Train The Trainer – Tip #1

We want to introduce you to one of our flagship programs here at Iluma Learning, Train The Trainer. Each week we’ll hear from Amy about one of her seven tips for creating a dynamic training environment that will result in greater comprehension, immediate knowledge application, skill and behavior changes, and create an energetic and fun atmosphere! Let’s get started with tip number one.

Transcript:

Hi, I am Amy with Illuma Learning and one of our flagship programs at Illuma Learning is all about train the trainer. So we do certifications for OEMs, we do dealer training to help trainers, subject matter experts, really improve their presentation skills and their facilitation skills. And so I want this blog series to now be about how to make your training dynamic. So if you have to make presentations and really persuade people to buy into something or agree to work with you or just not complain about new things that are going to be happening in your organization, or you are a subject matter expert like we have in heavy equipment all the time. We have a lot of technicians that become trainers and a lot of operators that become trainers, and then they have to teach other technicians and operators how to use the equipment or repair it. So when we do that, we really have to call on a whole other skillset in order to do a great job helping our participants really learn. And so there are a few things that I’ve learned over the years that really make training sticky help people remember, and also make it really dynamic so that you have people participating throughout the training. So we’re gonna start with a couple of those.

The first one we’re going to talk about in today’s blog is “get your participants moving and talking in the first five minutes of your session”. So whether that is, whether you’re having a day long training, a week long training, or an hour training, take those first five minutes. And you might say, well, Amy, we have a lot of housekeeping. We have to go over safety. We have to go over fire exits, where the bathrooms are, how it’s going to be set up. Great. Do all of that and call it housekeeping and do it before you start your class. So take the time to get all that out of the way and then begin your class and call that the first five minutes of really getting into the topic. I like to get people standing up and talking to someone that’s close by. So they just have to talk to each other. So even if they’re introverted, they can do this. So you get them to take the time to talk to each other and then throw a question up on a slide that says something like, if I’m teaching something on communication, I’m going to ask them about what they need to really improve when it comes to talking to their coworkers. What drives you crazy in trying to communicate with your customers on a regular basis? Or if I was teaching a class on how to repair a dozer, I might ask them to name the differences that they know about the latest model of a dozer that’s come out that we’re going to be talking about during the class. So a lot of this is just finding a way to get them talking to each other and about the topic. So the real reason we do this is not just to get them talking about the subject matter, but to get them talking, moving, and it sets the tone so that they understand this is going to be a very engaged class where they’re going to really focus and learn something.

So that’s the first one. And it’s an important one, and it’s been something that is a real hallmark of how I lead training. So if you are a trainer try this out, you will be amazed at how much participation and energy you’ll create at the beginning of your classes. And then that really becomes a cycle where you feed off of that energy, it gets them relaxed, where they’re now ready to focus, and then we move into the training. So that’s first step and next blog will go into another detail.