I’m sure you’ve endured training sessions that made you want to rip your eyeballs out—or more accurately, the eyeballs of the person leading the session. And I’m guessing when you conduct your own training, you don’t want people clawing at your eyeballs.
So here are four ideas to help make sure your next training session doesn’t end with people lunging for your face.
- Keep it short! The average person’s attention span is somewhere between 8 and 11 minutes and falling every year. Soon we’ll be unable to feed ourselves because eating takes too long. So the best training will cover concrete topics in the shortest time possible.
- Keep it funny! Approximately 14 trillion studies have demonstrated the benefits of adding humor to educational offerings—people pay more attention, they remember it longer, they remember more details, it cures illnesses, it’s low in cholesterol, etc. There’s no reason education has to be boring or that entertainment has to be useless, and the best training will find a way to accomplish both at once.
- Keep it surprising! Part of the reason humor works is because it keeps trainees on their toes, constantly wondering what’s going to happen next. Sometimes a straightforward lecture is necessary, but none of us—repeat, none of us—likes being lectured to for very long. If you vary your delivery with jokes, worst practices, or anything else your audience is not expecting, you’ll establish an expectation that yours is not the typical training.
- Keep it coming! Education is a continual process. If you allow people to continually re-educate themselves through online courses or on-demand video training, you’ll get the greatest return on your investment.
Follow these four guidelines, and your training is guaranteed to excite, engage, and resonate. Otherwise, keep those safety goggles on!
Jeff Havens is a keynote speaker and corporate trainer at The Jeff Havens Company (www.JeffHavens.com).