this most often,’ and a 1 representing ‘My instructor did this least often.’” Challenge 28  •  231

Regardless of whether there is a neutral option, there should be “don’t know” or “not applicable” options, especially for items that are required. I can’t tell you how many surveys I’ve taken where I’ve been asked to rate something I didn’t experience and there was no “not applicable” button and the item was required. That negates the validity of that assessment item.

Avoid Cognitive Dissonance Make it easy for the participants in your training course to answer your Level 1 surveys and avoid cognitive dissonance. For example, if an item on your evaluation looks like this, “The facilitator was organized—Yes/No,” it’s easy to respond. In contrast, you make it harder for participants with, “The facilitator didn’t prepare—Yes/No.” By asking participants to respond to a negative, you force them to have to think about how “Yes” means “The facilitator didn’t prepare” (a negative) and “No” means “The facilitator did prepare” (a positive). Make sure that your wording is problem-free by phrasing things in the positive. Additionally, it might be hard for respondents to indicate whether a facilitator prepared in advance, as they weren’t present to make that determination.

Maximize Responses When you get more responses from your Level 1s, it means you are hearing from a broader base of participants, which can help even out the extremes. You probably already know that the sooner you ask for feedback after course completion, the more likely you are to get it (and the more likely that it will contain specifics about the experience that are forgotten over time). Evaluations are ideally administered in the training room. I’ve got ample anecdotal, and several instances of quantitative data, to back up this recommendation. For instance, I spoke to a trainer recently who noticed that virtually no one responded to the feedback form once they got back to their desks (“They forgot about us,” he said), but when they moved back to having it completed in the classroom, they had a 92 percent completion rate. Whether you administer it on paper or through a survey learners can access through their mobile devices (assuming you have adequate internet service) is up to you. Keep in mind whether you have the capacity to do the data entry afterward if you do it on paper. I’ve found that the greatest response comes from giving people an option in the training room to complete an evaluation on paper or using Survey Monkey, or some other survey technology. If 232  •  Challenge 28

you cannot do evaluations “live,” the best scenario is when the evaluation is waiting for participants when they get back to their desks. In synchronous or asynchronous online training, you can include a link to the evaluation directly from the program. If the evaluation is that important to you, set aside time for participants to complete it, and then wrap up the program (this is discussed more in Challenge 37). If participants know that as soon as they finish the evaluation they’ll be released, their responses will be rushed and not as thorough as when you say, “Fill these out now, and in five minutes we’ll do the big wrap-up!”

Share Evaluation Responses When possible, share evaluation data with the participants. This serves the dual purpose of acknowledging their feedback (and ensuring they will provide it again the next time) and inspiring them to continue applying what they were taught. For instance, they might like to know how their feedback led to a specific change in the program going forward (Level 1); how the entire group fared on a post-test (Level 2); how many of them are using the skills on the job, and how they are using those skills (Level 3); and how many of them had better business results six months out (Level 4). Every opportunity you have to reach back out to participants following the program helps keep the content alive for them. Sharing evaluation data is another of those ways.

Consider Customizing You may wish to have one common Level 1 for all courses and classes. That will let you compare apples to apples, but it may also be useful to have separate ones if your objectives and what you need to learn are different. For example, you will want different Level 1s for pilot programs versus nonpilots. Multiday or lengthy programs might require some different information than short, onetime programs. You may want to ask different questions on your evaluations of classroom training than you would for virtual or online learning events. You may want to create different Level 1s to evaluate different types of programs, such as onboarding versus compliance versus technological skills. You can keep a couple of questions the same across all Level 1s for comparison and consistent reporting purposes, and tailor others to ensure that they are actionable in a given situation.

Challenge 28  •  233

Bottom Line Stop calling them smile sheets—and stop designing them that way.

Go Deeper “Evidence-Based Training Methods and Smile Sheets (An Interview With Dr. Will Thalheimer)” by Jeffrey Dalto Will Thalheimer, author of Performance-Focused Smile Sheets: A Radical Rethinking of a Dangerous Art Form, responds to questions like where have smile sheets gone wrong, how can we make better smile sheets, and where do smile sheets fit in with the larger training evaluation process?

“Eight Tips on Developing Valid Level 1 Evaluation Forms” and “Level 1 Evaluations: Do They Have a Role in Organization Learning Evaluation Strategy?” by Ken Phillips According to research conducted by ATD (2015), 88 percent of organizations evaluate at least some learning programs at Level 1. According to the same ATD research study, only 44 percent of organizations view the data they collect from their Level 1 evaluations to have either high or very high value. These two articles focus on how to increase that percentage. These, and several other fantastic resources related to program evaluation, are available to anyone who signs up for a free Phillips Associate membership.

“The Four Levels of Evaluation—An Update” by Jim and Wendy Kirkpatrick The original Kirkpatrick Model measured customer satisfaction at Level 1. The New World Kirkpatrick Level 1 also includes measures of engagement and relevance. This TD at Work talks about why the model needed to be updated and how to approach the four levels now. Considerations for each of the dimensions of the new Level 1 are included, and the piece ends with a sample Level 1 instrument, which is included as Tool 28-1.

234  •  Challenge 28

Tool 28-1. Post-Program Hybrid Evaluation Form Example Instructions. Thinking about the course you just completed, please indicate to what degree you agree with each statement using a 10-point rating scale (where 0=strongly disagree and 10=strongly agree). Strongly disagree

Strongly agree

The class environment helped me to learn.

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

There were no major distractions that interfered with my learning.

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

I was engaged with what was going on during the program.

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

The activities and exercises aided in my learning.

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

I was given adequate opportunity to practice what I was learning.

0

1

2

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5

6

7

8

9

10

I will be able to use what I learned immediately.

0

1

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3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

The program material will contribute to my future success.

0

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2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

I would recommend this program to my co-workers.

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

Comments: From what you learned, what will you be able to apply to your work? What assistance or resources will you need to apply what you learned to your work successfully? How confident are you that you will be able to apply what you have learned to your work? (Circle one) Not at all confident 0

1

2

Extremely confident 3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

Comments: How committed are you to applying what you learned to your work? (Circle one) Not at all committed 0

1

2

Extremely committed 3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

Comments: What outcomes are you hoping to achieve as a result of your efforts? What other feedback would you like to share?

Challenge 28  •  235

s e s i r p 6 r N u S TIO C g E n S i in a r T Live The Problem “I’m not good at standing up in front of people. I only got asked to train other salespeople because I was good at sales. That doesn’t make me a stellar trainer.” “I get flustered when participants ask me questions I’m not prepared for and don’t know the answer to.” “There’s always a problem with the technology in my live training events—whether in person or online.” “I want to dazzle learners from the start, but just sharing the agenda and objectives for my session isn’t really a strong opening, is it?” “I find it hard to gauge the time during my sessions and usually have to cut things out toward the end.”

What’s Happening Here? Many newer trainers start out in the classroom or facilitating live training online. They may have been excellent in their functional roles and were singled out to teach others how to do what they were doing. Or, they may have taken it upon themselves to train others—new hires or those struggling in the field—on an individual basis and are now slated to run workshops for groups of these learners. Delivering live training is often an entry point into the field, and thus there are many people facilitating training who haven’t had much front-of-the-room exposure and who are facilitating training that they didn’t design. There are also more “make-or-break” moments in facilitation than there are in other aspects of your L&D position, because feedback is pretty immediate when you’re in the front of a live group of people. With the right strategies, you can take that feedback and adjust on the spot. Without them, your training may fall flat. What’s helped me—an extreme introvert—to be effective in the classroom? Well, for one thing I’ve been doing it for a long time. So some comfort comes from the discomfort you feel in certain situations and surviving and learning from those. Another thing that’s helped is realizing that I can be transparent as a facilitator. For example, I can say, “That’s unfortunate. The projector was working when I last turned it on. Hmm . . . let’s talk about something in pairs while I take a moment to call for help!” or “No one’s asked me that before, and I’d have to think about how best to respond. Give me a few minutes and I’ll get back to you,” or even “I had a marvelous question to ask all of you, but I just forgot it, so we’ll move on until it resurfaces.” These moments (provided they are limited) when you let learners “peek behind the curtain” (a Wizard of Oz reference, in case you aren’t familiar with the term), make you more human and approachable as a facilitator, and deepen the connection with the other humans in the room—your participants.

238  •  Section 6

The Challenges Look to this section for troubleshooting tips to handle these live training surprises: Challenge 29. I’m nervous..................................................................................... 241 Challenge 30. The technology isn’t working........................................................ 249 Challenge 31. The training room isn’t right ....................................................... 253 Challenge 32. They’re not hooked from the start............................................... 257 Challenge 33. Participants aren’t taking risks...................................................... 263 Challenge 34. Participants seem confused .......................................................... 271 Challenge 35. I don’t know how to respond to their questions......................... 276 Challenge 36. I’m always rushing at the end of my sessions............................... 281 Challenge 37. I’m not ending on a strong note................................................... 287

Section 6  •  239

29

Challenge: I’m nervous

Description Even experienced speakers can get nervous when conducting training, whether live or virtual. Fear of public speaking repeatedly tops lists— researched and less evidence-based—of common adult fears. Training events are dynamic; facilitators need to be able to adjust in response to participant needs and reactions, and the uncertainty of that can be unsettling. Because we are at the helm of the training event, and learners are putting themselves into our hands, we know that participants have—and should have—high expectations. All of this can produce nervous anticipation before or during a training session.

Solutions What you can do to reduce nerves in a live training event happens both before that event and in the moment. There are tangible tips you can employ, but also some mindset changes that can help you to reduce anxiety and relax into your sessions.

Prepare and Practice The very best way to overcome nerves ahead of a training event is to practice that training event. A corollary to the common expression, “If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing right,” is “If it’s worth doing, it’s worth practicing,” because that’s how you get it right. If possible, run a dress rehearsal in the space in which you will be conducting the training, using the technology that you will be using during the session, or, if you are conducting live virtual training, on the platform you will be using. But, even if you can’t get time in the training room or online, practice somewhere. And I do not mean sit quietly and read over your materials (though even that is better than nothing). What I mean by practice is run through the session aloud—whether with an audience or all alone in your living room. Why? If you’re going to stumble over words or program flow, it’s best to do Challenge 29  •  241

this when you can still make tweaks to your delivery, rather than when you have participants in front of you. Make sure that when you have an audience is not the first time the words have come out of your mouth. If you will be sitting while facilitating, such as when you are leading an online synchronous (live) program, sit; and if you will be standing when you deliver the training, stand during your practice. It’s a very good idea if you are just starting out delivering online learning that you enlist a partner who can monitor the chat and otherwise help make sure your presentation runs smoothly. This isn’t necessarily something you can practice, but you do want to get on the platform ahead of time with your partner to make sure you both understand how things work.

Have a Pilot Program When people know they’re in a pilot program, they may be more forgiving. This is a good venue for you to build up confidence around the curriculum and your delivery of it. Make sure you have a pilot session well enough in advance that there will be time to make tweaks to the program in spots where it is less effective than you’d hoped. Use draft formats of materials and slides. If you’ve already printed final, glossy, expensive learning assets, it’s not a pilot. Make sure the pilot participants include members of your intended audience—not just the eager ones, but the resistant, tough ones as well. Always save time for feedback; that’s the purpose of a pilot. Pilots take a long time—you have to start by sharing your expectations of pilot participants, and the logistics of how the pilot will work. In some cases, you’ll need to review some principles for delivering effective feedback. And all of that is before you run through the entire program, after which you must reserve time for written and oral feedback (that you, or someone else on your team, can ask for). If time is limited, you might schedule more than one pilot and offer only a portion of the full program in each. You probably also want to consider rewards for attending. I’m often asked how to convince organizations with a culture of immediacy to allow for a pilot in the first place. I usually refer back to the “good, fast, cheap” model from Challenge 8. You can roll out your final program quickly— without conducting a pilot—but it often comes at the expense of good and cheap. Your program will be better if you take the time to walk though it and incorporate learner feedback. You will be able to say with certainty that your program is effective if you conduct a pilot and then compare the on-the-job 242  •  Challenge 29

performance of those who went through the pilot versus those who did not. Mistakes caught during a pilot are cheaper to correct. And, depending on the size of the mistake, not holding a pilot can delay a rollout that is already underway if you have to cancel sessions while scrambling to fix something you could have caught earlier.

Use Positive Mental Imagery The head coach for the Washington Wizards basketball team, Scott Brooks, uses visualization as part of the team’s daily routine (Haberstroh 2017). He knows how critical mental imagery is to athletic success. Prior to becoming a coach, Brooks had had a very successful career on the court. He credited one of his high-school coaches for his shooting success and, in particular, one drill his coach required him to practice daily—visualizing his free throws! You can practice visualization, or mental imagery, too, in the hours—or the night—before your next training. Close your eyes and envision yourself in front of the room or the computer screen. See your face and posture as alert and welcoming. See your audience members nodding and smiling along with you. Picture the session going smoothly and producing the outcomes you hope for. This will manifest itself when your program begins, because you’ve rehearsed it going that way.

Own the Room Not only are you the facilitator of the workshop, but you are also the host of the event. This is true whether your classroom is real or virtual. Arrive early to get comfortable in the surroundings in which you will be welcoming your learners. And, where possible, set it up as you would like it. In a classroom, this means checking the following: • Temperature. One of the most common complaints classroom trainers hear is that the room is either too hot or too cold. Be prepared to adjust the temperature in your room, if that’s possible, which might mean calling someone in. Know, however, that the room should be cool when you are in it alone, because when it fills up with participants, they will create body heat and warm it. Prepare learners for adjustable temperatures by suggesting in your registration materials that they bring layers. • Room layout. Are tables and chairs set up as you want them to be? Are there aisles between tables and chairs for you to circulate the Challenge 29  •  243

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room? Does the room setup encourage participant interaction? If the answer to any of these questions is no, see what you can do about moving the furniture to meet your needs, and those of your learners. Posted materials. Prominently display a welcome message, including your name and contact information. Post other information you will want to refer to later in the session, like an agenda, ground rules, team lists for breakouts, or models related to your content. These can be hung and not visible if you put them behind your projector screen (Pressing the letter B on your keyboard “mutes” your PowerPoint slide show if you want to use the board behind it; Press B again to resume your presentation) or if you fold the chart in half vertically and tape the bottom of the chart to the wall so that you can remove it later for a big reveal. Also hang blank charts around the room that participants will use for activities later on. This allows you to launch the activity seamlessly, rather than having to tear off and hang charts as you go. Tangible materials. Make sure handouts, snacks, and other materials are laid out in an attractive manner. Place handouts only where you want people to sit so that when they come in, you can ask them to sit only in seats with handouts (and not, for example, in the back row). Don’t forget to block off an area near the door for latecomers. (For more on this and other concerns around latecomers, see Challenge 45.) If you will be handing some things out during the session, separate them into stacks that align with the number of people at each table, or in each row, so that you won’t have to count them when you pass them out later. Music. Results of a 1993 study led by Frances Rauscher have been coined “the Mozart Effect.” Three groups of college students were asked to take a spatial reasoning test. One group sat in silence for 10 minutes before the test. Another group listened to 10 minutes of relaxation tapes before taking the test. The third group listened to 10 minutes of a Mozart piano sonata. The third group, which had listened to Mozart, scored measurably higher, although these cognitive gains lasted only about 10 to 15 minutes. Despite the results of this research being somewhat overblown, some educators have posited that having classical music playing in the background when

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students enter the classroom can reduce tension and anxiety. The calming effects of any kind of soft music is what has prompted hotel chains, retail stores, and even the London Underground to pipe it into the background. Turn it on as soon as you arrive to produce that positive effect on your own tension and nervousness. In a virtual classroom, owning the room means adjusting: • Your surroundings. Sit in a spot where you often sit—in a comfortable chair. Don’t pick the day of your training to try out a new location with a new background and new lighting casting new shadows. Do whatever you can to reduce noise in the area where you’ll be facilitating. • The screen layout. Have you set up your screen the way that you want it to look, opened or closed chat boxes, minimized things? • Notifications. Have you turned off any pop-ups that might distract you during instruction, like breaking news, app notifications, or private texts? • The participant list and timed outline. Instructors who frequently utilize online learning, like Bill Schiano, a professor at Bentley College, suggest having two documents printed out and taped up (not lying flat on your desk surface so you have to look down during the class) ahead of your session: a participant roster and a timed outline. • The welcome screen. About 15 minutes before the session, prominently display a welcome message, including a photograph of you. About five minutes before the session, post an introductory activity to help participants connect with one another. • Music. The positive benefits of music that were mentioned for classroom use also apply online (and can allow early arrivals to test their sound).

Be Comfortable The day you are in front of an audience is not the day to try out a new pair of shoes or a tight new blazer. It is not the day to give up smoking, start vigorous exercise, or make other changes that could knock you off your game. However, if you are facilitating online training, make sure that you don’t dress too casually. Even if participants can’t see that you are in sweatpants, wearing them may cause you to relax a little too much. Be comfortable, but

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also business appropriate. Be sure that you’ve eaten and gotten a good night’s sleep in advance of the program.

Take Deep Breaths Deep breathing can connect you to the present moment and allow you to get your nerves under control. This quick and easy tool goes wherever you go. Just focusing on your regular breathing for a minute can help ground you. Or, try one of these two breathing exercises: • Box breathing is a four-part breathing exercise. Get comfortable wherever you’re sitting. Focus your eyes on your lap or at some indistinct point in front of you. Start by breathing in for four full seconds. Let the air fill you up all the way down to your belly. Hold that for four seconds. Now slowly exhale for four seconds. And now hold that emptiness for four seconds. Repeat one or two times. • A prolonged exhale is a simple exaggerated-breathing exercise that entails breathing in through your nose for twice as long as you then breathe out through your mouth (for example, in for three, out for six; in for five, out for 10; whatever numbers feel right for you).

Have a Solid Opening Once you’re under way, you’ll be much more comfortable. New trainers are usually most anxious before getting started and in the first couple of moments of the program. Focus your practice on the opening so that you start out strong. Memorize it so you’re not looking at notes, but are making eye contact, so that you can speak naturally and automatically. One trick is to plan an interactive activity right away. That way you don’t even have to say much before turning it over to the participants. You can breathe a sigh of relief: You’re off to a strong start.

Recover Gracefully The truth is that no one will know if you’ve messed up except for you. They don’t know what your notes say and whether you missed something on the agenda or not. If you realize you’ve made a mistake, try not to get tripped up and simply move on. Don’t draw attention to mistakes by overly apologizing for them. Just pause, smile, and correct. If you must, make a quick acknowledgment, like, “Gosh. You’d think I’d remember that definition by now,” or

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“Well, that wasn’t how that was supposed to work” and move on. We all make mistakes; it’s how we recover from them that makes the difference.

Use the Positive Energy of the Group Change your thinking from “I’m going to screw up something in front of this audience” to “This audience is on my side; they want me to succeed.” Because they do. No one wants to come to a training program with a bad facilitator. They want you to be engaging and skilled, and to teach them something. They are rooting for you. Lean into their positive energy; facilitate from a mindset of “They already like you.”

Embrace Your Nerves Another mindset shift is to consider your nerves in a positive way. It’s better that you are a bit nervous. Nerves can spark you to work that much harder, to prepare that much more. If you weren’t nervous, you might get lazy in front of participants. A feeling of “I’ve got this” can result in an overconfidence that can lead to mishaps and to making less of a connection with your audience. I met a trainer the other day who practices the mantra, “If you’re not nervous, you’re too comfortable.”

Bottom Line Nerves happen; remember some tips to help you get comfortable in the moment.

Go Deeper “Poise,” step 6 in Own Any Occasion, by Erik Palmer Audiences can forgive nerves that cause a slight quiver in your voice, but they will be less sympathetic to repeated, annoying tics, because they make it difficult to pay attention. This chapter details how you can demonstrate poise even if you don’t feel calm, self-confident, or composed. Once you’re in control of your nerves, the book gives expert advice around every other aspect of your public speaking, from voice, to pace, to gestures, to eye contact, and more.

“90 Tips From Toastmasters” by Toastmasters International Just what it claims to be, this is a list of 90 suggestions on all aspects of public speaking, including reducing nerves, from Toastmasters International, the organization that’s been helping people from diverse backgrounds become more confident speakers, communicators, and leaders since 1924. Scan this list of tips, or, if public speaking is particularly scary for you, drop by one of their open meetings held every day all over the country.

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“Basics of Stand-Up Training” by Tora Estep A stand-up trainer’s natural enemy is tension. Tension interferes with creativity, the emotions, and the five senses—all keys to a strong, effective performance. This Infoline provides advice for taming your fears by focusing on the learners, focusing on the content, and following the plan. Tips that actors use to reduce tension before a performance are also included.

