Podcast: Designing an Impactful Training Experience

Training can be a dull duty employees feel forced to endure, or it can be an engaging effort that makes an impact, meaning:

1. Knowledge is transferred.
2. Knowledge is retained.
3. Knowledge is applicable to the student’s day-to-day job.

“If you're designing a training course that does not do those three things, then you're basically wasting everybody's time,” says John Dyer.

In this episode of Behind the Curtain: Adventures in Continuous Improvement, podcast co-hosts Dyer and Dr. Mohamed Saleh discuss characteristics to keep in mind in your efforts to design impactful training experiences. Both continuous improvement experts liberally sprinkle the conversation with real-world examples they have employed over the years.

Among the topics they focus on is the varying levels of engagement offered by different training elements. Dyer provided this list, which moves from lower levels of engagement to higher:

• Lecture
• Ask the audience a question.
• Engage in activities at the student’s seat.
• Engage in activities that have trainees getting up out of their seats and doing things.

Importantly, Dyer reminds, do something different every 10 to 15 minutes to avoid losing the audience to attention-drift.

Saleh rounds out the conversation with several additional course design techniques, which include:

• Training at the gemba
• “Teach backs,” in which the trainees engage in teaching one another
• A coaching technique that includes three individuals: the coach, the person being coached and an observer
• Video clips.