Four Steps for Creating Effective Trainings
By Kate Marple
Often times when we think about communicating information, we start by thinking about what we want to say. But to be effective, we need to instead start by thinking about who we are trying to share that information with. The very best trainings are facilitated, not presented, meaning that the person at the helm helps people engage with a topic in a personalized way that is meaningful and specific to them. Whether you are leading a training to share research, build awareness about an issue, build skills among staff, or share information about services with your community, here are four steps to help create effective trainings.
1. Define and understand your audience.
We all have different experiences and knowledge. We also seek out community and information in different places and learn in different ways. That means there is no “one-size-fits-all” approach for communicating. Most of us will default to creating a training that relies on language and learning styles that are most familiar and accessible to ourselves. It’s why so many researchers and academics walk into every room with a PowerPoint presentation. But assuming others learn where and how we do won’t get the results we want. Instead, it’s important to unpack as much as you can about the people you are trying to reach and how best they will engage with you and the information you have to share. That knowledge should inform where you show up, what you share, and how you share it. Here are some audience questions to guide your planning:
How do they typically learn? Is this group used to sitting in a room and listening to a panel? Do they rely on experiences of peers and oral storytelling to share critical information? Are they a group that typically learns by doing and needs activities and real-world scenarios? How are you adapting your information to respond to their learning style? This also speaks to the amount of time spent on a training. Some groups want to spend half a day engaged in a workshop on a specific topic. Others need quick, 15-minute hits of information that fit into their day. How are you responding to their lifestyle?
Where do they typically learn? It’s tempting to invite people into our spaces, asking them to leave their neighborhoods or add an additional meeting to an already busy schedule. But our mantra should be, “meet people where they are,” literally and figuratively. If you are trying to train community partners from another sector, find out when they have an existing meeting and show up there. If you are training community members, go to a space they already gather regularly and in a place they feel safe and comfortable. If the training is virtual, is your audience used to Zoom or is Facebook Live more their speed?
What is their relationship to this topic? What do they already know about it? What are they interested in learning about it? This matters deeply because this is another part of meeting people where they are. Asking people before a training about what they want to get from a training, and in some cases what topic to host a training on, help you design the content around what people in the room want and need. It’s also important to think about a group’s relationship to the topic. Do they already know a lot about it, but aren’t moved to do anything about it? Then you need more strategies to motivate them (see “engage” below). Or are they already really passionate about it but need more information to do something about it? Then you need more ways to help them understand it (see “inform” below).
What do I need them to know and/or do at the end of this training? When planning a training, if you start thinking about all the things you know about a topic and all the nuances of things you want to share, it’s really easy to build something that is way more than the audience needs or can handle. It’s important to ask yourself, “What is the one thing I most want this particular group of people to know or do when they leave this training?” and then build everything to serve that goal.
2. Engage.
Once you are designing the training itself, the first part should focus on “why” the information is relevant to this audience right now in the context of their own lives, work, and values. Whether you are leading a staff training, one for community members, or one for organizational partners, find ways to make the topic personal and urgent. In other words, connect what you're talking about to a specific problem they face in their life, work, or community. As you do this, use tools that catch people’s attention and make engaging with information easier.
Tell a story. Stories help people engage emotionally with a topic. When it comes to storytelling, the messenger matters. When people are asked who they trust the most, no matter who you talk to, the answer is almost always “someone like me.” Are you training a new group of volunteers at your organization? Kick it off with a volunteer talking about their best experience with the organization and what volunteering has meant for them. Leading a training to get more referrals to your program from a community partner? Open with someone who made a referral sharing what changed for the client and for the person making the referral. Educating community members about their housing rights? Have a client join and talk about the experience of working with a lawyer.
Ask a question. Most of us have been in at least one room where someone starts a training or presentation and they are already on their fifth PowerPoint slide before you are barely settled in your seat, and you’ve never been called to be present in the space. You haven’t been asked to engage critically with the topic or to share anything. It’s how we end up with rooms full of people checking their phones and Zoom room full of people looking at their email while half listening to a presenter. Life is busy. We all need to be invited into spaces and have intentions set. One great way to disrupt this pattern is to start by asking a question that gets everyone thinking about the topic and applying it to their lives. I like to have people share in pairs and then report back to the group on their answers. If I were leading a training about how to build effective trainings, I might start by asking people to fill in the blank for each of these three statements:
To me trainings are…
I learn best when…
I’m not able to learn when…
These questions get people thinking about the topic in general as well as their own personal experiences with it, giving them a lens through which to experience the rest of the training.
Share a bold fact. Bold facts can carry the element of surprise, which can be another great way of capturing people’s attention at the start of a training and helping them understand the importance of an issue. What would people be most shocked to learn about the topic you are sharing? Humor, if and only if, used appropriately can have the same effect.
3. Inform.
After your audience understands why the topic matters in their life, work, and/or community, it’s important to go back to a question you thought about when examining your audience: what’s the one thing you most want this specific group to know and/or do after the training? People are probably only going to remember a maximum of three things you share with them during any training, so ask yourself what three things you’d want them to remember when they walk out of the room. What three things will most help them do what they need to do when they leave? Then build your training around those three things. The actor Charlie Chaplin used to say that good storytelling was as much about good editing, and that it required you to shake the tree over and over and over again until every dead leaf fell off of it. In other words, you’re only done when there is nothing that isn’t absolutely necessary left. That’s a good way to think about sharing information in a training too. What are the things this specific audience must know in order to be able to do their job, understand an issue, resolve a problem, help themselves, or do whatever thing it is that you gathered them to do. If it isn’t absolutely critical to that task, it’s extra and you should let it fall away.
When we are trying to communicate complex information or information people may not be familiar with during a training, there are techniques we can use to make it easier for them to both learn and remember, all of which require knowing a lot about our audience. They include:
Communicating in familiar language;
Using cultural cues; and
Making analogies between the information you are sharing and their lives or work.
I worked in the medical-legal partnership world for many years where lawyers worked as part of the healthcare team to address issues like housing and food that impact health. When those lawyers were training social workers, physicians, and nurses identify and refer different legal issues to them, leaning on healthcare metaphors and language was important, like sharing when a housing need needed “primary care” from a lawyer versus when a patient needed to go to the legal “emergency room.”
4. Invite clear action.
When you decided to lead a training, you hopefully had a clear idea of what you hoped the group of people would do at the end of it. Did you spell that out for them? You should. All of our trainings to raise awareness, share research, train staff, and connect people with services, should end with telling people clearly what they should do next. If I’m leading a storytelling training for communications staff that touches on big issues of consent and changing organizational culture to support more community-centered storytelling, I always try to end by identifying one or two simple steps participants can take now to start that journey. Better yet, I ask them to reflect on the training they just participated in and share what immediate next step they believe they can take. If you work in legal aid and are delivering an eviction prevention “know your rights” training to community members, inviting action might look like telling someone what to do if they receive a notice from their landlord. It can be helpful in those scenarios to use an if / then format. “If you get a notice from your landlord, call us immediately.” When you are calling people to action, it is important to help motivate and inspire them by letting them know what changes—in their life, in their work, in their community—if they take that step.