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30

Challenge:

The technology isn’t working

Description Whether your training is in person or virtual, things can go wrong during live training—and often what goes wrong is the technology. Getting ready for a session that contains some technological component can be the most stress-provoking aspect of preparation. Whether that one five-minute video clip in the middle of a four-hour program will actually run properly is the kind of thing that keeps us up at night.

Solutions Here are some things you can do to avoid or respond to common technological glitches.

Expect Technological Mishaps Connie Rowland, who is on the road delivering training for WW over 50 percent of the time, says, “Despite the best planning, I often run into technical problems. Either the TV sound doesn’t work, the clicker to advance the slides doesn’t work, or the TV is simply missing. It’s not if something goes wrong; it’s when something goes wrong.” That’s the nature of the work. Rowland continues, “Overall, when something doesn’t go as planned, you just have to MacGyver it!” (referring to the fictional television character who relies on his unconventional problem-solving skills to save lives). She gives this example: “Once we had to get a ladder out of the supply closet, set the laptop up on the painter step, and show the slides. Better a small screen than no screen!” Keeping your sense of humor helps, too. During the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, when so many people were conducting and experiencing virtual webinars for the first time, I heard a ground rule for all participants of “generosity with technical hiccups.” That’s something I will hang on to for virtual learning long after the crisis is over.

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Test Your Technology If a full-on technical run-through isn’t possible in the 24 hours before your training event, make sure to arrive early enough to turn on and test all of your audiovisual (A/V) equipment: slides, sound, internet connection, and so on. Do this check first thing when you enter the room—before moving tables, hanging flipcharts, or setting out snacks and handouts. That way if it doesn’t work, you have time to call someone to fix it (assuming there is someone to call). Open direct links to videos that are embedded in the slide deck and leave them on your task bar in case, for some reason, they don’t play as part of the deck. Test your microphone prior to the session, if you are using one. Make sure audio can be heard in the back of the room (it should sound louder to you when you’re in the room alone). When participants will be using their own technology, such as for a webcast or virtual learning opportunity, send them instructions on how to test their own equipment a couple of days in advance. Allow people to arrive early to work out any technological issues. When your training is in a computer lab, you will want to turn on and log in to all computers before your session begins so that you find out about any broken ones and can plan accordingly before participants arrive. Put signs on the broken ones so that people don’t get comfortable at those seats and then have to move. Pair people up at the terminals that do work, and remind participants periodically to switch which one of them is using the keyboard, so that everyone gets their hands on the machines. When there aren’t enough computers for partners to work at, turn your session into a demo, where you show them how things work in the front of the room. Dismiss people early who don’t want any additional practice and let those who do want to get their hands on the machines stay. Finally, make sure you do your part: Report computers that don’t work after your session is over. Don’t make the next trainer face the same problem you had.

Have a Backup Plan Have old-fashioned backup plans for all technology-based activities. For example, I usually have at least one copy of the script for any videos I plan to show in the event that they don’t work. If the video was short enough, I’ve read the script aloud, or acted it out with a willing volunteer. In one case, I gave the group a break and went out and copied the script so that everyone could read it. Or, you may need to summarize what was in the video 250  •  Challenge 30

and move on. Do not spend more than a couple of minutes trying to get an inoperative video to work. I’ve seen trainers spend up to 10 minutes of coveted live-training time trying to get a two-minute video to play that, once it is working, seems very undeserving of that time. When the volume isn’t working on the video, turn on closed captions. Similarly, if your presentation won’t open, have a printed copy of it so that you can copy key slides onto a whiteboard or flipchart. Make sure to email yourself all the slides in case that is the only way you are able to access them, such as when your thumb drive isn’t recognizable or your laptop malfunctions. If the live-polling feature you’d planned to utilize isn’t working, revert to raised hands, or, if you are online, use the chat box.

Include Troubleshooting Tips for Participants Just as you need to come up with solutions for technology problems when the training is in a classroom, your learners have to troubleshoot their own issues when they are participating remotely. Anticipate what problems they might experience and have solutions on hand. For instance, before the session starts, have a message on the screen (and in the chat box for when you change the screen) that says something like, “If you can see this but can’t hear me . . .” with tips for fixing the audio. Just before starting your session, say something to the effect of, “If you can hear me, but are having trouble seeing me, or seeing my slides, this is what to do . . .”

Have On-Site Support Whenever possible, have another person available to help when things go wrong. For live online events, have a moderator or producer who can troubleshoot problems participants are having with logging on, navigation, audio, video, and so on, leaving you free to focus on content. When you are doing classroom training, know who is available to contact in the event of a problem. Cultivate your relationships with facilities team members. They will come to your rescue more than you hope they’ll have to.

Invest in Some Equipment There are some things that, depending on how often you are conducting live training, you will want to own. That isn’t to say that your own technology will never break, but it is sometimes possible to buy yourself a nicer item than your company will provide. And if you own the equipment, it will be a common

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variable among all the variables that go into putting on live training. You’ll be able to master it more than you might equipment that changes in each different location you go to train in. Equipment you might consider includes a lapel mic (far better than the mics some training rooms have that keep you tethered to a podium), a clicker with a laser pointer (again, so that you can walk among the participants), or a portable projector you can use as a backup. For online training, you might wish to invest in a light to put in front of you to light up your face or a stand to prop up your notes so you don’t have to look down to view them.

Bottom Line When it works, technology is a great asset during live training. When it doesn’t, it’s best to be prepared.

Go Deeper “Basics of Stand-Up Training” by Tora Estep Three categories of things that are critical to a good learning environment are seating arrangements, equipment, and basic comfort. This Infoline issue covers all three, including the keys to managing any equipment problem: Be prepared, get to the site early to inspect it, and be flexible and creative. This piece also includes some basic facilitation skills and tips for handling challenging participants.

“Plan the Facilitation Session,” step 2 in 10 Steps to Successful Facilitation, by the Association for Talent Development Visuals can clarify issues and ideas, but they can also turn a meeting into a disaster if you haven’t appropriately planned for what you need. This step includes checklists for just about every aspect of your technological and logistical needs to make sure your location promotes interaction and supports planned activities.

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31

Challenge:

The training room isn’t right

Description All kinds of classroom details can trip you up, and turn into detractors for your learners, whether you are facilitating live training in a familiar, dedicated training room, or in a conference space or off-site facility that’s new to you. In some of these spaces, you will have a degree of control to customize the space for the needs of your learners; in others, you might be stuck with the room set-up, temperature, or lighting that exists.

Solutions Here’s how trainers can respond to some common concerns during live classroom training.

Sweat the Small Stuff If you haven’t facilitated in the room you will be using before, visit it, or find out all that you can about it from your room-reservation system or from someone who’s been there. Make sure you know how it is set up and whether that setup can be changed. Does it have whiteboards on the walls or flipchart easels? Pay attention to details like how many people the room can hold and make sure that number is aligned with the minimum and maximum number of participant settings in your learning management system. There will always be a few people who don’t show up on the day of your session, so you can establish a maximum that is a bit over the room size, but not by much (and your minimums should be a few seats above what the bare minimum would actually be). Know how the temperature is controlled and whether that is something you can do by yourself, or whether you need to submit a request. Being aware of all these room details will help ensure that you and learners can focus on the content at hand, rather than the “small stuff” that can get in the way.

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Have Your Own Supplies If you are fortunate to have a cabinet or closet in a regular training space, establish a system on your team for tracking inventory and reordering as needed. It’s frustrating to arrive to train and find that no markers work or that there are no sticky notes (or worse, handouts) for activities. And don’t frustrate your colleagues: Clean up after each training event and note the items that are running low. Make sure you have your own personal trainer’s bag with vital supplies you might need (sort of like the first-aid kit you might keep in your home with basics like bandages, disinfectant, and aspirin). Yours should be stocked with: blue painter’s tape • both whiteboard and flipchart markers • name tents or badges • colored sticky dots • sticky notes • extra pens • a clipboard • every type of cord that you might need (labeled with your name), so that you are prepared for any type of TV, projector, or other piece of equipment. While you might not be able to invest in your own, make sure you use a microphone, even in small groups where you should be able to project your voice. This reduces the extraneous load placed on learners with learning loss. Microphones are also needed when your session is being transmitted geographically or recorded. When the training is off-site, carry a spare printout of your handouts that you can have copied on the spot. Use a flash drive at a nearby printing shop to make copies if you need to. •

Set Up Early When shipping supplies to a remote training site, arrive with more than a few hours to spare to track down items in mail rooms, at local FedEx offices, or in hotel storage rooms. Wherever possible, ship materials to a specific person whom you have spoken to and who expects them. If the room is not set up the way you have requested it, you can ask for help from the facilities team if there is one (of course, if your organization

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would be charged for this, obtain the appropriate permission), and don’t be shy about simply moving the chairs and tables yourself to be more conducive to your needs. To facilitate small group discussion and to avoid poor visibility, round tables work best for small groups with 16–24 overall participants. U-shaped table setup works well when you will have both large and small (two to three people) group interactions. Chevron style works when those small groups require four to six people. If you’re in an office building or there is no facilities team, it’s nice if you’re a good corporate citizen and put the room back the way you found it before you leave. The other option is to reconfigure your activities to work with the room setup you find, or when tables can’t be moved. Order food to be delivered at least 45 minutes before the start of your session so that you have time to track it down if it isn’t there. Make sure you have a copy of the food order that includes a number to call, and hopefully, a contact person. If your food is not going to get there, and if there is one on-site, go to the nearest convenience store and buy bags of candy or snacks and soda. Or, order a pizza. You may need to provide an additional, or an extended, break to give participants time to go get food for themselves if they arrived hungry in anticipation of snacks. In some cases, you may have to end a bit early if participants’ stomachs have been growling for hours.

Change Your Mindset Another issue here might be your mindset: I’ve heard a lot of new trainers wondering why it’s their role to move furniture, make copies, or order food. As more seasoned trainers know, we often have to be audiovisual technicians, furniture movers, caterers, copy shop personnel, and more. It comes with the job, so you should be mentally prepared for it, even if you can’t be otherwise prepared. One of my colleagues thinks about it as if she’s hosting a party. She wants her guests to be comfortable and happy. When she hosts a party at home, she cleans up and rearranges things to maximize the space—so she does it for training, too.

Bottom Line Being flexible—and willing to do whatever it takes—is critical when facing obstacles during live classroom training events.

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Go Deeper “Prepare to Succeed and Be Credible,” step 4 in 10 Steps to Successful Training, by Elaine Biech Establishing an environment that is conducive to learning is a small, but important step to successful training. This chapter is chock-full of checklists to help ensure that the location—and you—are prepared for your learners. Tools include a list of questions to ask about the location, common seating arrangements with their advantages and disadvantages, a packing list, and checklists for one week before, one day before, one hour before, and one minute before your training event.

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32

Challenge:

They’re not hooked from the start

Description Often those developing training will start with the “meaty” stuff—the actual content that needs to be delivered. But sometimes it’s what might be considered the “small stuff” that will determine if you will hook your participants, or whether your content will transfer to the workplace. As the University of Maine’s Cooperative Extension, an arm of the university that puts university research and resources to work in homes, schools, businesses, farms, and communities across the state, explains, “Learners tend to remember primacy (what happens first), recency (what happens last), and the unusual.” If your openings or endings are weak, not only will it negatively affect the flow of the program, but it may affect how much participants remember and use from your training. This challenge will cover openings, and Challenge 37 will focus on endings.

Solutions Effective openers bring learners mentally into the workshop, and can connect them with others and with the content. Here are tips for several types of openings.

Ask for Questions Before the Session You can set your participants up to be engaged in a live or virtual session by asking them ahead of time what questions they want answered during the session and tweaking the content in response to their specific concerns. Send out a survey or conduct a focus group before your program asking them what particularly about the topic they hope will be covered in the program. Ask them why they enrolled in the program and how they see it relating to the job that they do. You can ask for responses to come to you through email, or you can have participants post responses to some area where they can learn about one another’s expectations and wishes.

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This means participants will enter the workshop anticipating your answers to their questions. Your opening can provide some of these answers right off the bat, or you can tease upcoming responses with a statement like, “Several of you asked how you can respond when an employee cries in response to your feedback. Most of us know that we might pause when that happens and ask if the employee wishes to continue the conversation later. We have several more tips that can be helpful that we’ll be talking about in the second hour of today’s program.”

Consider When and How to Include Introductions There are four factors to consider when determining whether and how to conduct introductions: • Group size. With groups of about 20 or fewer, individual introductions are possible, depending on the remaining three factors. With groups that are larger than 20, individual introductions can happen at tables or in small groups, rather than in a full group format, or networking activities can replace introductions. • Session length. If the session is two hours or less, you may not want to take the time to conduct introductions. Do make sure participants are wearing name tags and perhaps move into a small group exercise right away, during which they can introduce themselves to one another. • Whether the group will meet again. If this is the initial session for a group that will become a cohort, then you probably do want to include individual introductions, and your introductions can be more robust than just the essential information (such as name, department, and how long you’ve worked here). If your cohort is more than 20 people, though, you might skip introductions, knowing that participants will get to know one another more deeply through activities over the course of the subsequent sessions. • Course content. Introductions help create safety. If the content you will be discussing is more sensitive or personal—including communication, leadership, coaching, or diversity, inclusion, and belonging—introductions are more important than when the content is less sensitive, like some compliance or technical training.

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Integrate Icebreakers These highly interactive facilitation exercises are commonly presented as a warm-up to engage participants with one another (people icebreakers), or with the topic (content icebreakers). Because researchers, including David Rock, have shown that the brain equates social needs with survival, these people icebreakers are not just fun, social activities; they can provide participants with the connections they need to feel comfortable before they are able to turn their attention to higher-order intellectual pursuits, or from the office they left to the learning space they entered. They are intended to help members of a group begin the process of forming themselves into a team, or to help group members get to know one another. Content icebreakers help learners turn their attention to a particular topic. For instance, I use brain teasers in pairs as icebreakers at the start of my critical-thinking sessions to wake up participants’ brains, to focus learners on the session’s topic, and to give learners a preview of the interactive nature of a course. It’s also a chance for them to connect before content and harness the power in starting from a shared experience.

Anticipate Complaints and Address Them Head-On Help participants focus on the content you have to share by first clearing anything that’s clogging their mental filters. That is, be prepared to speak to their potential concerns right away. Potential obstacles may relate to the topic at hand, or they might be about training in general. If you’ve heard about potential concerns during your analysis, you can bring them up for discussion. Some new trainers fear that naming these concerns will create these concerns. Not so. Naming these concerns will make those who are experiencing them feel seen and will reassure all members of your audience that you have thought through your impact. If you haven’t already surfaced some potential concerns, you can ask for them at the start of your program. My colleague Aynsley Toews, at the University of Maryland’s Center for Leadership & Organizational Change, addressed these types of concerns brilliantly at a recent session I observed. She started out by saying something to the effect of, “If you have skepticism about attending a training program, you have a right to. You’ve probably attended training before and been told one thing would happen, and then it didn’t.” She then facilitated a discussion of what participants think of when they think of training, surfacing comments like “loss of productivity,” “taking time away from work,” “how much money Challenge 32  •  259

is being spent on this training when there were no salary increases last year,” and “going through the motions.” Finally, a small group activity helped recalibrate mindsets when she asked participants to consider what happens if we don’t invest in skill building through training, or what is at stake if our behaviors remain the same over time. After looking over their responses to these questions, she was able to make the point that “training isn’t taking away from our work—it is our work.” With the buy-in that the discussion created, Toews moved on to the day’s content.

Ask Who Is There to Actively Participate Generally, when they attend training programs, people are either prisoners (sent to the training by their supervisor and personally don’t see the need to attend), vacationers (attending the session to get a break—and possibly write out their grocery list), or explorers (those who truly desire to gain new knowledge or skills and to grow personally and professionally). Ask participants who are in one of the first two categories to reflect (silently or with a partner) on what it might take to move them to the learner perspective. Make sure to welcome learners, no matter which place they are standing in, and explain that there may be parts of the program that move you from one place to the other, and that’s OK.

Prepare Advance Organizers Advance organizers are brief introductions that provide a heads-up about what’s coming prior to launching a new topic or set of skills. They give participants time to clear out what is currently in their active memories and to connect them to where they are headed next. Effective advance organizers: • Are short. Like the trailer for a movie, these should very briefly provide a feel for what’s to come. • Contain key highlights. Advance organizers offer an overview of what you are about to cover. • Cover the benefits to learners. Before launching into your new topic, you want to be sure that learners know how it will benefit them. Often trainers refer to this as the WIIFM (“What’s in it for me?”). Including benefits can increase the perceived value of the material to be covered, which then positively affects motivation. • Link prior knowledge to new material. To integrate adult learning theory, and how we move information from our short- to our long260  •  Challenge 32

term memories, we want to help learners connect the new content to something they already know. • Are packaged in a clear, enticing manner. The best advance organizers pique your learners’ interest by intriguing or exciting them somehow. Here’s an example of an advance organizer on the topic of cognitive learning strategies from my Learning Fundamentals course at NYU: When it comes to deciding on methodologies for learning—making design choices—one place we want to look is at cognitive strategies. Cognitive strategies are the mental methods we use as we study and learn (key highlights) and have been shown to speed up learning, make it stick more powerfully and longer, and actually cost less in time and energy for both teaching and learning (benefits). Earlier we talked about how we learn—how we internalize information and how we recall it. Cognitive strategies are what enable us to organize a piece of learning so we can capitalize on how we learn (link to prior knowledge). For example, I could just list these five strategies we’ll cover in random order—spatial representation, advance organizers, mnemonics, practice, and clustering, or I could use an acronym—CAMPS—which is one of our cognitive learning strategies, to help you chunk this information to remember it more readily (enticing packaging). Ready?

Bottom Line Effective openings connect learners with the content and with one another. They set the likelihood for engagement, which, in turn, leads to transfer.

Go Deeper “Begin the Meeting,” step 3 in 10 Steps to Successful Facilitation, by the Association for Talent Development Successful facilitation opens with a bang to get everyone on the same page and engaged in achieving the meeting’s objectives. This step includes examples of strong opening activities whether you are live in a classroom or online: icebreakers, reviewing the agenda, clarifying the purpose and objectives, establishing ground rules, and explaining the parking lot.

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“Make It Interesting—Use Lively Openings, Transitions, and Powerful Closings,” step 8 in 10 Steps to Successful Training, by Elaine Biech The opening of your training sets the stage for what is to come while informing participants about the tone, goals, and trainer’s nature. This chapter explains the rationale behind lively openings and then walks through how to create them with a handy acronym to help you open your sessions with PUNCH.

“4 Reasons Warm-Ups Will Fundamentally Change Your Work” by Olivia Vagelos Creative warm-ups are different from icebreakers, which the author considers “forced, high-energy social interactions.” This is a delightful article on why warm-ups matter, and includes some unique ones to try.

“Have Them at Hello: Warm-Ups and Welcomes,” ch. 2 in Interact and Engage! by Kassy LaBorie and Tom Stone Welcome and warm-up activities open your session with a purpose beyond asking participants to sit and listen. They help set the stage for interaction and collaboration. And, when they are at the start of an online program, they function as early technical checks and a tutorial on how to navigate the platform. This chapter includes sample openings, as well as how to position them and how to spice them up.

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33

Challenge:

Participants aren’t taking risks

Description We all want our training participants to try out new skills, contribute ideas, reconsider how they currently approach problems, and take action. But sometimes we’ll notice that participants are very stuck in their existing ways of doing things or are not contributing much to the session. What can you do when faced with a group of quiet, cautious, or unreadable participants?

Solutions There are many things trainers can do to create a learning environment in which participants feel safe to take risks.

Take Care of Their Needs Neuroscience shows that individuals learn only after trust has been established. According to Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs (Figure 33-1), one can’t do things like increase self-esteem, achieve full potential, or make changes without first having one’s physiological and safety needs met. Recent studies support Maslow’s hierarchy and suggest there’s even more to it. Naomi Eisenberger, a leading social neuroscience researcher at UCLA, scanned subjects’ brains during a simulated social interaction in which they were snubbed by others and saw that threats to social needs and belongingness, which are in the middle of Maslow’s model, activate similar neural responses to survival needs (Eisenberger, Lieberman, and Williams 2003). So, for example, being ostracized produces a similar reaction in the brain to hunger. Training is all about changing the way people do things and how they see themselves—risky behaviors—so it’s important to make sure they feel they are in a safe, supportive environment first and foremost.

