I’ve been thinking about the art of training, and the lessons I’ve learned from my 15+ years of standing at the front of the room/lecture theatre/auditorium
- Be prepared. Ensure you’ve got every eventuality covered. Failing IT hardware, broken power leads, no internet connectivity all get you off to a bad start which is difficult to recover from. The time before your presentation should be spent planning your delivery, not frantically making calls and running to the shops.
- Be confident in your material. Say what you’re going to deliver, deliver it, and ensure you’ve delivered it. If you can customise it on the fly to cover any questions or issues raised by your delegates.
- Give them takeaways. Give them something over and above the slide deck. Even in 2019 everyone loves paper – a sheet of links to other resources works wonders.
- If you’ve got difficult delegates find out how you can make things better, and don’t allow them to carry the room with them. People may be at different levels of expertise so take care to ensure everyone improves on their knowledge.
- Rehearse exercises so you know the answers – even the ‘there’s no wrong answer’ ones. Don’t rely on your knowledge being to hand there and then faced with scenarios you’ve never seen before.