Conducting Exciting Training

I am repeating here the lessons of the greats, but only to assure you that, yes, they work. I recently completed a week of training on a not-so-exciting topic (reporting industrial accidents for manufacturing sites), in the Philippines. The workers in the Philippines all speak fluent English, making my job easier than it might have been in, say, China – but that doesn't mean their culture isn't different. It is!

 

1. Study the culture to understand how to adapt your training. I used the book "Culture Shock: Philippines" to learn what drives and motivates people here. Actually, I have to admit this was my own idea. I knew that our employees in the Philippines were less likely to report minor accidents, and the book explained why. The notion of hiya (shame) and amor-propio (self-respect) was the reason. And the motivators? Family, teamwork, helping out the community over the individual. I had to explain how helping the whole team feel safer was more important than being embarrassed that you had an accident, or feeling bad about "complaining" when reporting it.
   
2. Pop quizzes – use a reward system to get people to raise their hands. And make people raise their hands – any quiz where people are yelling out answers will create chaos and you won't know who to respond to. For that matter, insist that people follow the rules – it's unfair to others if you don't. We had chocolates to hand out, and people got all excited about "winning" the chocolate during the pop quiz.
   
3. Announcing your pop quiz will occur at the end .. at the beginning of class .. will make people listen better. After all, the purpose of the quiz segment is to ensure that people learned. Even better if they are taking notes when you seem to emphasize something because they think you are going to quiz them on it!
   
4. If you are doing multiple sessions, take notes on your experience and change your training. I changed it several times, adding slides for questions that kept coming up. I removed slides that didn't seem to flow, or seemed awkward.
   
5. Practice in advance if you can. By my third session, I could speak slowly while looking around the room, not even look at my slides. I should have practiced more in advance so that all my trainings were that relaxed.
   
6. Even during your lecture/demonstration, ask for input. I started asking my groups to suggest what kind of accident we should use for the demo. I got some funny answers (poisoning, drowning), but it definitely made the class more fun.
   
7. Don't lecture for two long! Over the ten trainings, I re-arranged my training quite a bit. At one point, I moved my group exercise towards the end, and put more information in front. Why? People kept asking certain questions that I would have answered afterwards. After doing that twice, I moved it back to the middle. The long lecture section was too long and people ended up with the same questions anyway. Besides, studies show people learn more from making mistakes first and learning why, rather than knowing "the right way" all along.
   
8. Group exercises rock! People loved that section, and it gave me a break, as hard as it was for me to step back for 15-30 minutes.
   
9. Lolcatz are universal. Everyone loves cute cats. And dogs for that matter.