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Figure 33-1. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs Self-Actualization Achieving one’s full potential, including creative activities Esteem Needs Prestige and feeling of accomplishment Belongingness and Love Needs Intimate relationships and friends

Safety Needs Security and safety

}

Self-Fulfillment Needs

} }

Psychological Needs

Basic Needs

Physiological Needs Food, water, warmth, and rest

To address participants’ physiological and safety needs, you may need to ask about them in advance. For example, a recent discussion among members of the Ivy Plus Trainers group, a group of individuals in the learning and development departments at Ivy League schools (plus a few other top-tier institutions), centered on whether to address issues like food allergies and other accommodations in their registration letters. Almost every respondent did so, in the interest of making sure every individual had a successful learning experience. They used wording like this: • “Please let us know of any food allergies and dietary needs you have.” • “Please let us know of any accommodations you need regarding the physical space, audio or visual concerns, or any other needs you have to be successful in the program.” • “If you anticipate needing any type of accommodation or have questions about the physical access provided, please contact me in advance of your participation.” • “Please add anything you’d like to share about your needs or participation that doesn’t fit into the above questions. You can also contact the Office of Accommodations with questions.”

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Those who did not ask these sorts of questions made sure that all options were automatically covered. For example, they made sure any catered event had options for vegetarians and vegans, as well as those who were gluten-free, lactose-free, and peanut-free. They audited all of their programs, materials, and facilities to ensure they were accessible to individuals with disabilities of any kind.

Greet People as They Enter Set everything up well in advance of the first participant’s arrival so that when they arrive you can chat with them. This is important even if you’re not good at small talk. You just need to prepare for it. Have three questions you can ask to build rapport as you wait for the session to begin. This can relate to the course (for example, “What other classes have you taken on this topic? Why’d you sign up for this class?”) or not (for example, “Do you have interesting plans for the weekend? How far did you have to travel to get here? What do you think of that current movie/headline/organizational announcement?”).

Use Name Badges Even if learners already know one another’s’ names, if you don’t know them, name tents or name stickers are critical, because using names creates psychological safety. It’s an indication that you’ve paid attention to the learners, reflects the fact that they’re important enough for you to remember them, and builds personal connections. Even if you know participants’ names already, name tents or badges are helpful for them to get to know one another, especially in interactive sessions. Name tents can also do double duty when they deliver a marketing message, or enhance a key learning point, on the side that faces the participants themselves. If you are concerned about the environmental impact of name tents, you may want to invest in dry erase name tents, which are available from major office supply companies. Name badges and tents also allow participants to indicate a name they prefer to be called, rather than the name on the enrollment roster. In addition, make sure you know how to pronounce everyone’s name as you don’t want your uncertainty of how to say a person’s name to translate into not using their name at all.

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Ask for Pronouns Regardless of your personal views on, or personal comfort level with, gender identity issues, someone who is struggling with them, or who has resolved them for themselves, needs to feel welcome and seen by you and their classmates. Asking participants to share their pronouns doesn’t have to be clunky or awkward. For example, you might ask for pronouns during registration and then print them on nametags. Or, provide name labels and name tents that have a space on them for pronouns, where people can choose to write them in or not. Also, you can introduce yourself with personal pronouns: “I’m Sophie and I use the she-series pronouns.” Those who wish to can follow suit; those who don’t will not.

Watch Your Language Even when you are trying your hardest to create an inclusive environment for your live training, you may accidentally say the wrong thing at times. Eliza Blanchard, author of “Prioritize Inclusivity in Your Training Sessions” points out, “Because words connote different things to people based on their diverse experiences and because terms can change over time, it’s possible to inadvertently use a word that causes offense to one of your learners.” If that happens, the most effective—and human—response is to apologize and to make an effort to change your wording going forward.

Conduct Introductions or Icebreakers Introductions help create safety, because participants get to know who is in the room with them and what their role in the organization is, while building human connections among participants. This gives learners an indication of how well others will be able to relate to their experience, or how likely it is that word from the session will get back to someone else in the organization. Icebreakers can serve a similar function, but be aware that some icebreakers help build trust, while others require trust before people will be comfortable participating in them. So, an icebreaker like “Two Truths and a Lie,” or “Talk about the best training you’ve ever been to and what made it so good,” are fine to conduct before attending to other safety needs, but an icebreaker like “List all of the ways you identify yourself,” or “Talk about a time you received constructive feedback and what made it effective,” may require a longer runway. More on what to include in your opening can be found in Challenge 32. 266  •  Challenge 33

Have Participants Share Their Enthusiasm Asking people to share good news, or something they are looking forward to, puts them in a positive state of mind for your session. This approach is suggested by the Appreciative Inquiry model for engaging stakeholders and can short-circuit the negative thinking that can derail a workshop. In a LinkedIn article, certified executive personal and life coach Lynn K. Jones suggests starting meetings with Appreciate Inquiry questions like these, which you can easily adapt for a training session: •

• • •

• •

How can we build a workplace environment that places an emphasis on acquiring new knowledge? What was a win that you had last week? In which situations did you have an opportunity to learn and grow? What new relationships have you formed that have helped you to perform better? How do you help to make our workplace positive and productive? When do you feel your job is important?

Share the Agenda and Objectives Sharing the agenda and objectives—and letting participants know where they can find them if they need to refer back to them later in the session—helps ground the participants and allows them to focus on the content, rather than on wondering where they are or what to expect. You can even share this information before the training starts as a preview of what they’ll be participating in. This allows participants who dread group activities, for example, to prepare themselves so that those won’t come as a surprise once your program is under way.

Review Logistical Concerns As Maslow’s work highlights, you are wise to address your participants’ physiological needs up front so they can climb up the hierarchy faster. They want to know where bathrooms are, when breaks will be, if there will be food, and so on. Once these basic needs are met, they can focus more fully, so share those details early.

Set Ground Rules One of the ways to address your participants’ needs up front is to create a list of ground rules (also referred to as norms, agreements, requests, or terms

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of engagement). You can create this list ahead of time, but you always want to leave room for your participants to add to or alter it to meet their needs, because the most significant purpose of ground rules is to help them feel safe. Ground rules let you proactively address learners’ safety concerns when you say things like, “We’ll ask a ton of questions today, and I don’t expect you to have the answers.” Here are some common ground rules you may wish to introduce having to do with confidentiality, respect, and active participation: • Respect the opinions of others. “All contributions are valued,” “There are no stupid questions,” “Agree to disagree respectfully” • Participate fully. “Show up,” “Step up/Step back” (which helps your introverts and second-language English speakers have a chance to engage), “Share your knowledge and experience,” “Take a guess,” “Watch your ‘airtime’” • Maintain confidentiality. “Share information, not gossip”; “What you hear stays here, what you learn leaves” • Avoid multitasking. “Use laptops only for note-taking,” “Silence cell phones,” “Be fully present” One of the reasons they are also called agreements is because learners should be asked explicitly to agree with them (with a nod, hand raise, signature, or verbal “Yes”) before you move on. Adrienne Hamcke Wicker, associate director of the Center for Leadership & Organizational Change at the University of Maryland, utilizes this “check/hold” method: “I ask each person to say ‘check’ if they are fine with the item or to say ‘hold’ if they have a question or concern. We then address this hold, make any modifications, and start over. It goes pretty quickly even if there are holds. I find it works really well to get people to own their engagement.” Keep your agreements posted throughout the training session so you can refer to them both to encourage participation, or when people are in violation and you want to do a course correction. In a virtual setting, you can post them to the chat so that they are always a scroll away.

Acknowledge When the Boss Is Present If you think people do not feel safe to participate because their boss is in the room, discuss this head-on. Ask the boss in front of everyone if their direct reports can be honest. Acknowledge to everyone that permission to be honest makes both the employee speaking, and the manager they may

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be speaking about, vulnerable. Thank them for being willing to contribute, given that vulnerability, in the service of helping their teams, their customers, or the organization. Consider the content and objectives when determining whether to separate individual contributors from supervisors at tables and in small group work.

Avoid Sarcasm While this should go without saying, there are some trainers who, in trying to lighten the mood or to inject humor into a less-energetic session, make comments like “The silence in here is deafening” or “Really? We just watched a 12-minute video and you have no thoughts about it? Those are 12 minutes I wish we could get back!” The problem is that this humor is sarcastic and can hurt feelings or alienate people. Instead, when you do happen to face silence after something you say or an activity, use positive language to probe for any possible confusion. For example, try using, “What questions do you have?” That is a more open-ended and encouraging form of “Any questions?” that assumes there are questions and therefore makes it more acceptable to stop the class to ask them.

Be Appreciative The opposite of using sarcasm to address a lack of participation is to be extremely appreciative when people are sharing. Thank them for their contributions. Point out how helpful differing viewpoints are. And be careful when your language unintentionally says you don’t appreciate input or questions. For example, when you say, “Any questions? None. Good. Let’s move on.” That may have meant “Good, I’m glad you are all with me and we can move on to more advanced content,” but it comes across as “It’s good that there are no questions.”

Use Tentative Language Along the lines of “If you don’t know, take a guess,” is the subtle use of tentative, rather than absolute, language. It may be less threatening to answer a question phrased as “What might be a good way to use the 3 A’s of Service Recovery with Ms. Fitz,” versus “What’s a good way to use the 3 A’s in Ms. Fitz’s situation?”

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Offer Multiple Ways to Participate Give participants several ways to participate so they can find one they are comfortable with. If you are in a virtual setting, allow them to raise their hand physically or by clicking an icon to call out, chat, or respond to a poll. In any live training setting, supplement large group discussion with opportunities to work in pairs and small groups, as well as individually.

Bottom Line Engaging your participants starts with good design, but even good design will fall flat if you do not create a safe environment for risk taking and growth.

Go Deeper “Managing With the Brain in Mind” by David Rock Neuroscience has discovered that the brain is highly plastic and that even the most entrenched behaviors can be modified, but only if you can minimize participants’ threat response and enable the reward response. This Strategy + Business article summarizes extensive research on how the brain is wired and how to help individuals become ready to change behaviors by positively affecting perceived levels of status, certainty, autonomy, relatedness, and fairness (SCARF).

“Create a Safe and Engaging Learning Environment,” step 5 in 10 Steps to Successful Training, by Elaine Biech Creating a safe and engaging learning environment is something you have to think about; safety and engagement don’t occur naturally. However, they are critical requirements for successful training. This chapter provides suggestions for creating a safe learning environment, as well as identifying barriers to effective trainer communication.

“Prioritize Inclusivity in Your Training Sessions” by Eliza Blanchard Your primary goal in creating a safe training space is to encourage people to participate fully and take risks. Creating an inclusive learning environment for all learners reduces barriers that prevent individuals from learning. This TD at Work issue includes actions you can take before, during, and after a training event to ensure you create an inclusive and welcoming environment. Tools for creating a participant persona and a post-session reflection questionnaire are included at the end of this thoughtful and practical piece.

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34

Challenge:

Participants seem confused

Description It’s not a pleasant feeling to look out at your learners during classroom training only to encounter a sea of blank or puzzled faces, or to ask a question in your online program only to find that everyone is lost and no one can answer it correctly.

Solutions It probably won’t help you in that moment, but the situations I just described weren’t generally caused by you, the facilitator. They are usually the result of poor design. To rewind the clock on this situation, here are some things you could have incorporated into your design to avoid those vacant stares you’re facing in these situations.

Scaffold the Content Be prepared with different supports that you can add or remove for learners as they need them. For instance, you might ask easier questions first and move to more complicated ones once participants experience success with the initial ones. Or you might have people work in pairs during an exercise before asking an individual to do it themselves. Scaffolding is a process based on the theories of Lev Vygotsky from the early 1900s, which suggests that the area between the comfort zone and the frustration zone (he called it the “zone of proximal development”) is the one where learning will take place. But because it is outside of the learner’s comfort zone, it is the area where a learner will need some help to understand the concept or complete the task at hand. When scaffolding, instructors provide considerable guidance and support to participants at the outset of their learning process and then incrementally remove those as responsibility for the learning process shifts over to the learners.

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Provide an Appropriate Level of Difficulty Imagine I gave you six chances to learn how to draw a stick figure. How engaged would you be with this activity after the third or fourth opportunity? Now imagine I asked you to paint the Mona Lisa. How engaged would you be with this activity the very first time I asked you to try it? Learners’ motivation is tied to their confidence level. When learners are not at all confident they can do something (like paint the Mona Lisa), they are less motivated and check out. Similarly, when learners are overconfident, their motivation decreases and they stop participating. To motivate and engage your learners, your questions and activities need to be at an appropriate level of challenge, or struggle. Make sure to review the activities and questions in your program so that you can meet learners at the appropriate level of struggle before they check out.

Keep Questions Specific and Short If your participants look perplexed after you’ve asked a question, it may be because it’s so general they’re not sure how to answer it, or it’s so specific they have no response. “What are you thinking about the 3 A’s of Service Recovery?” is such a big question, participants may not know where to begin, while “Ms. Fitz said she hadn’t received an email reminder of her appointment right after the employee said what?” may be too narrow a question. Rambling questions fill up participants’ working memory, and they are so busy processing the question that they can’t begin to formulate responses. The more concise your questions, the better. So ask, “How can you respond to an angry customer when you are not at fault?” rather than, “Have you ever had a customer like Ms. Fitz, who was irate about coming in on the wrong day and blamed you even though it wasn’t your fault because you had sent out email and phone reminders? What do you do when customers are mad at you for something you didn’t even do and had no control over, or when it was their fault?”

Watch Out for Overload For learning to stick, it has to pass through our short-term memories to enter our long-term memories. The trouble is that short-term memory isn’t a place; it’s a processing center, and it has a limited capacity. Items pass through our short-term treatment facility and are either remembered or discarded in 10-15 seconds. This is important for survival. If we can’t treat, sort, eliminate, or store information quickly, we will not react in a timely manner. We’ll be so busy processing the many dangers around us, we’ll be attacked by a bear. 272  •  Challenge 34

Short-term memory can process only about four items—single or grouped (called chunks)—at a time. If participants are feeling overwhelmed, you will see those telltale blank stares. We can combat overload by chunking, or by pausing for reflection or practice. And of course, we avoid overload when our explanations and instructions are concise.

Allow for Reflection Time Make sure there are ample opportunities during your program for quiet participants—and all participants—to silently process and reflect on content. It is in these moments of reflection that learners make the connections that allow learning to move from their working to their long-term memories. (For more on reflections, see Challenge 37.)

Focus on Your Transitions One of the key places you lose participants is in your transitions. If you’ve ever been in a workshop where you’ve found yourself thinking, “What are we talking about and how did we get here from where we were 10 minutes ago?” you know how important transitions are. Make sure that you are using clear, explicit transitions every time you move from one module or one activity to another. Transitions are where many programs fall apart; where we separate out skilled facilitators from those who create unnecessary cognitive load for their learners. And just adding the word now (“Now we’re going to talk about . . .” or “Now, a game . . .”) does not make a good transition. The discussion of advance organizers in Challenge 32 offers suggestions for what you can include in your transitions.

Think About Agenda Order How you sequence your topics also affects whether participants are following along with you, or getting left by the wayside. Moving from the simple to the more complex is probably the most prevalent way designers sequence information (and conforms to Charles Reigeluth’s Elaboration Theory, introduced in 1979, in which content is arranged so that concepts that are more simple and general build up to progressively narrower and more detailed concepts, thereby placing new content in a meaningful context). However, there are many other ways to order your agenda: • Start with “safe” topics and venture into the ones that require more vulnerability.

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Start with the urgent and important first (“need to know” versus “nice to know”). • Present your topics in chronological order: “This happened first, then this, then that.” (Reverse chronological order works, too: “Here’s where we are; let’s backtrack to figure out how we got here.”) • Move through the steps of job task or function—just go from start to finish. • Present your topics from the familiar (known) to the unfamiliar (unknown). (Or, start with the unknown and then think about what we know that could have led us here.) • Present topics as cause-to-effect or effect-to-cause. • Move from concrete (specific) to abstract (generic), or vice versa. Obviously, some of these approaches are the exact opposite of each other. There isn’t necessarily one best way to order your topics. The idea is to be intentional, consistent, and explicit about whichever approach you do take. If learners know you are moving from effect (“This happened”) to cause (“Why did it happen?”), they will be less likely to get lost. •

Consider Spacing Out the Learning The spacing effect is when more efficient learning and improved retention result from educational encounters that are repeated over spaced intervals of time (spaced distribution), compared with mass distribution at a single point in time (also known as binge-and-purge learning). (More on the spacing effect in Challenge 22). When cramming all of your content and practice into one sitting, problems like learner fatigue occur. It may also cause preceding content to interfere with your ability to learn new content (that is, your brain can’t understand or memorize any new information before encoding current information into memory). Microlearning is offering quick, meaningful interactions that are focused on a specific learning outcome. Microlearning comes in many forms—games, quizzes, videos, text messages, text-based content, podcasts. It can be pushed to learners, or available in a centralized location from which learners can pull when needed. And it is usually part of a larger training system, because microlearning isn’t suitable for all types of content. Microlearning can help ensure that the participants in your live training programs are not left behind in a number of ways. For instance, sending out some microlearning modules before the course can set expectations, give 274  •  Challenge 34

them a preview, and provide some content that allows you to “create a level playing field” ahead of live instruction. The pauses that are part of a microlearning approach allow participants who are confused time to catch up.

Bottom Line To avoid learners who are dazed and confused, use best practices like scaffolding, microlearning, appropriate level of struggle, and transitioning.

Go Deeper “The Zone of Proximal Development as Defined by Vygotsky” by Kendra Cherry According to Vygotsky’s zone of proximal development, three essential factors are critical to the success of the learning process: the presence of someone with more advanced skills, social interactions that allow the learner to observe and practice skills, and scaffolded activities. This article provides brief overviews of each factor and touches on their application.

“Cognitive Load and Learning,” ch. 3 in Evidence-Based Training Methods, by Ruth Colvin Clark Severe processing limits affect all mental activities, including learning. This chapter explains the concepts of intrinsic, extraneous, and germane load and their grounding in an understanding of how long- and short-term memory work.

“How to Put Microlearning Into Action,” ch. 4 in Microlearning: Short and Sweet, by Karl M. Kapp and Robyn A. Defelice Content spaced over time is an effective tool for aiding retention, combating learner fatigue, and making sure that successive and preceding content do not become jumbled. This chapter talks about how microlearning builds off of the spacing effect and about some considerations for developing microlearning, like keeping it under five minutes (generally) and making the time between learning events at least 24 hours, ideally.

“Design Your Microlearning Program: How Do You Start?” ch. 3 in Designing Microlearning, by Carla Torgerson and Sue Iannone Chapter 3 introduces four uses for microlearning: preparation before a learning event, follow-up to a learning event, as stand-alone training, and as performance support. This chapter goes into detail about why and how you can integrate microlearning in these cases.

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35

Challenge:

I don’t know how to respond to their questions

Description Responding to participant questions can be the scariest part of live training events. You don’t know what’s going to be asked or where the resulting discussion will lead. Unlike other portions of the training, you can’t necessarily prepare for it (though having responses prepared for some anticipated questions can help). And, when you’re new, worries that you will lose credibility during an unplanned discussion compound the fear.

Solutions Here’s how to respond to participant questions like a pro.

Change Your Mindset About the Q&A Kristin Shutts, professor of psychology at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, remembers her first classroom session as follows: “I wrote out everything I wanted to say and said it in a very short period of time. I ended by saying, ‘I’m sure that was pretty clear. There are no questions, right?’ And I just left. It can be scary in that space, asking if people have questions, letting students move a class forward. What if they have questions and you don’t have answers? What if the discussion goes in a direction you’re not prepared for?” It is true that the Q&A portion of your program is unscripted, but it is important and you can get better at facilitating it. When participants are able to form their own questions, they are able to process the information you’ve provided and to think about how it might pertain to their own situations. Adrienne Hamcke Wicker, associate director of the University of Maryland’s Center for Leadership & Organizational Change, has a favorite reframe that can help here: “I’ve moved from thinking, ‘Oh my God, they’re asking questions. I must not have done a good job,’ to ‘Wow! They are interested and engaged enough to ask questions.’”

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Another reframe is remembering that questioning is an important life skill. More and more information is coming at people in today’s world, and questioning what you hear is becoming a vital critical-thinking skill. Training today should not only be about responding to participant questions, but also about helping learners form questions.

Respond to the Question That Was Asked Wherever possible, you want to avoid the response that angry viewers watching a political debate or a news program shout out in their empty living rooms: “You didn’t answer the question!” Maybe the question does spark something for you that you also want to say, but be sure to respond to what they asked first, and then pivot (“Your question also reminded me of . . .”).

