What to do when you don’t know what to do

I’m staring at a blank screen thinking of what to write for this post. I guess this is something all bloggers, indeed, all writers face.  What do I do now?

This is also a really scary place to get to in a training room; when you’ve run out of something to say.

In fact it is way worse than a bit of writers block – in that situation you have a group of people expecting you to share what you know and have some authority.

But what do you do when you get to that point in a training program where you’ve run out of material, or you’ve got nothing to say, or what you had planned won’t meet their training need, or they don’t have one.

Here’s what you can do:

Suck it up princess – Your breath I mean. A few deep breathes to realise the totality of your predicament (it’s probably the worse you will face in this profession) and gain some humility; the transparency will be endearing.

• You could call a break – if it’s an appropriate time.
• Ask the ‘Why’ question – our brains work in interesting ways and the ‘why’ question prompts people to think of reasons (for or against) e.g; why do leaders need to understand customer service? Or whatever fits the theme of your training. Build on the answers you get. Go to coach mode.
• Set groups of three to create a case study of a situation that relates to the training topic. Each group then passess the case study on to the next to solve the problem.
• Get pairs to come up with a top ten list. Draw out what everyone has said and do a multi rating on the most important ones to address.

The top ten list could be ‘Top Ten things we do to annoy our customers’, or, ‘Top Ten process we could streamline in the business’, or, ‘Top Ten questions to ask at the end of meeting’. You make stuff up.

Then do a mind map or a brain storm of a way to tackle the problems. Or use this: www.letblitz.com I’ll do a post on that software soon, it’s awesome, still in Beta mode.

Or you could just pull up your chair and sit down, and ask them what’s really going on in the organisation.

What else do you do when you’ve run out of material.?