Podcast: Building Lasting Capabilities through Effective Training: The Do’s and Don’ts

Can you imagine anything more mind-numbing than being lectured at for a week of training, stuck at a desk or table for hours at a time while an instructor drones on and on?

Even if the subject matter is important, this training scenario is guaranteed to bore the students, fail to deliver memorable information and be a waste of time. Nevertheless, it remains a common teaching method.

In this episode of Behind the Curtain: Adventures in Continuous Improvement, podcast hosts Dr. Mohamed Saleh and John Dyer tackle the topic of how to design training that is engaging, effective and makes a lasting impact. And while the discussion focuses on training for lean, Six Sigma and continuous improvement, the principles make sense for a host of training topics.

Among the discussion points:

Understand how adults learn. They have an attention span of 10 to 15 minutes. “So, if you're not constantly changing your approach or getting them engaged or asking questions or doing something different every 10 to 15 minutes, you start losing your audience,” Dyer says.

Consider simulations and other activities that encourage audience participation.

Assess the current state of the students and build on it. If you are teaching material they already know, “it's gonna feel like you're talking down to them,” Saleh notes.

One-size-fits-all training doesn’t work. It’s important to understand both the context of what you are training and the audience to whom you are training—and then make the training and your conversations applicable to them.

Training is more impactful when the students reach conclusions (the “aha” moments) on their own.

Don’t let leaders treat training like a spectator sport, meaning “I won’t attend the class, but I’ll watch,” or “Give me the two-hour condensed version of this two-day training.” “Because then nothing sticks,” Saleh says.

Avoid jargon and be sensitive to culture.