Listen to the Whole Question One way to make sure you are answering the actual question is to make sure you listen to the entire thing. This is especially true when a participant raises a question during a course you’ve been teaching repeatedly and you’re sure you have heard similar questions before. When you jump in because you think you know where the question is going, you may be wrong, and waste precious time responding to the wrong thing. Also, the question is new to the others in the room who are listening, and they need to hear it.

Repeat the Question When Necessary While you don’t want to end up sounding like a parrot, repeating back whatever you heard, there are a few situations in which repeating, or rephrasing, the question is necessary. These include: • When the question needs clarification. • When you have a large group and many people may not have heard the question. • If the question is “loaded” and needs to be reworded—that is, if the participant has phrased the question in a particularly negative way, or in a way that seems meant to trap you, you can rephrase it in a more positive way before answering. For example, if a participant asks, “Isn’t this active listening stuff just patronizing and tricking people into thinking you care?” you might rephrase it as, “Jorge is wondering if active listening is genuine.” • If you need time to think about a response before launching into it.

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Direct Responses to Whole Group When you respond only to the individual who posed the question, you end up in a private conversation with just that person while the rest of the participants wait idly by. Be sure to turn to face the entire group when responding to questions, and to take questions that are very specific to the individuals asking them offline. Ask the person if you can connect with them during a break or after the session.

Avoid Judgments Like “Great Question” You certainly have the best of intentions when you label some questions as “good,” “great,” or “excellent.” You think you are encouraging people to ask questions. Or, it’s just a natural reaction to an exceptional question. What happens, though, when you forget to do this with the next person’s question, is that person is left thinking, “What about my question? Wasn’t that great, too?” And, if you go to the other extreme and call all questions great, that cheapens the response—it doesn’t mean anything. Rather than judging each individual question, just say at the end of the question and answer period, or at periodic intervals in your training: “All of you are asking such thoughtful questions.”

Ask If You Answered the Question Sufficiently Allow your participants the opportunity to let you know if your answer hits the mark and give yourself the opportunity to course correct. Ask, “Did I answer your question?” “Is that what you were looking for?” or “Is that what you needed to know?”

Turn the Answering Over to Others You remain an expert facilitator even if you turn a tough question over to others. You can send it back to the person who asked it (“Well, what do you think?”), to the whole group, to an individual (“Lloyd, you’ve had some thoughts on this, what do you say?”), or to a co-facilitator or a SME, if they are available. If it makes you feel better, you can preface this with something to the effect of: “I have some thoughts on this topic, but I’d like to ask you all what you think first, so that I don’t cloud your thinking.”

Do a Mini-Demonstration If your answer can contain both words and visuals, you will be transmitting the information across the dual auditory and visual channels of working

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memory. Additionally, a demo of the desired performance or behavior is an example of behavior modeling and increases the likelihood that learners will retain the information. For example, if a participant asks, “How do you respond when an employee gets defensive during their performance review?” say, “Let’s act out that scene. You be the defensive employee . . .” If they ask, “How do I submit that report again?” rather than just telling them, bring up the screen from which they submit the report and show them the correct buttons to press.

Know Your Audience When your response can integrate their experience, it helps them to see how the content relates to themselves. Often questions arise out of the desire to connect with the information in a meaningful way. Know how your audience is going to use the course information so your responses can refer back to that.

Don’t Bluff Most important, when responding to questions, don’t make anything up. If you don’t know the answer, say so. This does not make you look bad. In fact, you look much worse—and lose credibility—if you make up an answer and then it is found out to be wrong later. Simply say, “I don’t know. I’ll find out and let you all know immediately after the class.” In responding this way, you are also modeling how participants should respond to inquiries they encounter in their work lives. Shutts asks, “What do you want them to do when they don’t know an answer? Make it up? Give some vague response? It seems reasonable to show them that it’s okay to be honest about the parts you know and the parts you don’t know and to help them identify which parts of a question are actually answerable.” This honest response also gives you a good “excuse” to follow-up with participants after your session. Plus, as Shutts points out, participants often feel respected when you are willing to take time outside of the session to track down a response. A good follow-up question Shutts suggests is, “What’s leading you to ask that question?” This helps you determine whether the participant is dealing with this question in the workplace or in life and whether they really need to know, or if it’s a one-off question. And their response might lead you to a question that you are better equipped to answer.

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When the conversation goes where you weren’t expecting it to, or where your expertise ends, be transparent about that. Say, “I’m now just as much a learner as all of you.”

Bottom Line Don’t worry needlessly about losing credibility during a Q&A; it can be the most enjoyable part of training when you and your participants can interact more naturally.

Go Deeper “Master the Q&A,” step 9 in 10 Steps to Successful Presentations, by the Association for Talent Development A Q&A session can serve as a good transition between sections of your program, an assessment of your delivery of a message, and a chance for them to absorb what you’ve told them and to create their own memories associated with the content. This chapter contains a wealth of great tips for preparing for and responding to questions, including the tough ones, the hostile ones, the irrelevant ones, and the echoes.

“Agility vs. Force,” ch. 1 in In the Line of Fire, by Jerry Weissman and Ax Norman While this book isn’t geared toward trainers (in fact, most of the examples are political), there are universal challenges included that tell you how to respond so that you’re controlling the question, your answer, the questioner, the audience, the time, and yourself. This introductory chapter lays the groundwork for the solutions to come.

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36

Challenge:

I’m always rushing at the end of my sessions

Description Feeling rushed at the end of your live training sessions can actually be traced back to the design of your program. For numerous reasons, there just might be too much content squeezed into your courses. Even good time managers find themselves pressed as they near the end of their live training sessions that have been jam-packed with content. That said, there are certainly facilitation and time management issues that compound the problem.

Solutions Some solutions to always rushing at the end of your live training events are actually design fixes, like the first three. Others are “in the moment” fixes that have more to do with your facilitation.

Focus on What Content Matters Most Given the limits on participant attention and motivation (see Challenge 17), given that time is limited, and given that practice and reflection yield the most bang for the buck from your training (see Challenge 22), you’ll need to focus your training design on those things that aid learning using tips like these: • Address “need to know” content and remove the “nice to know.” Your course objectives can help you identify what is need to know; anything that doesn’t further those objectives can go. • People don’t remember specific content covered as much as they remember an experience or stories. Let them experience something while they are with you to process that experience. Tell a story that they can repeat to family, friends, and colleagues. Most learning happens outside the classroom, when learners try out the KSAs on the job, so pique their interest and curiosity with these stories. • The forgetting curve (Challenge 22) starts as soon as you dismiss the learners, so make sure your program provides job aids and

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•

•

resources, and that your time is spent showing them how to locate and use these. Tell them where to go for the information when they forget it back at work. Flipped classrooms allow you to share models and information ahead of the session (as pre-work) so that face-to-face time is spent discussing or trying out concepts, not introducing them (see a related discussion of pre-work in Challenge 17). Put some content into handouts so that you can refer to it and not have to cover it. This might include a detailed facilitator bio or detailed definitions or descriptions of concepts.

Build a Cushion Into Your Courses Time and again throughout this book, I’ve talked about the importance of reflection, processing, feedback, and interactive discussion. These things take time, and sometimes more time than expected. As a designer, you should build a cushion of at least 15 minutes into all of your sessions. In the worstcase scenario, you end 15 minutes early; no one’s ever complained to me about getting time back. Add this cushion even if it results in making your course longer.

Include an Optional Activity Toward the End of Your Course Here’s what I often see happen. Trainers give conversations and activities plenty of time at the start of their sessions and then, when they realize they are short on time, start cutting time for activities—or skipping them altogether—near the end. The problem is that, as knowledge and skills build throughout a session, the meatier, more important activities are usually the ones at the end, which are the ones they’re skimping on. This suggests two types of responses: First, move through introductory materials at a faster clip. Second, instead of saving the most important activities for the end, include an optional, “nice to know,” or advanced practice at the end of the program that can be skipped if you do end up spending more time than expected on earlier activities and discussions. When there is an optional activity in your program, make a note for yourself saying, “Only do this if it is earlier than 3:30 at this point.” If you get there at 3:35, you know what to do: Move on.

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Plan Around Actual Times Many facilitator’s guides say how long an activity takes, but not what time it should start and by what time it should end. That’s because courses might be offered at different times during the day, and the designer may not have that information. But when you’re preparing to facilitate, you do know the actual times for your session. Make yourself a one-page outline that lists the sections of the program and major activities—with the actual (though approximate) start and end times on it. That gives you something to glance at quickly during your sessions to know how you are doing with time. Posting this outline in the room can help participants keep you on track and know for themselves how long certain activities are expected to take. Make sure your outline includes at least 10 minutes at the end for concluding activities. More on endings in Challenge 37.

Start on Time Live training is usually designed to start at a certain time. It’s critical to start on time, even if not everyone is in the room. And, if not everyone is in the room, look at Challenge 45.

Have the Room Set Up Beforehand Getting to the room early to hang blank flipcharts, test videos, write headers on the white board where participants will add their comments, and counting out handouts for table groups is critical to saving time and moving efficiently through your agenda. Do not set up activities while participants are sitting and waiting.

Model the Length of Answers You Want If you want them to introduce themselves in 30 seconds or less, introduce yourself first and show them what that should sound like. If you want them to report out just the top two items on their list, not all the items on their list, show them what that looks like—and call it to their attention if they are not following the instructions on how much to share, with a statement like, “Remember that we’re only looking for the two items your group considered most important right now, not the whole list. I’ll be taking a photo of your entire list and sending it around after the session.”

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Provide Clear Instructions A lot of time is lost, and engagement sapped, in sessions where facilitators give poor instructions and then participants sit in their small groups or pairs not knowing what they are supposed to be doing. Be explicit about the activity they are supposed to complete, as well as approximately how much time they have (but be willing to respond to the energy in the room by lengthening or shortening the allotted time once you are under way), and what cue you will use to get their attention back (waiting for small group conversations to end is another time waster), like raising a hand or flicking the lights (breakout rooms in virtual sessions eliminate the struggle to get the focus back to the large group, as the breakout room automatically closes when time is up). Answer any questions about what they are supposed to be doing before you launch them on a task or discussion.

Observe During Group Activities I can’t tell you how many times I’ve watched a facilitator in the front of the room look out to see if people in pairs, triads, or small groups were still working, notice that people were talking and energy was high, and let the discussion go on, even if the energy was around participants’ weekend plans or some workplace gossip. Listen in to conversations to be sure they are the conversations you meant for them to be having. And, if they’re not, ask if they are finished or have any questions about the instructions. Suggest that when working individually or in small groups that they put down their pens, or give you some sort of cue, when they are ready. When breaking participants into groups, I always give them an approximate amount of time for the activity they are completing and warn them that I will monitor progress and adjust that end time accordingly.

Stop Group Activities When a Majority of the Learners Are Ready People will always work at different speeds. Just as you wouldn’t stop a whole group from working when just a quarter of the participants were ready, you shouldn’t necessarily wait for the last quarter to finish either. You can help ensure that all groups finish around the same time by announcing when it is time to let someone else practice, or by giving countdown reminders.

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Adjust Your Breaks As a facilitator, you can read the room to determine when breaks are needed and when exactly to conduct the activities on your agenda. Perhaps instead of having a 10-minute break halfway through a 2.5 hour program, you need one five-minute break and one two-minute in-the-room, stand-and-stretch break. Paying attention to natural energy cycles is an important facilitation and time management skill. For example, feeling tired, or having difficulty concentrating, after a meal is relatively common. It’s so common, it has a name: postprandial somnolence. Therefore, after lunch is the worst time for a mini-lecture or video and a great time for an interactive activity or discussion. Be aware of dips in energy and insert those activities that get participants standing or moving at those intervals. Don’t have any moving activities? Have participants stand up and stretch, change seats, or meet in standing groups, rather than seated ones.

Practice Moving Swiftly Time management for facilitators is a skill that takes practice. You’ll need to learn when to let a conversation go on and when to intervene. Tips for managing digressions, found in Challenge 41, will be helpful with that. You’ll need to learn when to shorten a practice, skip a slide, or take your time to make sure participants absorbed the key points. As you work to manage your facilitation time more productively, two types of data may help: Asking participants to rate your pace at intervals throughout the program and recording the actual times you are reaching certain slides or segments of the program compared with the times that are suggested in the facilitator’s guide. This is valuable feedback to inform your time management strategies going forward.

Bottom Line Try not to have too much to cover before you arrive at your live training event, and be alert and efficient once you are underway.

Go Deeper “Flipped Learning: Maximizing Face Time” by Jon Bergmann and Aaron Sams The basic premise behind flipped learning is that direct instruction and lecture are not effective teaching tools in the group learning space and, as such, are not the best use of

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live class time. This article talks about the strengths and challenges of this model, with illustrations of how it has worked in two corporate settings.

“Present Like a Pro—Presentation is Key,” step 7 in 10 Steps to Successful Training, by Elaine Biech What you say isn’t as memorable as how you say it. Trainers must pay attention to all aspects of their presentation or they may detract from their message. Poor time management makes you appear rushed and disorganized as a facilitator. This chapter includes tips for pacing and staying organized that will help you manage class time more effectively.

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37

Challenge:

I’m not ending on a strong note

Description Participants remember best what they just heard or experienced, making effective endings for your workshops critical. The ending is when participants organize all the content they’ve been exposed to by processing, reflecting, and thinking about its application. Many of us have been taught the concept, when preparing an essay or a presentation, to “tell them what you’re going to tell them, tell them, and then tell them what you told them,” yet we still forget the last one, which is especially useful in training when there’s been a lot of content or it’s been a long training session.

Solutions The University of Maine’s Cooperative Extension, an arm of the university that puts university research and resources to work in homes, schools, businesses, farms, and communities across the state, explains, “An effective closing contains one or more of the following elements: a sense of value or meaning, action planning, a sense of accomplishment or movement, and completeness.” Here are some ways to incorporate these elements into your closings.

Provide Feedback to Create a Sense of Movement The end of any practice activity—any role play, any case study, any quiz or summary activity—must include feedback. If a person practices something in training, they must be told if they’ve done it correctly. Otherwise, training might end up having a negative effect when people are coming away having practiced the wrong thing (in psychological terms, it’s called negative conditioning). Obviously, one of the advantages of asynchronous e-learning can be the ability to provide immediate, individualized feedback. How do you provide feedback to each individual in a live training event?

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•

•

•

•

•

After participants have completed an activity or exercise, provide an answer key, or conduct a review so they can compare their responses with the correct ones. After participants have completed an activity, provide a model of how it should have been done. Give peer observers checklists with very specific criteria to watch out for during an activity. Encourage and prepare observers to give honest, thorough feedback. Conduct your practice in fishbowls. The fishbowl technique is a process used in groups where people form an inner and outer circle. The outer circle observes the inner circle as they discuss a topic or role-play a situation and gives feedback on group dynamics as well as content. Have them practice a process, or use a model, with a script. After they’ve said the words once as scripted, have them make the script their own, without sacrificing the key parts of the model.

Debrief to Clarify Value and Ask for Forward Movement If your training includes activities, exercises, videos, even mini-lectures, you must wrap them up with a debrief. If you conduct activities and do exercises in training that you don’t debrief, the likelihood that those activities or exercises will translate to applied skills is slim. Activities and experiences in training need to be processed by learners to establish relevance and applicability if learning transfer is to occur. Debriefing questions can fall into these seven categories, and each debrief period should include questions from multiple categories: • Observation. What did you see? What just happened? What stood out for you? • Comfort level. How comfortable were you doing ___? How did you feel during that exercise? What was your reaction? • Learning. What did you learn (or relearn?) • Needs. What might help you to remember these skills? What support do you need to do this back on the job? • Benefits. How was this useful? What was valuable about this? How could you use it? • Challenges. What will be difficult about this? What can you do to get past these obstacles? 288  •  Challenge 37

Application. In which situations could you see yourself using these ideas? An abbreviated method of debriefing conforms to Kolb’s Model of Experiential Learning (see Challenge 17). It’s the “What, So What, Now What?” approach: • What questions (experience) ° What did we just do? ° How did you feel doing that? ° How did it work? What were the results? • So what questions (reflection) ° Why do you think we did that? ° How does that relate to the topic we’re considering? ° How does that relate to the work you do? • Now what questions (application) ° How can you apply this at work this week? ° How will you remember to apply this at work? •

Gauge Participants’ Understanding to Ensure Meaning Questions like “What’s clear?” “What’s muddy?” or even “What percentage of what I just shared has landed for you?” let you know whether you need to spend more time on a concept before pressing on, and where specifically the bottleneck is.

Reflect to Create Meaning and Completeness When people learn new content up until the last moment of a program, what happens? They run back to their desks and look at their overflowing inboxes and instantly start forgetting what they learned. Ideas that were percolating in their heads dissolve, never to be recaptured. Reflection is a form of debriefing that gives learners a chance to process what they’ve heard or experienced before returning to their worksites. Reflection is often individualized and characterized by silence, but can be done in small groups or other formats. For those trainers afraid of silence or who are extroverted, reflection time can seem unnecessary—and deadly. But there will also be introverts in your sessions who need time to process their thoughts individually—often in writing—on what has changed for them as a result of attending your program. Reflection is a critical mental-processing moment.

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These are some of the reflection questions I use most often at the end of a day or a program: • What was clearest/muddiest? • What has changed for you as a result of . . .? • What was your aha moment, if you had one? • What was most valuable, if anything? • What questions do you still have? • What are you going to do this week?

Watch Your Last Words What typically happens at the end of your sessions? Does this sound familiar? People start looking at the clock and packing up. You race through your final point and remind people to fill out evaluations as they are running out the door. Your big finish is a “Thanks for coming” to those who are still paying any attention. Because of the recency effect (the principle that the most recently presented items or experiences will most likely be remembered best), let’s talk about the literal ending—the very last words out of your mouth. They shouldn’t be a yelled, “Remember to fill out an evaluation. They’re very important!” After thanking participants, after evaluations and other logistical concerns, try one of these (with examples from a session on vulnerability): • Ask a question (rhetorical or not): “I leave you with this question: Who do you need to be vulnerable with today?” • Make a dramatic statement: “The most significant moments of my life came when I was being my most vulnerable.” • Use a quotation: “I hope that you will practice vulnerability as a result of this session because, as author Brené Brown, writes, ‘Vulnerability is the core, the heart, the center, of meaningful human experiences.’” • Tell a story or an anecdote: “I want to end with this story of a time when I was vulnerable in front of my father. This moment deepened our relationship and is one of our fondest memories to this day.” • Share a fact or statistic: “X percent of folks who are more vulnerable find . . .” • Make an appeal for action: “Being vulnerable is the most courageous act you can perform in the workplace. Be courageous with one individual in your life today!” 290  •  Challenge 37

Summarize what you’ve learned from the group: “Not only did I pick up a great quote about being vulnerable from you all today, but through your vulnerability in this session, you all have reinforced for me that vulnerability—especially in the workplace—takes bravery, and I was reminded that I can’t just assume it comes easily to everyone. That’s a valuable lesson for me as I continue to teach this course.” I know you see how those endings are a lot more powerful than just, “It’s been a pleasure having you in class today.” •

Bottom Line The more learners acknowledge and celebrate what they leave with, the greater likelihood that it will be transferred into practice.

Go Deeper “Leave a Lasting Impression: Close With Impact,” ch. 7 in Interact and Engage! by Kassy LaBorie and Tom Stone One of the biggest mistakes made in an online event is failing to leave enough time to properly bring the session to a close with a memorable wrap-up activity. This chapter includes activities that engage participants to contribute their own thoughts and ideas on how they’ll take the knowledge and skills learned in the online event into their own environments.

“Closing Ideas: Facilitation Tips, Tools and Techniques” by Jane E. Haskell et al. If learners acknowledge and celebrate what they leave with and acknowledge how useful it is for them, the likelihood increases that it will be transferred into practice. This terrific two-page piece from professors at the University of Maine focuses on the power of endings and provides three sample closing exercises.

“Training Approaches and a Cornucopia of Learning Activities,” ch. 8 in Telling Ain’t Training, by Harold Stolovitch and Erica J. Keeps Activities in training, the authors posit, teach, prompt, or release learners. While this chapter includes 25 flexible, creative, and meaningful training activities that cover all three of these areas, several of them are more adapted to “release,” when learners are sufficiently able to try skills on their own.

