It was a frosty May morning. The training room was the staff canteen, buried deep in the hangar of a major airlines engineering department. I got there early to set things up.
It was a long, narrow room, a kilometer long it seemed – row upon row of industrial sized fridges, 20 or 30 microwave ovens, and cold steel topped kitchen benches.
One of the first fellows there before we began looked forlornly at the gaping, empty room.
He described the flurry of activity that greeted him each day as he bought his lunch in to put in the fridge; shift changeovers, breakfast meetings, a crumpled newspaper left with an unwashed bowl of cereal.
Not anymore, it was a change management program and the only thing colder that morning was the participants greeting to me, their trainer for the day.
What do you say when you’ve got a room full of people with no idea about what to expect and most are quietly wondering what the heck they’re doing there; training engagement at it’s worst.
I raise my hand and I ask “who are the…:
Shoppers.
They get a day or two off work to attend the training and are there to browse the program and see what’s worth taking home.
Conscripts.
They’ve been sent to the training by someone else and probably don’t want to be there.
Adventurers.
Are up for anything and wants to learn.
Volunteers.
Needs convincing but will go along for the ride”
Once you’ve established who these participants are, they’ve got nowhere else to hide. That means they can’t sabotage your training as easily at they normally could.
And by putting their hand up to this you’ve got license to be transparent with them if they do.
But this little quick fire question and answer session works every time for me.
What works for you to gain rapport and cover all the bases at the start of a training?…