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7 N O I T SEC

g n i g n e l l Cha icipants t r a P

The Problem “Even though we’ve got ground rules in place, some people continue to monopolize the conversation. I don’t want to insult them, but I do want to give others a chance to participate.” “I seem to always have one participant in my sessions who challenges everything I say. They’ll say, ‘That won’t work here,’ ‘We’ve already tried that,’ or ‘Have you ever worked in an office like mine?’ It makes me look bad in front of the group.” “I’ve been facilitating this very interactive, multisession course for a while now and usually have no problems, but in this current cohort, no one is speaking. I’ve tried putting them into smaller groups. I’ve tried letting them contribute their ideas ahead of the session via email. I just can’t get this group to participate. What’s going on?”

What’s Happening Here? It’s exciting to work with learners, to watch their faces light up during their aha moments or when they figure out how to resolve what’s been a struggle for them. But, let’s face it, it’s also sometimes a drag to work with learners, especially some participants. They can derail us, fluster us, or upset us. Sometimes, you know in advance what kind of challenge you might face and can prepare. For instance, when I worked for Redwood City, I had to deliver anti-harassment training for all staff. I knew that my audience would include police officers at the end of their overnight shifts, who weren’t exactly thrilled about the subject. When I knew that these officers were going to be in my audience, I would find someone they found credible and liked to introduce the session. I would thank them for being there after spending the night doing the urgent work that they do, and I would not take it personally if a few of them yawned or closed their eyes at certain points during the program. And I would acknowledge the expertise this group already possessed on the subject, while highlighting what might be different about that day’s workshop. A seasoned facilitator can sometimes anticipate and head off some of the challenges participants bring with them. Other times, you don’t expect the challenges participants show up with, like the last trainer quoted in the section opener, who had never had a problem with a particular program before, and then had a group go through it that was completely silent and with whom none of her usual tools for drawing participants out would work. Some of these challenges will push your buttons, while others won’t affect you as much. For some, it’s the nonresponsive participants. For others, it’s the know-it-alls. Knowing what kind of learner behavior triggers you can help you to recognize when that trigger has been released and to jump into a technique that works for you in that sort of scenario. For instance, if you are most troubled when a participant says, “We tried that before and it didn’t work,” recognize that you’re feeling the hairs on your neck are raised and then remember which tip from this section you want to utilize when you hear that. Maybe it’s asking, “What was the context then, and is that the same as the context now?” Maybe it’s using empathy, saying something to the effect of, “You’re justified in feeling skeptical about this technique if you’ve tried it unsuccessfully before.” Whatever the approach, realize that some situations are just tougher for you and arm yourself for those. The solutions for challenging participants in our live classroom and online training events are as unique to the situation as are the learners themselves. But I do want to share three overall tips here. First, don’t always try to 294  •  Section 7

change the situation that is not going as planned, or the participant who is disruptive. Sometimes you can lean into the situation or behavior—or use it to your advantage—as noted throughout the solutions in this section. Second, it’s critical that you maintain a positive and participant-friendly tone when dealing with even the really challenging and frustrating participants. As in many situations in life, Michelle Obama’s directive, “When they go low, we go high” comes to mind. You’ve got to model the way you want your participants to interact with you and with one another. You’ve got to remain the professional even when your professionalism is being tested. Third, you can try any of the solutions suggested in this section a time or two, but there will come a point when, as Monique Staunton Stevens, my colleague at the University of Maryland, suggests, “You can’t care more for the disruptive or challenging participant than they care for themselves.” That is, if you’ve tried to correct troublesome behavior in calm, polite, positive ways and it is not making a difference, you may have to tell them that they are not welcome in your session. This is in your interest, for instance, if the behavior in question is aggressive; and in the interest of all of your other participants, whose learning is being negatively affected. Before getting to this point, you’ve usually had more than one interaction with the particular participant. Once things have gotten to the point where you are considering an action like this, please loop in your boss or the supervisor of the challenging participant. Luckily, participants at that level of challenge are few and far between.

The Challenges Look to this section for solutions when you have one of these more common challenges with participants: Challenge 38. Someone is monopolizing the session.......................................... 297 Challenge 39. Someone is complaining about every aspect of the session....... 300 Challenge 40. Someone is challenging everything I say...................................... 302 Challenge 41. An individual, or entire group, keeps going off on a tangent... 305 Challenge 42. A few people aren’t saying anything at all.................................... 308 Challenge 43. I’ve got varied skills sets and expectations among participants.......................................................................................... 315 Challenge 44. My participants are distracted and multitasking......................... 318 Challenge 45. People keep showing up late......................................................... 321 Section 7  •  295

Go Deeper In other sections of this book, I have included resources at the end of each challenge, but most resources I’ve found on this topic address all types of challenging participants at once, so I’ve listed them here.

Books

Training Difficult People by Becky Pike Pluth It’s important to regain control of your classroom in order to mitigate the effects of negative participant behaviors on your other learners. This book includes tested techniques used over the years by the Bob Pike Group to respond to 23 challenging learner types, from the reluctant learner, to the latecomer, to the know-it-all.

Articles

“Managing Difficult Participants” by Tora Estep Remember that difficult behaviors in live training aren’t personal attacks on you, and that you are dealing with disruptive behaviors, not difficult people. This Infoline provides tips to depersonalize challenging participant situations, from knowing your own fears and triggers, to managing specific live-training behaviors and assessing how you did.

“Five Tips for Dealing With Difficult Participants” by John Townsend Just as its title suggests, this article provides five techniques including nonverbal, refocusing, and “you and me.”

Videos Most of the videos on this topic are talking-head style. Others are ads for longer programs for which you must pay a fee. Some contain only the most obvious of suggestions. In short, none are stellar. However, the following two met a few of my criteria: They are recent, they are 10-30 minutes in length, and they provide some solutions that you wouldn’t necessarily think of on your own.

“Chairing Meetings—How to Deal With Challenging Participants” by Mike Clayton "There are no difficult participants,” says Clayton, “there are just inflexible facilitators.” I agree with Clayton’s suggestion that the bulk of participants behave well, want to get the best out of the event, and are good communicators. And I appreciate his tips that tie difficult participant behaviors to inefficient communication. From this lens, his suggestions to respond to some common disruptors are humane and, quite likely, effective.

“The Secret to Communicate With Difficult Participants” by Tomek Borek Despite distracting hand gestures and a frenetic pace, Tomek Borek does a good job of talking about what drives five different archetypes of challenging participants to behave as they do, and of providing some quite sensible solutions in response to those drivers.

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38

Challenge:

Someone is monopolizing the session

Description You see them in most meetings and training spaces—individuals who are big talkers who don’t allow time for others to contribute. It doesn’t take long to notice them in a session. They are the ones whose hands shoot up as soon as you pause, or who cut in without raising a hand. They are the ones who, when they do start talking, change the energy in the session. They are the ones whose rambling responses have you debating whether to cut them off, or glance at your watch, or just let them keep going.

Solutions When an eager participant has crossed over into monopolizer territory, as noted by some of the indicators mentioned in the description of this challenge, here are some responses to calmly and firmly shut them down.

Establish Ground Rules for Participation As the person responsible for training delivery, you can establish general ground rules that encourage all participants, especially monopolizers, to be aware of the extent of their contributions. Having these ground rules also gives you something to refer back to when you need to correct this speaker’s behavior. Some good ones are “Take room, make room” or “Watch your airtime.” Or, give participants a guideline for how often they should be speaking up with this “rule”: • If you are a talker, wait until three people have spoken before you speak again. • If you are quieter, share your thoughts when three people have spoken.

Ask for Input From Others Politely acknowledge the contribution of the monopolizer and then ask if others have input with a question like, “Who else has some ideas?” or “Thanks, Challenge 38  •  297

Maria. Is there a question you’d like to pose to the group to get more information about your concern?”

Ask Them to Summarize At a pause, ask the big talker something along the lines of, “Could you summarize what you just said in a few words so I can capture it?” You can also model the skill of speaking concisely by summarizing their paragraphs of speech into short sentences and asking if that was what they meant. After a few times of your doing that, they may get the idea and try to do it themselves.

Interrupt Them Sometimes trainers, especially new ones, hesitate to interrupt a participant who is doing more than their share of the talking because they generally believe that interrupting is rude. However, if you must interrupt the monopolizer, know that you are doing so in the service of all the other participants, who also deserve a chance to speak. In other words, you can worry about interrupting one person and do nothing, or you can interrupt and better serve everyone else who is having to bear with the monopolizer. This might sound like: “Thanks, and we haven’t heard from . . .” or “Let me interrupt you, because we need to bring some other voices into this conversation.” Sometimes your interruption is also a gift. Yes, some people like to hear themselves talk and they suck up the oxygen in the room, or consume all the airtime in your virtual session. But others are genuinely engaged and don’t always notice that they’re the ones dominating conversation. This is especially true in a virtual setting, where they can’t pick up on any of your body language that might indicate that they have been going on for too long.

Notice Who’s Monopolizing Just as most monopolizers do not intend to dominate the discussion, they also don’t intend to silence others in the room, particularly those who are traditionally silenced in the workplace. In “Prioritize Inclusivity in Your Training Sessions,” Eliza Blanchard suggests, “During discussions and group exercises, pay attention to who is doing most of the talking and whether this reflects any broader power structures. Are men speaking more than women? Are they interrupting women who try to speak up? Are they attributing ideas initially voiced by women to other men or to themselves?” Similarly, she suggests keeping an eye out for whether white people are interrupting people of color

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or if younger workers are speaking up much more than older ones. In these instances, it is especially important that you intervene with the strategies we’ve discussed, or with comments like, “Ben and André, you’ve made a lot of great comments today—thanks for participating. I’d love to hear from some others in the room. Anya, do you have anything to add to this discussion?” or “Ben, could you wait until Anya has finished sharing her thoughts before you speak?”

Keep Them Busy If the monopolizer can be given a task that will keep them busy, they will be less able to take over the conversation. For instance, assign them the role of observer or scribe.

Check Yourself Make sure that you are not enabling a monopolizer by relying on just one or two people to speak up in an otherwise quiet group. If you have turned someone into a monopolizer, you might want to review the suggestions for handling a quiet individual or group (Challenge 42) to encourage others to speak up, rather than focusing on having your monopolizer speak less.

Bottom Line If a participant is violating agreed-upon ground rules regarding their level of participation, call them on it!

Go Deeper Go deeper with the resources listed on page 296.

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39

Challenge:

Someone is complaining out loud about every aspect of the session

Description Despite your best efforts to cultivate a welcoming, engaging atmosphere, you’ll inevitably face the participant who audibly complains about the training session. This is the individual who sits with their arms crossed and a grim look on their face, or who, when they are unmuted in an e-learning session, finds fault with all aspects of the program, from your voice, to the visuals, to the pace. That’s different from the confrontational participant who disagrees with everything you say. That participant is next (see Challenge 40).

Solutions It’s hard not to take this participants’ complaints personally, and effective responses will often test your mindset and reactions. Skim these tips to finesse your response.

Lean In: Determine If Their Complaints Are Warranted Even someone who has several unwarranted complaints, or complaints that are not shared by a majority of the participants, may have some that are legitimate. When they raise their hand to tell you about something that isn’t right, the first thing is to determine the basis of their complaints. If their complaints are warranted or widespread, make whatever changes you are able to.

Be Empathetic Although what they are complaining about may not bother you or other learners, you can still make an empathetic statement to help them feel heard, like, “I know the bright lights are bothering you, and I appreciate your tolerance so that we can all see one another clearly in our role-play triads,” or “I know it can be difficult to follow along remotely; I’ll do my best to ensure you’re all ready before I move on to the next idea.”

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Be Thankful If you shut down the complainer, others, who might have legitimate concerns, may hesitate to raise them. Be polite and thank them for bringing the issue to your attention. Reframe your own view of the complainer by thinking, “Complaint reveals commitment.”

Use a Parking Lot Ask that unless their complaints are absolutely preventing them from learning, that they hold on to them until a break, or that they list them in an area posted just for this purpose (a parking lot). This way they aren’t interrupting the session with their concerns, but still have a way to express them.

Focus on Results Share results you’ve achieved with other groups, despite the criticisms that they have, and ask them to bear with you for a bit longer to see if they can also achieve those results. That might sound like, “I know the sound on this video is terrible, but I’ve turned on the closed captions and most of my past participants have gotten real value out of watching it despite the poor sound quality.”

Let Them Track the Problems Make their complaints their job. Give this person responsibility to track all aspects of the program that can be fixed. Ask for a report or presentation at the end of the session. Often when given an “official” role, they complain less and act more professional.

Bottom Line Stay positive with your negative participant as long as they’re not negatively influencing the learning of others.

Go Deeper Go deeper with the resources listed on page 296.

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40

Challenge:

Someone is challenging everything I say

Description One of the scariest types of problem participants, especially for newer trainers, is the person who repeatedly confronts or contradicts what you have to say.

Solutions A trainer needs to develop a thick skin for participants who challenge them every step of the way. Here are some tips to help you develop that sort of exterior.

Set Ground Rules for Disagreeing Agreeably When reviewing ground rules for the program, share the quote (which I’ve seen attributed to four different people!), “If the two of us always agree, then one of us is unnecessary.” Acknowledge that a range of views exist, and that’s how it should be. Healthy disagreement is just that, healthy. It’s when it is toxic or unhealthy that a problem arises, so set the expectation from the start that everyone agrees to disagree and to do so respectfully. The exception is some diversity and inclusion training, where comfortable conversations should not be the expectation and some participants who are used to feeling comfortable are made to feel a little uncomfortable. Challenges often come in the form of interruptions. Set expectations when you are presenting concepts that you know to be somewhat confrontational, for example, “I know that what I’m about to say is controversial. I just need 60 seconds to explain the concept. Give me a minute and then we’ll discuss this, and I’ll want to hear all of your thoughts.”

Lean In: Make It Official Explain how important it is that all groups have someone who can raise concerns and ensure that alternative viewpoints have been considered. Assign this person the “official” role of devil’s advocate. Often when they know that their viewpoint is appreciated and will be heard, they tone down their arguments. 302  •  Challenge 40

Make Them Give Reasons for Their Thinking When they challenge an idea, concept, or model, find out what’s at the root of their concern. You may be able to help them, and others who share that thinking but stayed silent, get past an obstacle to their understanding of the subject.

Acknowledge Their Breadth of Knowledge Some people argue with the trainer to exert their own authority, or because they feel threatened by an approach that is different from their own. These are adult learners who bring a wealth of their own experience into the program, and what you are sharing may contradict what they have seen and experienced. Acknowledge what’s true about their objection and then ask them to consider another approach. For example, “You may have had success doing this another way, and you may be able to achieve even greater success by expanding your skill set.”

Assert Your Own Expertise Some people may question your credibility and then question whatever it is you want to share with them. Head them off at the pass by citing the authorities you used as a source, or your own experience that qualifies you to share the ideas you are transmitting.

Ask Thoughtful Questions Ask the person who challenges all your points, “What would it take to change your mind?” or “Would it be OK if others in the room see it differently?” Their responses can be helpful to others who are struggling with the concept, or to help them realize if their concern is actually causing a problem. Ask the participant who continually says, “We can’t . . ., ” “Our culture isn’t . . . ,” or “This won’t work . . .” how what they are doing now is working. So if they say, for example, “I can’t confront unproductive behavior in this culture of niceness,” Ask, “How is that working for you?”

Involve the Group Have the participant address their comments to the whole group, for example, “So you aren’t liking this model. Can you tell the group more about your concerns?” Then ask the group for any response they may have.

Change Your Mindset Think about why the participant is challenging you. Do you think it really is just to be argumentative? Doing this might help you to change your own Challenge 40  •  303

mindset from “They want to challenge me” to “They are really trying to understand this material,” which will, in turn, help you respond more graciously. The person challenging you may be a gift in disguise—raising challenges that others are feeling but not saying. Acknowledging the value of that respectfully is probably the best way to respond to what some people call the “know-itall.” Also, come to terms with the awareness that you won’t necessarily change any minds. Do what you can to empathize and educate, but, ultimately, this concept may not land with the person. That isn’t to say it won’t land further down the road, or when they hear it again from someone else, or when they see a peer use it and get good results. Transformation rarely happens in the moment, in the artificial setting of the live training event.

Shut It Down When They Challenge One Another It’s one thing when participants are confronting you, the skilled facilitator. It is quite another when they turn on one another. If participants are attacking one another’s contributions, you must handle the situation quickly; don’t allow tempers to flare. Stress that while it’s more than okay for people to have competing values or opinions, how one expresses their opinions needs to remain respectful. A notable exception is during diversity and inclusion training when we might want people who are used to being comfortable in conversations to experience some discomfort or to understand that their comfort shouldn’t come at the expense of someone else’s humanity. Ask the parties to rephrase their ideas in the form of their own beliefs, not attacks on others. Emphasize points of agreement, if any. Even if there are no spots where they have common viewpoints, suggest that each opinion may be correct and acknowledge what is valid about both sides. If the situation is heated, the participants in the room are distracted, or the matter is highly sensitive, you may wish to take a break and ask those who are involved in the conflict to chat with you either individually or together.

Bottom Line Allowing participants to disagree allows for a more authentic connection to— and understanding of—your content.

Go Deeper Go deeper with the resources listed on page 296.

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41

Challenge:

An individual, or entire group, keeps going off on tangents

Description It’s rare for training sessions to be designed to accommodate extra time for lengthy tangential conversations. You’ve got a lot of material to cover and there is no time for the individual who thinks as they speak, or whose responses ramble further and further from the question that was asked. Or, more broadly, there’s no time for a group discussion that is out of control and moving further away from the session’s agenda.

Solutions Some of the tips from Challenge 36 about time management during training may apply to this situation. Additionally, these solutions should help with an individual whose comments meander and wind.

Bring Them Back to the Topic at Hand Help them, and everyone else present, to rein in their thoughts with a statement like, “What you’re saying is interesting and relates to our topic in this way . . .”

Ask How Their Comments Relate If you can’t bring them back to the topic as I just suggested, you may need to ask them to do so with a question like, “I’m not sure how that fits the issue we’re talking about. Can you help me?” In asking them how they think their comments are relevant, you may uncover some misunderstandings about the topic or some confusion that it’s important for you to clarify for everyone.

Intervene Just as you would politely interrupt a monopolizer in the interest of the rest of the group (and of your agenda), you should do so here. Thank them for their comment, but suggest that time is short and you need to move on. If appropriate, you can refer them to the parking lot, as described in Challenge 39.

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Help Them Think Before They Speak Some people ramble because they don’t know what they’re going to say until they say it. Offer opportunities for individuals to collect or organize their thoughts (maybe on a worksheet) before opening the floor for a large group discussion. If you’re worried about time, consider that taking two minutes for everyone in the room to jot down a few thoughts in advance might prevent a three- or four-minute rambling response later on. It might also allow everyone—even the quiet ones—to process their thoughts and enhance their learning, even if they don’t contribute these in the large group.

And here’s how you might handle a digression when an entire group is going astray.

Set the Parameters of the Discussion Make sure you’ve explained the purpose of your discussion. Sometimes participants are just amiably going along with wherever the conversation is going because they don’t know the parameters of the discussion period— they don’t know that what they’re talking about isn’t what they are supposed to be talking about. It’s your role, if the group strays, to remind them of the objectives for the session and to point out when the conversation is steering you away from achieving those objectives.

Lean In: Allow Time to Digress Rather than standing by and allowing the conversation to take over, step in and point out where you see the discussion going. Ask the group if they want or need to continue discussing the new topic. Set a time limit (and a timer) to discuss the new topic, and then return to your scheduled agenda. This might sound like, “I hear that there’s more energy around this related topic than the question I originally asked you. How about if I set my alarm for five minutes so we talk about the related area and then get back to the topic at hand?” Usually, after the timed digression, participants will return feeling more ready to focus on what you need them to, having had the opportunity to process the digression.

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At times, a group may be unable to come back to the topic of the training and I’ve had to, occasionally, cancel the remainder of the session in this situation. This happened, for instance, in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic when people were showing up to previously scheduled training completely uncertain about how much longer they’d be in the office or what they needed to be doing to transition to working remotely.

Offer Follow-Up When going with the digression, even for five minutes, isn’t possible, consider whether it is possible to schedule a follow-up session to discuss the new topic, or whether you can create another opportunity for the discussion to continue, such as in an email thread or a chat group following the program.

Bottom Line A tangent could actually be where the energy, interest, and learning of the individual or group is. The tangent may be about something that is preventing them from learning and must be discussed.

Go Deeper Go deeper with the resources listed on page 296.

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42

Challenge:

A few people aren’t saying anything at all

Description In every live training session, you will have some people who simply aren’t comfortable speaking up. They may be introverts, who need time and space to process their thoughts before sharing them publicly. English may not be their first language. They may be in a session along with their colleagues or their boss and not feel comfortable raising certain issues. Or, they may be trying to take the morning off and coast through your session without putting in any real effort.

Solutions For these silent types, you might want to first utilize the principles from Challenge 33 about promoting engagement more generally. In addition to those techniques you might try these.

Establish Expectations of Active Participation When you are going over ground rules at the beginning of the session, you can share some of the best practices for making learning sticky (see Challenge 22). “If you sit back with your arms crossed and think, ‘Teach me something,’” I often tell my participants, “You won’t get as much out of the program as will someone who asks questions to make sure that they understand, who makes comments tying what we’re discussing to real workplace issues, and who takes a risk to try out new skills during our practices. All of these are ways to help ensure that you’ll take this learning and apply it back on the job.” At the same time that you are reviewing this ground rule of active participation, remind others to watch their airtime so that everyone has a chance to contribute (see Challenge 38). In short, I remind them that participation enhances learning.

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Allow Questions to Be Submitted Anonymously During the Session Even with an “all questions are valid” type of ground rule in place, some people are just not comfortable asking questions in a group. Try to create opportunities throughout your session for questions to be submitted anonymously. For instance, you can: •

•

•

•

Have index cards on tables and ask participants to pass up the index cards as they have questions, or at just one designated time. Have sticky notes on the table and let participants hang their questions up on a posted parking lot throughout the session. Explain at the start of the session that if participants have more sensitive questions, they can find you during a group activity or a break, or online in the private “Chat With Instructor” option. Use anonymous survey technology to solicit questions (and responses). Using polling technology and their phones or computers is a way to start generating participant response and participation, especially in larger groups. In a classroom, use polling technology, like Slido, to submit questions or to vote for those questions that are most urgent. Online, integrate polls and surveys throughout your session.

Prime the Pump In the late 1800s, a pump didn’t work until you poured liquid into it to expel the air trapped there. Once the pump was “primed,” the water would flow. Similarly, if you want ideas and responses to flow from participants, you sometimes have to prime them. You can do this by having them discuss a question with a partner, or in a triad, before asking them to speak to the entire group. Think-pair-share is a variant on this, where the participant first considers a problem or question on their own, then with a partner, and then with the larger group. Online you may have to jump directly from think to share, if you can’t use a breakout room, but including those few seconds or minutes for the think part can make a big difference. You might approach this as instructional designer Erika Mendelson does: At the beginning of our sessions, before we’re even ready to conduct one, we introduce the concept of a “turn and talk” to participants. We explain that they are short exercises

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sprinkled throughout the session where they can reflect on the content we’ve covered with people at their tables for two minutes. We demonstrate the cue that we will use to get their attention back. Knowing what’s coming and how it will work has made these discussions more lively and more efficient. Another primer is having “plants” in the room or online: people you’ve given questions to ask, or comments to make, in advance in order to kick off a larger conversation.

Relate If they’re not asking questions, try some of these prompts. They make asking less threatening and help build connections between you and your learners: • “When I was learning this, I wondered . . .” • “If I were you, I’d be wondering . . .” • “At this point in the program, participants usually ask me . . .”

Read Body Language Sometimes, you can just see that they aren’t getting it, even if no one is volunteering a question. In these cases, you can reflect back to the group what you are seeing, such as “Some of you look confused” or “I’m not seeing too many nods when we talk about this. I wonder if that means you’re not with me.” In larger online sessions, you can’t read body language, so you may have to sprinkle more quick surveys of the “Send me a thumbs-up if you’re with me” or “Raise your virtual hand (or click ‘yes’) if you are nodding now” variety.

Discourage the Mute Button In interactive online sessions, I like to ask people to mute only if there is loud noise going on in the background. Staying unmuted has a few advantages: First, it allows people to hear the effect of their comments on others, who might laugh, gasp, or make other small encouraging sounds. This helps people feel as if they’re not speaking into a void, but actually being heard in a supportive environment. Second, because volunteering to speak involves the extra step of unmuting, it might just be one barrier too many to actually speaking up.

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Assign Seating to Break Up Departments Using preprinted name tents on tables ensures that participants in classroom sessions are divided among departments or across other demographics. This can help people to feel comfortable sharing when they are not seated with people whom they know and will see when back on the job. Online, you’ll want to preassign breakout rooms to split up people who work together or expose participants to a wider set of perspectives from one activity to the next.

Make Encouraging Participation Someone’s Role In small or large groups, ask someone to take on the role of dynamics observer (you can give it a jazzier name). This person is responsible for ensuring that ground rules around participation are followed. For example, this person might invite sharing from those who have been quiet or move the discussion along to make sure everyone gets to talk within the allotted time.

Possibly Call on Them in a Nonthreatening Way In an adult learning situation, I recommend asking for volunteers to respond, rather than calling on people to try to generate participation. Although, sometimes you can see that a quieter participant has a thought cued up but needs some encouragement to get it out. Come up with some inviting ways to ask them to share, such as “Dayzee, do you have anything you want to say about . . .” or “Ron, is that group response how you feel, too?” If you are going to call on anyone during a session, make sure to say their name first so that they can focus and hear the question, rather than asking the question first and then putting a potential responder on the spot.

Give Them an Assignment Ahead of Time Pre-work can be a great way to engage participants before a session, and it can allow those who hate being put on the spot to engage with the material beforehand (more on pre-work in Challenge 17). When you have met your participants before and know that you have a particular person on your roster who tends to be quiet in sessions, you can ask them to bring some prepared thoughts to the session. For those who need time to process their thoughts, this equips them to more fully contribute to the discussion.

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Feed Them an Answer Beforehand In a classroom setting, I will often go to someone quiet while they are working in a small group and ask them in a whisper if they will repeat back something I’m about to tell them when we begin the group debrief. When we’re back together as a large group, I call on this person to share what I just told them. Invariably, they not only share the answer I already gave them, but elaborate on it in their own words. For example, I might tell someone that when we debrief as a large group, I’d like them to make the point that providing excellent customer service benefits you, the person offering it, because what goes around comes around, and when you treat the customer nicely, they tend to treat you more nicely than they otherwise might. When the debrief starts, I call on my “plant” first and they’ll paraphrase what I just told them, embellish with statements like, “What a better day we all have when people are interacting nicely with us!” or they add their own examples to illustrate the point I gave them to share.

Have Everyone Respond to a Question Though time-consuming, asking every participant to respond to a certain question is one of the most powerful ways to really know that everyone has engaged with the content. Make sure that you let people know that they will be sharing a response aloud and give them a few minutes to think through their response first. Some trainers give participants a “right to pass” when doing this. Whether you offer this option is a feature of your course objectives and the content at hand.

Prepare Your Own Questions That Encourage Participation It’s great to have some questions in your “back pocket” that you know work for you to generate discussion. Two that I find particularly useful are: • “What would you say if you did know?” Somehow this question frees people to use their imaginations. It’s like saying, “If you don’t know, take a guess”—an approach that gives people the freedom to get it wrong. They can then answer theoretically, rather than in some way that they’ll be held to, and they access answers they claim not to know. • “How should I interpret the low energy?” While this question might feel scary to you, it is extremely effective. By naming what you are noticing in a completely transparent way, you are connecting with participants on a deeper level. You are also getting some 312  •  Challenge 42

very useful data about what is going on for people. They may say they’re not responding because they are lost, which tells you to spend more time on the content. Or, they may say it’s related to an organizational announcement that happened right before your session. In which case, you can ask if they need 10 minutes to process that announcement before you go on. Or, they may say it’s nothing at all, but sometimes just knowing you’ve noticed the low energy lights a fire under your participants. Here’s how this worked for a new trainer I recently spoke to: “I was in a session and there were awkward silences in response to questions on topics we thought people would have real opinions on. My co-facilitator decided to name what was happening in the room, rather than letting it go unsaid. So, he said, ‘It feels like there’s not much energy here. Does anyone else feel that? What’s going on?’ Turns out, many people were feeling it, and many were distracted by something going on outside the room. It was kind of a relief that it wasn’t the topic that had fallen flat, but that there were other things on their minds. We talked about how we could work around that distraction, and participation picked up significantly.” I have been asked how you can respond when the answer to “How should I interpret the low energy?” is “This is boring,” or “I don’t want to be here.” In these cases, I say something to the effect of, “I appreciate your honesty. Thank you for being here even though you didn’t really have a choice and for bringing that to the space.” Then either: “I have to be here today, too, so I will do whatever I can to make this time valuable for us,” or “Why do you think they might have sent you here?” There are many reasons some people choose to remain quiet during live training events. The other reason to ask explicitly why a group is quiet is to check your own assumptions. Even when some people don’t choose to participate actively, don’t assume that they are not getting anything out of the session.

Lean In: Provide “Wait Time” Everyone benefits from some moments of silence during live training. While you’re familiar with the concepts you are sharing, this is the first time your participants have heard them. It is necessary to give them time to both process Challenge 42  •  313

what you’ve said and then to formulate a response to your question about it. Too often, if participants don’t respond quickly enough, inexperienced trainers will dread the ensuing silence and then answer the question themselves or try to rephrase the question another way. The former takes away all incentive for answering in the future, because the expectation becomes, “If I don’t answer, the trainer will.” The latter leaves the participants confused about which question to answer and creates extraneous load on their working memories. Be sure to allow for frequent “wait time”—30 seconds of silence for participants to process.

Bottom Line People process information in different ways; use tips to draw participants out that honor these preferences and maintain safety.

Go Deeper Go deeper with the resources listed on page 296.

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43

Challenge:

There are varied skill sets and expectations among participants

Description You never know who will turn up to sessions, whether enrollment has been open to anyone who signs up or has been limited to intact work teams. Your audience may have a variety of experience and knowledge, even if you were very clear in your course description about who would benefit most from participation, and even if you asked the team’s supervisor to give you some insight ahead of time on the team members and their skill levels (and if you aren’t doing either of those things, those are your first two solutions).

Solutions Varied skill levels and expectations can be disruptive and should be addressed as soon as they become apparent. Here are some ways to do that.

Collect Expectations Whether you do this informally or formally (for example, discussing it casually with individuals as they enter the room, or as an initial full group activity), or whether it’s ahead of time or in class (for example, using email or Survey Monkey), you want to find out at the start of your program what expectations they are coming in with. Identify those that are realistic and those that will not be addressed during the session and level-set up front.

Have Them Create Individual Goals Ask participants to create a goal for themselves based on the course objectives. So, if the objectives are to utilize best practices for decision making, ask participants to think about how the content relates to their own work roles and responsibilities and what they want to do with those best practices. This keeps everyone engaged, even if they don’t start or end in the same place.

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Don’t “Teach to the Top 5 Percent” Sometimes, trainers focus their attention during live training on the people in the session who show the most promise. These are the participants who are asking questions, contributing ideas, and making connections to realworld examples. The problem is that these individuals are the ones who are most motivated to learn. They are the learners who would likely succeed in meeting the course objectives even without you being present, because they have the desire and they know how to access their resources. In short, they don’t need you. It’s the ones who are unable to make the connections or to respond to your questions, or who don’t seem to have the tools they need to be successful, that you need to focus on.

Provide “Outside” Assistance On the flip side of the previous strategy is don’t teach to the bottom 5 percent. Despite your best efforts to customize the learning and to provide support to those who need it most, there may be a person in the session who just doesn’t get it and who is holding up the rest of the group. In these situations, first do some digging to make sure it isn’t everyone who is confused. If it’s more than one isolated person, you may need to backtrack and clarify something you’ve already covered. If it is just the one person, you might ask them to meet with you during a break or afterward for more one-on-one help, or you might assign them a buddy who can explain things as you go.

Customize Prepare separate exercises for those who show up and need advanced challenges and for those who don’t. You can “test” to determine which learners get which types of exercises, or have individuals self-identify as you describe each exercise that they can choose from, just as a physical exercise instructor might introduce an exercise along with one or two modifications. This test can come in a variety of formats and can be as simple as saying, “We’re going to break into groups now, and I ask those who have prior experience with this subject to come over here and those who are new to it to stay over there. If after a few minutes in the group you choose you realize you’re in the wrong place, feel free to move.”

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Match Up Those at Different Skill Levels Pair experienced, skilled participants with novice learners so that experienced learners practice leadership skills and review the material, while lessskilled learners learn and practice. This can happen in a multitude of ways, from saying to someone, “Lewis, if it’s OK, I’m going to ask Angel to sit next to you after the break, because you’ve had prior exposure to this concept and can guide him through the next activity,” to a formal peer mentoring aspect of a leadership development program, in which individuals indicate on day one which areas are their strengths and which are their opportunities, after which they are matched and assigned as mentor and mentee for the remainder of the program.

Scaffold Remember the zone of proximal development from Challenge 34 and be prepared with different supports that you can add or remove for learners as they move away from their comfort zone and toward their frustration zone.

Bottom Line Learners are unique—and so are their skill sets and expectations. A skilled facilitator meets learners wherever they are.

Go Deeper Go deeper with the resources listed on page 296.

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44

Challenge:

My participants are distracted and multitasking

Description Years ago, before cell phones and laptops entered the work environment, the idea of checking email, sending texts, or doing other work-related tasks during a training session was unheard of. Now it is commonplace. As your organization integrates more synchronous e-learning, the problem multiplies, because your learners can be distracted by things in their own environments you can’t even see.

Solutions Ultimately, whether to multitask during a training session is a decision that the participant will need to make. As a trainer, you can only ask that they refrain, and share with them the disadvantages when they are unable to do so. You have the opportunity to help people understand that multitasking— doing two things at once and doing them both well—is not actually possible. The brain cannot process two attention-rich inputs simultaneously. These are some tips for responding to distracted learners.

Set Ground Rules Setting expectations around the use of technology during sessions is the foundation to which you can refer back should problems arise later. These might include: • Laptops are for note-taking only (in a classroom setting). • I will not multitask and I request that you do not either, such as checking emails or visiting websites (in a virtual setting). • Check cell phones at the door, or put cell phones away. Turn cell phones to silent (or vibrate). Some groups decide to hold one another to these ground rules in creative ways, like in the cohort I observed, which asked a participant who

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brought out their phone to place $1 in a basket designated for a charity they’d selected together.

Educate Learners About the Effects of Distractions Research reported in the Journal of the Association for Consumer Research indicates that when our phones are on silent mode but are still visible to us, they are a distraction (Ward et al. 2017). Their experiment tested the “brain drain” hypothesis, which includes the idea that “the mere presence of one’s own smartphone may occupy limited-capacity cognitive resources, thereby leaving fewer resources available for other tasks and undercutting cognitive performance.” When we can introduce this type of research on the detrimental effects of multitasking, you not only increase the likelihood that participants will put their phones away during the class, but also that they learn something with broader application.

Allow for Emergencies Dan Erosa, who conducts training for residence assistants at NYU, posts this message on a welcome screen as participants enter the room: “If there is a situation that you need to attend to, or be prepared to attend to, please let me know and take a seat in the back by the door.” This allows the participants to leave the room to deal with a crisis with a minimum of distraction and lets Erosa know why the participant might not be fully present. Allowing for emergencies also means that if a situation has come up that has all of your participants distracted and unable to refrain from responding to urgent messages from work, you may have to suspend the session altogether. At one retail bank, a security glitch was discovered hours before a training was scheduled. After a brief introduction, the session was curtailed because most of the people in the room were responsible for containing the breach.

Let Them Know You See Them Stand over the shoulder of someone who is constantly on their phone. There is no need to say or do anything; your presence alone often encourages them to put the technology away. Sometimes they don’t realize that what they are doing is that noticeable. Sometimes this will mildly embarrass them; that’s sort of the point. Usually, you won’t be able to see the participants in a virtual session, but you can keep a roster beside your computer and put marks next to their names

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when they participate. If they aren’t participating, you can pose a question to them directly (say their name before asking the question), which not only contributes to less multitasking, but also addresses the challenges of too many silent types.

Keep Them Busy A well-designed program might keep participants too busy to check their phones or toggle to another screen or website. If your lectures are brief and there is a lot of small group work and practice, participants may not have time to look for messages or do their grocery shopping online.

Lean In: Use the Technologies They Bring If they’re going to have their phones and computers out anyway, you might as well use them. Have participants use their laptops or phones to look things up or to answer questions using polling software.

Bottom Line Technology continues to creep into our sessions. You can embrace it by integrating its use into your course design, regulate it, or ignore it.

Go Deeper Go deeper with the resources listed on page 296.

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45

Challenge:

People keep showing up late

Description Somehow, even when your program is scheduled to start first thing on a workday, people show up late for training. Things come up in participants’ work and personal lives (or en route) that mean they may not arrive on time, and many facilitators start classes late because, when only a fraction of those enrolled have arrived, it is very disruptive when others enter. It is usually less disruptive to the other participants when people arrive late to online sessions, because learners can’t always see one another and aren’t aware when people join, yet it can be unnerving to you as the facilitator to watch the number of people who are signed in gradually rise as you are already under way.

Solutions Starting class on time is respectful to those who made the effort to arrive on time. Starting class late rewards latecomers and sets a norm that classes will start late, which perpetuates more latecomers in the future. Here’s how to start on time and integrate latecomers seamlessly.

Design Fix: Plan for Latecomers Design programs with an opening activity that isn’t crucial (such as a selfassessment or partner discussion) and cover information that everyone needs to hear, like the agenda, logistics, and objectives, about 15 minutes in so that no one misses them and you don’t have to repeat some of these logistical and important details of the learning environment. When possible in the classroom, have a designated section near the door reserved for latecomers so that they can slip in less noticeably. For online sessions, you might have a message on the side of your screen for the first 15 minutes of the program saying something to the effect of, “If you’re just joining us, we’ll cover the agenda and objectives for today’s session after a brief activity.”

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Try Not to Embarrass Them Latecomers are usually embarrassed enough as it is. Try not to call much attention to them. Simply acknowledge them as they arrive with a brief statement like, “Welcome. We’re talking about X. Take a seat and I’ll catch you up during a break.” For virtual classrooms, make sure entrance chimes are disabled to avoid drawing attention to late arrivals.

Avoid Enabling Lateness Don’t recap what you’ve talked about each time a new person or small group arrives. It punishes those who arrived on time and have to listen to it all over again, and lets people know it’s okay to arrive late for your sessions, because you’ll always just tell them whatever they missed. Catching up to the group needs to be the latecomer’s own responsibility. This is also important when people return late from breaks. Dive right in and don’t enable those who aren’t back on time.

Establish Procedures for Entering Late If a program has multiple sessions, establish some ground rules for how to enter late. If a participant is noisy coming in (and I’ve had people arrive late and start calling out hellos to people who are already involved in the session), pause for a moment until they are settled, then continue.

Send Them Away Depending on how late they arrive to a classroom session, you may need to decide whether they can stay. After a certain point, you may have to say, perhaps in front of everyone if it’s not a good time to take a break or move into a small group activity, “I’m sorry you had trouble getting here this morning; I know you came from far away. And, I’m afraid you’ve missed too much of this session and will need to come back the next time we offer this course (or talk with me one-onone about this at a later date).” Consider implementing policies that you can refer to in situations like these, which can take the burden of enforcement off you to some extent. Challenge 10 includes a discussion of these sorts of policies.

Bottom Line Start on time, regardless of how many participants are present.

Go Deeper Go deeper with the resources listed on page 296.

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Conclusion I hoped, when writing this book, that the troubleshooting tips provided wouldn’t just help you out when you found yourself in some kind of trouble, but that they could help you to proactively avoid getting into trouble in the first place. Particularly, I hope that by utilizing some of the strategies outlined in this book, you will be able to avoid common mistakes that new trainers often make. I put together this nonscientific list of the top 10 mistakes new trainers make in response to a request from one of my Learning Design Fundamentals students. To compile it, I asked several colleagues for their thoughts, read some articles and trainers’ blog posts, and then filtered in my own experience. The mistakes are listed with the more serious and prevalent ones at the bottom and the less consequential and less common at the top. More about how to avoid these mistakes can be found in the challenges listed at the end of each mistake.

10. Failing to rehearse synchronous training Practicing your workshop aloud—whether with colleagues or all alone— prior to facilitating it helps you master the content, improve your flow, and increase your comfort. (See Challenge 29.)

9. Not varying your learning activities If all content and all learners were the same, then approaching every course with the same types of activities would make sense, but this is hardly the case. Customize the learning, and capitalize on the innumerable ways to transmit information across multiple sessions and within each individual session, or your training will be deadly dull. (See Challenge 18.)

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8. Holding training when it’s convenient Some organizations schedule training events for off-cycle, or “down,” times. This might make sense from a productivity standpoint, but not necessarily from a learning standpoint. Offering training on a prescribed schedule limits the effectiveness of the training—because learners may not have opportunity to employ the new knowledge, skills, and attitudes for some time—and is a costly mistake. Customized, just-in-time training, on the other hand, makes sense instructionally and economically. (See Challenges 9 and 10.)

7. Having unclear objectives or outcomes In my first training job, I conducted a pilot program. The feedback I got was generally good; people liked the program, but they told me to scrap it and start again. This was extremely embarrassing, and I learned an important lesson, as I frantically spent the next few weeks (and weekends) revising my work. Why didn’t they want to run with my enjoyable and well-written training? Because it wasn’t clear what outcomes it was trying to achieve. I designed activities that worked for the content, but that didn’t necessarily support the behavioral, measurable outcomes the organization was seeking. (See Challenge 17.)

6. Leaving on-the-job learning to chance Trainers spend a lot of time focusing on their formal learning offerings, at the expense of all the learning that happens back on the job. Especially in our information-rich world, we can’t limit ourselves to providing stellar classroom and online training and ignore vastly important experiential learning, and learning that comes from coaching and feedback or digital resources. Live training events are only one facet of learning and development, and anyone who is still thinking about only that facet will be left behind, and so will their learners. Similarly, if design of those live trainings stops when participants walk out the door, and you don’t pay attention to the majority of learning that takes place after a training event, you’re just letting all of the knowledge, skills, and attitudes you’ve imparted go directly into the forgetting curve. You need to design for the work environment learners will return to following those events. (See Challenge 23.)

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5. Leaving evaluation as an afterthought If you need to measure the value of your programs (and you do!), then you must consider measurement all the way from your initial analysis of a training request through the design and development of your program. Training programs need to be tied to the desired performance you want to see on-the-job and so you need to identify what that behavior is and how you will measure it early on. Then design your training to lead to the desired results. Throwing together an evaluation strategy after the training has been developed will not be effective. (See Challenges 25–28.)

4. Not getting management on board Getting organizational leaders, and the individuals who supervise your learners, engaged with—and excited about—your offerings is critical to help generate participant buy-in, build credibility for your team, increase your learning budget, and, most important, ensure that learners are supported when they return to their jobs and need to apply what they’ve learned. (See Challenges 6 and 7.)

3. Putting too much material or content into your training Organizational leaders and training requesters will continue to want to squeeze as much content as possible into each encounter—synchronous or asynchronous—with employees. Subject matter experts will insist that every aspect of their topic is useful and important information (and it may be!). Many topics are complex and could be the subject of days or weeks, not hours, of study. New trainers often don’t push back hard enough on client and stakeholder demands when they might actually interfere with learning. As learning professionals, it is our role to educate clients and stakeholders about concepts like cognitive overload, working memory, the forgetting curve, and adult learning principles, so that we deliver content that is digestible, at an appropriate level of struggle, and effective in the long term. (See Challenges 17 and 20.)

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2. Teaching the way you learn best, or the way you were taught This mistake applies to both workshop design and delivery. If you learn best by talking in groups, for example, your design will include quite a bit of group discussion, and your facilitation style will have you suggesting participants turn to one another every time you want to explore a concept. But the platinum rule is most effective here, not the golden rule. Rather than teach others as you would wish to be taught, teach others as they would wish to be taught—and in a manner that is instructionally sound. (See Challenge 16.)

1. Providing training when the problem can’t be solved with training Not doing a thorough assessment of training requests that come your way— or not feeling you can say no to a request as someone just starting out in the field—leads to the number-one mistake I’ve found that new trainers make. Jillian Hintz, senior manager of learning design and development at Paycor, is the learning professional I’ve come across who gets the most requests— about one a day! Of these, she says about 40 percent are legitimate. That means that 60 percent of the requests coming through her door aren’t actually training problems. Think about how detrimental it would be if her team just jumped in and started executing on all of these requests, only to discover later that the problems weren’t ones that they had any ability to affect, or that simply were not appropriate for an L&D team! One of the best ways that training professionals add value is doing a careful analysis and respectfully pushing back on requests that will be costly for organizations and learners alike. (See Challenge 15.)

One last thought: This book is focused on challenges and mistakes. Adults learn best from a problem-solving focus, and I wanted to present concepts through that lens. At the same time, I don’t want you to think that becoming a trainer is a problem, or that every aspect of your job will be a challenge. New trainers I speak to have more positive things to say about the field of L&D than they do negative things. Here are some samples:

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“I was unprepared for the degree to which people are personally passionate about developing other people. There is an exciting energy in the room every time we talk about how to continue helping others develop.” • “I feel truly happy and proud of myself whenever I design creative and engaging classroom activities, have fantastic class time with participants, and see them making connections between the content and their work lives.” • “Providing resources that develop and improve the skills of others is incredibly motivating. I am passionate about empowering others, and working as a learning and development professional gives me the opportunity to do so, every single day.” Learning and development is a wonderful field, and I hope that you will enjoy almost every minute of it. And, for those minutes when you don’t, I hope that this book will be a useful resource. May your challenges be few—and may you find the passion, excitement, and pride that these fellow new trainers describe. All the best to you! •

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336  •  References

Index Page numbers followed by f and t refer to figures and tables respectively.

A ABCD objectives, 127–128 Absorb, 26 accessibility, 162–163, 199, 216 “accidental trainers,” 5 accomplishments, showcasing, 14–15, 50–51 accountability, 179, 205 action planning, 207 actions, changing your, 5–6 active learning techniques, 52–56, 133, 173 activities group, 255, 284 modifying vs. creating, 140 optional, 282 varying your, 323 ADA (Americans With Disabilities Act), 69, 216 ADDIE project management, 27, 29, 30 adult learning theory, 23, 52, 132, 260–261 advance organizers, 260–261 agendas, 267, 273–274 AGES model, 53 Agile project management, 28–30, 39 agreement scales, 230 AI (artificial intelligence), 23, 92 Allen, Michael, 27, 28 “A Manager’s Guide to Employee Development” (tool), 38, 44 amateur voice talent, 171 Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA), 69, 216 andragogy, 132–133, 133t animation, 152 anonymous questions, 309 answer keys, 224–226 anticipation theory, 69 appreciative, being, 269 Appreciative Inquiry model, 267

archive of organizational documents, 196 artificial intelligence (AI), 23, 92 “Ask a Trainer” blog (Slade), 117–118 aspirations, communicating, 39 assessment(s) for e-learning, 164 formative, 216 of organizational needs, 81, 82t performance (See performance assessments) summative, 216 for training need, 113–114 (See also needs assessment) assigned seating, 310–311 Association for Talent Development (ATD), 10, 50, 88, 160 asynchronous e-learning creating, 167–174 deciding to use, 160–165 attendance, increasing, 66–72 by increasing motivation for learning, 57–59, 61–62 by reducing logistical barriers, 62 senior-level champion for, 60–61 through mandatory training, 59–60 attitudes, 115–116, 115t attraction drivers, of organization, 40t audio requirements, for e-learning, 171–172 auditory information processing, 129 authoring tools, for e-learning, 169 automating project management processes, 30

B backup plans, 250–251 Barbazette, Jean, 139 baseline, collecting a, 206–207 beginner lens, embracing your, 6

337

Behavioral Engineering model, 115, 115t behavioral objectives, 126 behaviorism, 131 behavior modeling, 181 believing in yourself as a trainer, 5–8 changing your actions for, 5–6 changing your self-talk for, 5 embracing your beginner lens for, 6 evaluating your capabilities for, 7–8 recognize the parameters of new position for, 6 recognizing what you can offer, 17–18 benefits, tangible, 61 Bentley College, 245 beta testing, 29 Be the Boss Everyone Wants to Work For (Gentry), 18 Beyond Free Coffee and Donuts (Oberstein), 57 Bhargava, Rohit, 196 bias, 230 Bigas, Lianabel Oliver, 85–86 Bjork, Robert, 231 Block, Peter, 118 blocked practice, 183, 183t Bloom, Benjamin, 115 Bloom’s Taxonomy, 127–128, 127t bluffing, 279–280 body language, 310 box breathing, 246 “brag book,” 15 bragging, 14–15 brain, 53. See also cognitivism BrainCert Enterprise LMS, 26 “brain drain” hypothesis, 319 breakout rooms, 311 breaks, 285 Bridge, 26 “bring your own” breakfast or lunch, 188 broader topics, training on, 38–39 Brooks, Scott, 243 brown brag breakfasts or lunch, 188 budget, 78, 81–87 budget negotiations, 86 build effects, 152 building credibility, 1–32 and believing in yourself as a trainer, 5–8 by building trust and relationships, 9–16 and influencing without authority, 17–22 for long-term learning approaches, 23–26 using project management processes for, 27–32 building trust and relationships, 9–16 business analysis, 113–114, 114t business leaders, support from, 93t “buy-out” model, 88–89

338  •  Index

C calling on people, 311 capabilities, evaluating your, 7–8 Career Development Worksheet (tool), 108 career plans, 177 Cargill, 180 Carliner, Saul, 190 Carnes, Barbara, 178 Center for Creative Leadership, 187 Center for Leadership & Organizational Change (University of Maryland), 88, 259, 268 Center for Talent Reporting, 10–11 challenging participants. See difficult participants change in actions, 5–6 in mindset, 255, 304 in self-talk, 5 Chief Learning Officer, 11 chief learning officers (CLOs), 37 choosing your battles, 20–21 chunking content, 128 Cicero, Tarah, 25, 99 classrooms flipped, 130, 282 issues with, 253–255 setup of, 243–245, 283 virtual, 245 classroom training, 160, 163 click training, 23 CLOs (chief learning officers), 37 closed captions, 171 closing the session, 287–291 coaching creating programs for, 58, 59t as informal learning, 188 manager training for, 189 from peers, 78 for professional development, 104–105 3-5-3 approach for, 141, 141t coercion, avoiding, 21 cognitive ability, 176 cognitive dissonance, 232 cognitive overload, 53, 54, 129–130, 272–273 cognitive science, 53 cognitive strategies for creativity, 138 for retention, 181–183 spatial representation as, 150–151, 151f cognitivism, 53, 128, 130 collecting a baseline, 206–207 color schemes, for materials, 155 Columbia University Irving Medical Center (CUIMC), 11, 34, 62, 122, 164, 170–171, 187, 192–194

communication of active learning benefits, 55 after enrollment, 69–70 and learning language used by stakeholders, 9–10 nonverbal, 13 ongoing, 180–181 with other departments, 12–13 communications specialists, support from, 93t company newsletters, 10, 50, 65 competitors, 10, 50, 59–60 complaints, 259–260, 300–301 confidence, 121–122, 131, 272. See also believing in yourself as a trainer confidentiality, 268 confrontation, 304. See also difficult participants Confucius, 53–54 confusion, participant, 271–275 connectivism, 53, 195 consistency, 152 constructivism theory of learning, 132 consultant, contracting a, 97–101 content and e-learning, 167 focusing on most important, 281–282 maintenance schedule for, 164 narrowing down, 122–123 scaffolding the, 271 segmenting your, 161–162 for unfamiliar topics, 121–125 content icebreakers, 259 content-to-content connections, 138 content-to-self connections, 138 content-to-world connections, 138 contract with consultant, 97–101 learning, 71, 75 convenience, 324 copyrights, 197 Cornerstone, 26 Corporate Executive Board, 195 cost estimates, 85 Council of Hotel and Restaurant Trainers, 106 course catalogs, 65 course credit, 66–67 course fees, 67 courseware, free, 198 Courville, Roger, 168 COVID-19 pandemic, 249, 307 creativity, 137–141, 143–146, 169 credibility building (See building credibility) defined, 2 internal vs. external, 98 lack of, 2–3 criteria-on-referenced instruction, 215

criterion-referenced testing, 215 critical-thinking skills, 189 Cuddy, Amy, 14 CUIMC. See Columbia University Irving Medical Center cultural characteristics, 124–125 customers, talking to, 9–10 customer service, 101

D data for business decisions, 48, 50 sharing, 95 validity of, 24 data collection. See evaluation metrics DBS Bank, 89 debriefing, 288–289 decorative images, 149–150, 150f deep breathing, 246 Defelice, Robyn A., 163 demonstrating the value of training, 33–75 and active learning techniques, 52–56 with debriefing, 288–289 to increase attendance, 66–72 and increasing motivation for learning, 57–65 and informal learning, 187 by showcasing training successes, 46–51 to support team management, 91–92 with tangible benefits, 61 using CLO strategies for, 37–45 departmental meetings, 10 department-sponsored events, 10 design documents, 29 design phase of training, 109–199 analyzing need for training, 113–120, 326 on an unfamiliar topic, 121–125 and creativity strategies, 137–141 designing training materials, 147–157 with digital information, 195–199 for e-learning, 160–165, 167–174 and encouraging training application, 176–183 for informal learning, 185–190 instructional design principles for, 126–135 development timeline, 163–164, 163t difficult participants, 293–322 about, 294–295 complainers, 300–301 and continuous challenging, 302–304 distractions and multitasking, 318–320 and going off on tangents, 305–307 silent participants, 308–314 tardiness, 321–322 time monopolizers, 297–299 and varied skill sets/expectations, 315–317

Index  •  339

difficulty level, 272 digital information, 195–199 disagreeing agreeably, 302 discussion boards, 188–189 discussions, group, 306–307 distracting images, 150 distractions, 168, 318–320 diversity, 153 Docebo, 26 “double barrel” questions, 222 dress rehearsals, 241 Dweck, Carol, 5

E Ebbinghaus, Hermann, 6, 177, 179–180 educational campaign, for informal learning, 187. See also marketing Edvance360, 26 effectiveness scales, 230 efficiency, 39, 52–54 88 Assignments for Development in Place (Lombardo and Eichinger), 187 Eisenberger, Naomi, 263 Elaboration Theory, 273 e-learning. See asynchronous e-learning email marketing, 63, 65 emergencies, 319–320 empathy, 119, 295, 300 employee(s) attitudes and concerns of, 47–48 importance of development of, 49f performance issues in, 116, 117t sharing data of, 48 employee development committees, 79 “employer of choice,” 40 emulating someone you admire, 14 encoding information, 129 enrollment communication after, 69–70 deadlines for, 68 open, 83 equipment, purchasing your own, 251–252 Erosa, Dan, 319 error-based modeling, 181 essay questions, 219t establishing relationships in building credibility, 9–16 and coercion, 21 with other departments, 12–13 with stakeholders, 12 within training, 61–62 evaluation of new learning approaches, 23–26 program (See program evaluations)

340  •  Index

of your capabilities, 7–8 evaluation metrics, 205, 206t, 208–209 exaggerated-breathing exercises, 246 exhale, prolonged, 246 experience, analyzing, 124 experienced learners, 132 Experiential Learning Cycle (Kolb), 134, 134f, 289 experiential professional development opportunities, 104t expertise asserting your, 303 recognizing what you offer, 17–18 resources for, 93t “explorer” attendees, 260 external organizations, 83–84 extraneous load, 173

F Facebook, 172 facilitator’s guides, 147–148 facilitator’s slides, 148, 148f fads, 23–26 failure embracing, 29 learning from, 106 of rote memorization, 52–53 in training turnout, 71 feedback to close the session, 287–288 with e-learning, 168 manager training for giving, 189 on pace of program, 285 positive, 46 for professional development, 104–105 from program (See program evaluations) with test scoring, 225 fees course, 67 late and no-show, 67–69 fidget spinners, 23–24 fill in the blank questions, 219t, 223t financial practices, of your organization, 11 financial vocabulary, 85 Flawless Consulting (Block), 118 flexibility, 31, 255 flipped classrooms, 130, 282 flowcharts, 150 follow-up, 168, 169, 307 fonts, 151–152 food, 255, 285 forgetting curve, 177–179, 281–282 formal learning, 105, 185–186, 186f formal professional development opportunities, 104t, 105–106

formative assessments, 216 free courseware, 198 funding negotiations, 86

G Gagné, Robert, 134–135, 134f gamification, 23 gap analysis, 113–114 Gardner, Howard, 139 gender identity, 265 Gentry, William, 18 germane load, 173 Gilbert, Thomas, 115 goals of course and business goals, 157 individual, 315 for learning, 105 organizational, tying requests to, 18–19 Google, 38 graphic designers, support from, 93t graphic design principles, 154–156, 154f graphics, 149–150 graphs, 150 Grebow, David, 39 greeting participants, 265 ground rules for disagreeing, 302 for entering late, 322 for participation, 297, 308 setting general, 267–268 for technology use, 318–319 group activities, 255, 284 group discussions, 306–307 growth mindset, 5 guides, facilitator’s, 147–148

H handouts, 148–149, 254, 282 hard data, 206t Harvard Business Review, 11, 37, 84 Hierarchy of Needs, 263, 264f Hintz, Jillian, 29–30, 31, 119, 326 honesty, 268 hot spots, 169 How Creative Is Your Training (tool), 143–146 How to Write Terrific Training Materials (Barbazette), 139 Hurley, Rich, 47, 122–123

I IBM Institute for Advanced Learning, 39 IBM Marketing Cloud, 195 icebreakers, 259, 266

imagery, mental, 243 images, 149–150, 150f, 152–153, 159 inclusion, 153, 298–299 individual goal setting, 315 individual performance issues, 116, 117t industry, learning about, 10–11 industry meetings, 10 inferences, 138 influence style, adjusting your, 18 influencing, without authority, 17–22 infographics, 150 informal communities, monitoring, 188–189 informal learning common mistakes with, 324 continuous, 39 defined, 186 design phase of training for, 185–190 formal learning vs., 186f Informal Learning Basics (Carliner), 190 input, in project management, 29 instructional design principles for e-learning, 167–169 for new trainers, 126–135 for retention, 181–183 instructions, clear, 284 Integrated Performance Solutions, 160, 169 intelligence Multiple Intelligences theory, 139–140 types of, 140 interactive learning, 52–54, 167–168 interleaved practice, 183, 183t internal motivation, in pedagogy, 133 International Coach Federation, 11 International Society for Performance Improvement, 10 interpersonal intelligence, 140 intrapersonal intelligence, 140 introductions, 258, 266, 283 iterations, 28 Ivy Plus, 79, 106, 264

J job aids, 149, 158, 182, 281–282 job observation, for program evaluation, 207 job responsibilities, analyzing, 124 job shadowing, 188 Jones, Lynn K., 267 Journal of the Association for Consumer Research, 319 just-in-time training, 179–180, 185, 324

K Kanban, 31 Kapp, Karl, 163

Index  •  341

Karpicke, Jeffrey, 213 Khan Academy, 198 kinesthetic intelligence, 140 Kirkpatrick model, 190, 202–203. See also individual levels of the model Klaus, Peggy, 15 knowledge quizzes, 213. See also testing Knowles, Malcolm, 133 Kohn, Arthur, 181 Kolb, David A., 134, 289 KSAs (knowledge, skills, attitude), 115, 177, 220

L language, 85, 266, 269 large organizations, 97 late cancellation policies, 67–69, 68t latecomers, 321–322 L&D credibility of, 34 and “employer of choice” organizations, 40, 40t instructional design changes in, 110 leadership perception of, 48–49, 48f, 49f learning about, 10–11 positive experiences in, 326–327 purpose of, 37 showcasing value of (See demonstrating the value of training) as support function, 78 learner analysis, 123–125, 162 learners’ experience, in pedagogy, 133 learning about your industry, 10–11 about your organization, 9–10 active, techniques for (See active learning techniques) asynchronous, 160 (See also asynchronous e-learning) constructivism theory of, 132 evaluating new techniques for, 23–26 facilitating culture of, 38 formal, 105, 185–186, 186f Gagné’s nine conditions of, 134–135 informal (See informal learning) interactive, 52–54, 167–168 making a habit of, 105 motivation for (See motivation for learning) online (See online training) on the job, 324 of others’ lingo/vocabulary, 9, 85 setting your own goals for, 105 social (See social learning) technology for (See technology) learning contract, 71, 75 learning curve, 6

342  •  Index

Learning Guild, 10, 92 learning management systems (LMS), 26, 92, 94, 198 learning styles theory, 139–140 Leaving ADDIE for SAM (Allen), 28 legal team, support from, 93t Level 1 (Reaction) assessment data about, 202 case example of, 204 sharing, 46, 233 testing to collect, 228–234 Level 2 (Learning) assessment data about, 202 case example of, 204 sharing, 233 sharing, with senior leaders, 46 testing to collect, 213–227 Level 3 (Behavior) assessment data, 205–211 about, 202 and budget negotiations, 86 case example of, 203 sharing, 233 to show impact, 205 Level 4 (Results) assessment data, 205–211 about, 202 and budget negotiations, 86 case example of, 203 collecting, 210 sharing, 233 to show impact, 205 Lewis, Howard, 160, 164–165, 169 Likert scale, 229, 229t, 231 LinkedIn, 99, 267 LinkedIn Learning, 198 listening, to build relationships, 13 live training surprises, 237–291 classroom issues, 253–255 closing the session, 287–291 and creating safe spaces, 263–270 difficult participants (See difficult participants) getting over nervousness, 55–56, 241–247 opening the session, 257–261 participant confusion, 271–275 responding to participant questions, 276–280 and solutions to rushing, 281–285 technology mishaps, 249–252 LLAMA, 27, 31 Loffswold, Eric, 30 logical/mathematical intelligence, 140 logistical barriers, to training, 62 long answer questions, 219t long-term learning approaches, 23–26 long-term memory, 129 low-tech options, 84 Lundberg, Abbie, 37, 84–85

M maintenance schedule, for content, 164 “make or buy” analysis, 97–98 making it easy for others, 19 making it easy for trainees, 228 Making Learning Stick (Carnes), 178 making yourself visible, 14 Manager Cheat Sheet (tool), 71, 73–74 managers. See also organizational leaders buy-in of, 70–71 enlisting support of, 178–179 informal learning skills for, 189 support from, 93t Manager’s Meeting Guide (tool), 96 mandatory training, 59–60, 66–67 maps, 150 marketing after enrollment, 69–70 educating through, 62–63 email, 63, 65 to increase learning motivations, 58, 59t for informal learning, 187 for mandatory training, 59 varied approaches to, 63, 65 video, 65 Maslow, Abraham, 53, 263, 267 massive open online courses (MOOCs), 23, 198 Mastering the Instructional Design Process (Rothwell), 12 matching questions, 219t materials alternative formats of, 84 asking for reviews of, 19 designing, 147–157 for informal learning, 188 posted, in classroom, 244 printed, 84 tangible, 244 too many, 325 for unfamiliar topics, 122 for varied skill sets, 316 memorization, 52–53 memory, 128–129, 132, 272–273 Mendelson, Erika, 309–310 mental imagery, 243 mentorships, 188 Meyer, Richard, 173 microlearning, 23, 53, 274–275 microphones, 254 Microsoft Teams, 31 Millennials, Goldfish & Other Training Misconceptions (Quinn), 24 mindset changing your, 255, 304 growth, 5

mini-demonstrations, 278–279 mishaps. See live training surprises mission, tying requests to, 18–19 mistakes, 106, 246–247 mixed practice, 183 mnemonics, 138 mobile apps, 85 modeling, error-based, 181 modifying existing activities, 140 money funding negotiations, 86 learning how your organization makes, 11 requesting, 85–86 monitoring informal communities, 188–189 monopolizers, time, 297–299 monthly manager meeting guides, 65 MOOCs (massive open online courses), 23, 198 mood, 131–132 motivation for learning analyzing, 124 capitalizing on, 131 common, 57–58 and confidence, 272 and Gilbert’s Behavioral Engineering model, 115, 115t increasing, 57–65 and informal learning, 188 internal, 133 and learning transfer, 177 “the Mozart Effect,” 244 multiple choice questions, 219t, 223t Multiple Intelligences theory, 139–140 multitasking, 268, 318–320 music, 244–245 musical intelligence, 140 mute button, 310

N name badges, 265 naturalistic intelligence, 140 navigation, in e-learning, 170–171 needs analysis, 114t, 117–118 needs assessment, 81–83, 82t, 113–114, 114t negative speech, 20 negotiations, for funding, 86 nervousness, 55–56, 241–247 networking, 61, 99, 106 neuroscience, 53, 263 nimble, being, 39 nine conditions of learning (Gagné), 134–135 no, saying, 119 “no exceptions” clause, 69 nonverbal communication, 13 no-show policies, 66–69, 68t

Index  •  343

notifications, in virtual classrooms, 245 novice learners, 132, 149 NYU, 30, 47, 122, 197, 209, 261, 319

O Obama, Michelle, 295 objectives common mistakes with, 324 and e-learning, 160–161, 169 and individual goal setting, 315 and instructional design principles, 126–128 sharing, 267 testing aligned with, 215 observations during group activities, 284 for performance assessments, 225–226, 225t, 226t obstacles, analyzing, 124 online discussion group, 70 online training. See also asynchronous e-learning classroom settings for, 245 curating content for, 195–199 logistical barriers with, 62 mute button during, 310 practice for, 242 vetting individual, 198–199 on-the-job learning, 324 On-the-Job Professional Development (CUIMC tool), 192–194 open enrollment, 83 opening the session, 246, 257–261 opportunity to perform, 179–180 optional activities, 282 ordering food, 255 organization(s) attraction and retention in, 40t commitment to, 177 culture of informal learning in, 187–188 gathering knowledge of, 196 leaders in (See organizational leaders) learning about your, 9–10 needs assessment for, 81–83, 82t needs of, 59t trends of your, 49–50 organizational document databases, 196 organizational leaders. See also managers; stakeholders acknowledging, for feeling of safety, 268–269 communicating training success to, 46–51 getting support of, 325 learning promoted by, 38, 59t, 60–61, 70–71 and overloading training, 325 reporting findings to, 20–21 “outside” assistance, 316 outsourcing, 97

344  •  Index

P pain points, 85 pairing participants, 317 parking lots, for complaints, 301 participants confusion of, 271–275 difficult (See difficult participants) distraction and multitasking of, 268, 318–320 encouraging risk-taking by, 263–270 gauging understanding of, 289 greeting, 265 handouts for, 148–149 interviewing, for program evaluation, 208 making it easy for, 228 questions to engage, 138–139 responding to questions of, 276–280 sharing enthusiasm of, 267 surveying, for program evaluation, 207 troubleshooting for, 251 varied skill sets and expectations among, 315–317 participation active, establishing expectations for, 308 addressing, in openers, 260 ground rules for, 297, 308 levels of, 139, 139t offering multiple ways for, 269–270 selecting participant to encourage, 311 partnerships, for support. See support passing scores, 226 patience, 15 Paycor, 119, 326 pedagogy, 133t peer-coaching program, 78 peer consulting network, 89 peer-reviewed journals, 24 peer support, 179 peer teaching, 89 people icebreakers, 259 performance assessments and individual performance issues, 116, 117t for program evaluation, 207, 214 scoring for, 225–226 of your organization, 11 performance test questions, 219t Perry, Shermaine, 54 personalization principle, 173 Phillips, Ken, 230 Phillip’s ROI Methodology, 203 photos, stock, 156, 159 pie charts, 150 PiiQ, 26 pilot programs, 242–243 pilot tests, 29 “plant” participants, 310

Pokémon Go, 24 policies, no-show, 66–69, 68t polling technology, 309 pooling your resources, 84 positivity and budget negotiations, 86 with difficult participants, 295 of the group, 247 in influencing others, 20 posted materials, in classroom, 244 postprandial somnolence, 285 PowerPoint, 92, 147–148, 151–153, 168 power poses, 14 practice for public speaking, 241–242 for retention, 182–183 for synchronous training, 323 predictions, 138 Predictive Learning Analytics, 230 “Preparing and Defending Your Training Budget” (Bigas), 85–86 pre-work, 70, 130, 282, 311 “priming the pump,” 309 printed materials, 84 “Prioritize Inclusivity in Your Training Sessions” (Blanchard), 266, 298 prioritizing spending, 81–83 prior knowledge of topic, analyzing, 124 “prisoner” attendees, 260 prizes, 65 problem-orientation, in pedagogy, 133 problem solving, 58 professional development resources, 103–106, 104t professional voice talent, 171 program evaluations, 201–234. See also assessments and budget negotiations, 86 common mistakes with, 325 importance of, 202 of informal learning, 190 Level 1 assessments, 228–234 Level 2 assessments, 213–227 Level 3 and Level 4 assessments, 205–211 metrics for, 205, 206t, 208–209 for pace, 285 sharing results of, with senior leaders, 46 testing for (See testing) for training need, 114t project management, 27–32, 54, 55f project managers, support from, 93t prolonged exhale, 246 pronouns, 265 “pull” approaches, for digital information, 197 “push” approaches, for digital information, 197

Q Q&A portion, 276–280 question banks, 220 questions anonymously submitted, 309 avoiding cognitive dissonance in, 232 best practices for test, 223t–224t, 224 to build relationships, 13 for debriefing, 288–289 to encourage participation, 312–313 ensuring validity and reliability of, 221–222 to generative participation and creativity, 138–139 getting meaningful data from, 229 for Level 1 evaluation, 230–231 objectivity of, 231 for participants who continually challenge you, 303 for program evaluation, 229–230 for reflection, 290 responding to, 276–280 before the session, 257–258 specific and short, 272 for testing, 220, 219t Quinn, Clark, 24

R raffles, 65 Rauscher, Frances, 244 readiness to learn, 133 reading, efficient, 106 reasoning skills, 189 recency effect, 290 recognizing what you offer, 17–18 Redwood City, 13, 18, 34, 39, 48, 50, 62, 78, 89, 294 reflection time, 273, 289–290, 306 refreshers, 180–181 Reigeluth, Charles, 273 relationships establishing (See establishing relationships) for learning culture, 39 and saying no, 119 relevance, in pedagogy, 133 relevant images, 149 reliability, of testing, 221–222 reporting findings to management, 20–21 request for proposals (RFPs), 99–100 requests for money, 85–86 tied to goals or missions, 18–19 required training, 59–60, 66–67 research, 23, 122–123 resources, 77–106 contracting a consultant, 97–101 Index  •  345

creating teams for support, 88–95 for increasing budget, 81–87 lack of, 78 people as, 93t sharing, for digital information, 197–198 for training material, 156 trusted, limiting, 123 for your professional development, 103–106 respect, 17, 268, 321 results, focusing on, 301 retention, 40t, 181–183 retirees, 90 retrieval of memory, 129 return on investment (ROI) measures, 203 RFPs (request for proposals), 99–100 road shows, 65 Rock, David, 53 Roediger, Henry, 213 ROI Institute, 207–208 ROI (return on investment) measures, 203 role play, 225 Romanovich, Maggie, 84 rooms. See also classrooms breakout, 311 temperature of, 243, 253 Rothwell, William, 12 Rowland, Connie, 249 Rufty, Kevin, 21 “Rule of Five,” 148 rules, setting. See ground rules rushing, 281–285

S Saba Cloud, 26 safety creating a space of, 263–270 and employee learning, 38 with individual introductions, 258 name badges to create psychological, 265 in virtual environments, 168 SAM, 27 Sample Communication Plan (tool), 65 Sample Job Aid (tool), 158 SAP Litmos, 26 sarcasm, 269 saying no, 119 scaffolding, 271, 317 Schiano, Bill, 245 scoring, test, 224–225 Scott, Laura, 88–91 screen layout, for virtual classrooms, 245 segmenting content, 161–162 self-concept, 133 self-efficacy, 176

346  •  Index

self-management strategies, 181 self-promotion, 14–15 self-reports, for program evaluation, 208, 208t self-talk, 5 senior leadership. See organizational leaders setup classroom, 243–245, 283 table, 255 Shank, Patti, 92 sharing data, 95 shipping supplies, 254 short answer questions, 219t short-term memory, 128–129, 272–273 showcasing of training successes, 46–51 of training value (See demonstrating the value of training) of your personal accomplishments, 14–15 Shutts, Kristin, 276, 279 Silberman, Mel, 53–54 silent participants, 308–314 simulations, 225 Sinek, Simon, 47 skill sets, varied, 315–317 Slade, Tim, 117–118 slides. See also PowerPoint facilitator’s, 148, 148f transitions for, 152 small organizations, 97 smartphones, 319. See also technology SMEs. See subject matter experts social learning, 23, 53, 70 social media, 24 social professional development opportunities, 104t Society for Human Resource Management, 11 soft data, 206t software, e-learning, 165, 169–170 Sontag, Tom, 67 spacing effect, 23, 182–183, 274 spatial representation, 150–151, 151f spending, prioritizing, 81–83 sponsorship, 83, 89 sprints, 28 staff, supplementing, 88–89 stakeholders. See also organizational leaders decision-making involving, 29–30 developing relationship with, 12 knowing your, 11–12 needs analysis involving, 117–118 talking to, to learn about your organization, 9 State of the Industry report (ATD), 50, 88, 95, 160 Stevens, Monique Staunton, 295 Stock Photo Options (tool), 159 stock photos, 156, 159 storytelling, 188

struggle, 128 students, supplementing staff with, 90 studying, testing vs., 213–214, 214f style guides, 155–156 subject matter experts (SMEs), 17–18, 93t, 325 success metrics of, 46–47 personal, 14–15 of training, showcasing, 46–51 summative assessments, 216 supervisor surveys, 207 supervisory support, 178–179 supplementing your staff, 88–89 suppliers, of training tools, 25–26 supplies, having your own, 254. See also materials support after training, 180 on-site technical, 251 peer, 179 from project management teams, 30–31 supervisory, 178–179 teams for, 88–95 for testing, 216 surveys, 207 synchronous training, 160, 323

T table setup, 255 Talent Development Capability Model, 7–8, 7f, 91 talent development function, creating a, 34 tangents, 305–307 tangible benefits, 61 tangible materials, 244 tardiness, 321–322 teaching, peer, 89 team meetings, 10 team work, 29 technology for anonymous questions, 309 and budgeting, 84 distractions from, 318–320 logistical barriers with, for e-learning, 62 mishaps with, 249–252 technology experts, support from, 93t temperature, room, 243, 253 temporary workers, 90 tentative language, 269 testimonials, 59t testing best practices for creation of, 221–222, 223t–224t considerations when, 215–216 eliminating negative associations of, 213–215 grading/scoring for, 224–226 maximizing responses for, 232–233

questions for, 220, 219t, 223t–224t, 224 (See also questions) of technology, 250 user acceptance, 173–174 “testing effect,” 23, 213, 214f text-to-audio options, 171 thinking like a businessperson and active learning, 55 for budgeting and spending, 82–83 to understand your organization, 11 think-pair-share, 309 Thought Industries, 26 “The 3-5-3 Approach to Creative Training Design” (ATD), 137, 141, 141t time management strategies, 186f, 281–285, 306 time monopolizers, 297–299 Toews, Aynsley, 259 tools Career Development Worksheet, 108 How Creative Is Your Training, 143–146 learning contract, 75 Manager Cheat Sheet, 71, 73–74 A Manager’s Guide to Employee Development, 38, 44 Manager’s Meeting Guide, 96 On-the-Job Professional Development (CUIMC), 192–194 Sample Communication Plan, 65 Sample Job Aid, 158 Stock Photo Options, 159 Where Our Organization’s L&D Function Wants to Be, 45 Your Role in Professional Development, 38, 42–43 Torrance, Megan, 27, 31 trade publications, 10, 50 traditional project management, 27–28 training advisory boards for, 88 analyzing need for, 113–120, 326 classroom, 160, 163 common mistakes in, 323–327 design phase of (See design phase of training) handling surprises in (See live training surprises) just-in-time, 179–180, 185, 324 online (See online training) overloading your, 325 requests for, 113–116 required or mandatory, 59–60, 66–67 showcasing successes of, 46–51 synchronous, 160, 323 training application, encouraging, 176–183 Training magazine, 11 training role proving yourself in (See building credibility) recognizing parameters of, 6 Index  •  347

transfer building climate for, 177–178 evaluation questions to gauge, 230 learner characteristics for, 176–177 “The Transformer CLO” (Lundberg and Westerman), 37, 84–85 transitions, 273 trend-line analysis, 207 true/false questions, 219t, 224t trust, building, 9–16 trusted resources, limiting, 123 turnover, 48 Twitter, 24, 172 tying requests to common goals or missions, 18–19

U UCLA, 231, 263 unfamiliar topic, preparing to train on an, 121–125 University of Maine, 257, 287 University of Maryland, 88, 259, 276, 295 University of Wisconsin, 276 unpublished data, 24 user acceptance testing, 173–174 user environment, 162–163, 199 user experience, 169

V “vacationer” attendees, 260 validity of research data, 24 of testing, 221–222 of training (See demonstrating the value of training) value in e-learning, 168 increasing, 131 of training (See demonstrating the value of training) varied skill sets, 315–317 variety of activities, 139, 139t vendors deciding need for, 97–98 for e-learning, 169 finding, 98–99 roles and responsibilities of, 101 selection process for, 99–100 warning signs with, 101 verbal/linguistic intelligence, 140 video-editing software, 172 video marketing, 65 video requirements, for e-learning, 172–173 virtual learning. See asynchronous e-learning

348  •  Index

virtual reality (VR), 25 visibility, importance of, 14 visual information processing, 129 visualization, 243 visual/spatial intelligence, 140 VR (virtual reality), 25 vulnerability, 55–56 Vygotsky, Lev, 271

W “wait time,” providing, 313–314 Washington University, 213 waterfall approach, 27–28 websites, 65 Weight Watchers (WW), 71, 84, 249 welcome screen, for virtual classrooms, 245 Westerman, George, 37, 84–85 Wexler, Nava, 11 “What’s in It for Me” (WIIFM) and advance organizers, 260 in e-learning, 168 focusing on, 17 in marketing, 58 and motivation for learning, 131 Where Our Organization’s L&D Function Wants to Be (tool), 45 white space, 151 Wicker, Adrienne Hamcke, 268, 276 WIIFM. See “What’s in It for Me” Willis Towers Watson, 40, 40t workbooks, 149 work environment, analyzing, 124 Workforce Magazine, 11 working memory, 128–129 WW. See Weight Watchers

Y year-over-year data, 50 Yost, Caroline, 82–83, 85 Your Role in Professional Development (tool), 38, 42–43, 103 YouTube, 25, 84, 172, 198

About the Author Sophie Oberstein is an author, coach, adjunct professor, and L&OD consultant helping individuals who are seeking increased effectiveness and satisfaction at work. She’s been in the field of learning and organizational development for more than 20 years at public and private organizations, including Weight Watchers North America; Columbia University Irving Medical Center; Redwood City, California; and Citibank, N.A. Oberstein is on the faculty of the NYU School of Professional Studies, in the Leadership and Human Capital Management department, where she developed and conducts the fundamentals course in the learning design certificate program. She has also taught at Drexel University, Mercer County Community College, and Menlo College. Her books—10 Steps to Successful Coaching, 2nd edition, and Beyond Free Coffee & Donuts: Marketing Training and Development—are available from ATD Press. Oberstein is a past president of ATD’s Greater Philadelphia chapter. You can reach her on LinkedIn at linkedin.com/in/sophieoberstein or via her website at sophieoberstein.com.

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When you need to repair an appliance on the fritz, you can consult the instruction manual. But if you’re stuck when designing or facilitating training, what resource can you turn to for solutions to your problem? Part troubleshooting guide, part introduction to training design and delivery, Troubleshooting for Trainers delivers in-the-moment fixes and longer-term solutions for common challenges at every stage of the learning and development process. Pull it out when you’re in a predicament, flip to the related challenge listed in the table of contents, and find some immediate relief. Better yet, use it to discover tips and strategies that will help you proactively avoid the crises new trainers face. Covering more than 40 challenges, the book offers solutions for when: You feel a lack of personal and professional credibility You don’t have enough resources Live training surprises throw you for a loop Perfect for the busy trainer, each chapter briefly describes a challenge for trainers, offers a series of solutions for overcoming it, and includes some resources to go deeper into the topic.

Praise for This Book

Troubleshooting for Trainers

Your Fix-It Guide to Training

g n i t o o h s e l s b r u e Tro r Train fo

“Wish I’d had Troubleshooting for Trainers when I started as a trainer! It would have saved me lots of time and anguish.” —ELAINE BIECH, Author, The New Business of Consulting and ATD’s Foundations of Talent Development

“As a new trainer I am so relieved to have come across this book! It speaks to me and makes me feel supported with real-world examples, ideas, and useful resources.”

“Oberstein’s extensive references combined with her decades of experience in the trenches give Troubleshooting for Trainers credibility and authenticity as a resource for managing the existential realities of learning and talent development in today’s fast-changing workplaces.” —JONATHAN HALLS, Author, Confessions of a Corporate Trainer

“As someone just getting started with developing training programs within my organization, I returned to this book frequently for ideas, advice, and direction.” —JULIA CROWLEY, Chief Administrative Officer, Edge Technology Group

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$34.99

Sophie Oberstein

—MAYA MATALON, Associate Director of Training, Video Interaction Project

Sophie Oberstein