By Lee-Anne Ragan

From training for the United Nations and in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside to some of the biggest international corporate companies, here are some tips I’ve learned along the way.

1.    Take care of your bumblebee butt
In order to communicate how to find the source of nectar from one bee to another, bumblebees do a cute, hairy, little butt dance.  Yep, they shake their booty to communicate their treasure map. When they’re tired their dance suffers and so too do the instructions. It’s the same with us trainers.  Training is really hard work.  If you want to shake your training booty you’ve got to take care of yourself: get sleep, eat well, bring a snack.  

2.    Nix the jibber jabber attitude
Humour is a strategic tool for training because when participants are laughing they’re using the same part of their brain they use for strategic, critical and innovative thinking. The strategic use of humour (and I underscore strategic, no clown noses or fake dog poop) primes the brain for learning. Don’t check your sense of humour at the door like the judge asks in this 15 second clip, rather embrace it and encourage your learners to as well.

 3.    Praxis
Other than a luscious word that rolls off the tongue, praxis is one of the most underutilized and potent tips for training. Praxis is a tenant of popular education and it simply means constantly cycling back and forth between action and theory. Great trainings take full advantage of this, adding some theory/information and then anchoring it with practice/application/experience, then back to more theory/information. Rinse, repeat: practice your praxis.

4.    Get your fee flishtube
It’s free, it’s easy to use and most of all it has great impact on learning – it’s flishtube (a.k.a. Flickr, Delicious and Youtube). These examples of educational technology really add oomph and they’re fun to use.

• Flickr is a photo sharing site.  By doing an advanced search you can find gorgeous photos with a creative commons license that gives you the artist’s permission to use.  Here’s my Flickr account – you can see not only photos I’ve taken and used in trainings but also my favourites (other people’s photos I’ve used in blog posts; always with credit).
• How many times  have you found a great resource on the web only to not be able to find it later?  Enter Delicious, a social bookmarking site – click on my Delicious account and you have free instant access to some 1500 training resources I’ve tagged on the web.
• If I have to tell you that Youtube is a video sharing site I seriously want the address of the cave you’ve been living in.  You can find almost anything on Youtube and it’s a powerful way to illustrate your training points.   Here’s my Youtube channel for some examples of videos I’ve made and used in training.

Just make sure whichever educational tech tools you use are anchored in your learning objectives

5.  Don’t default to your personal vault
Deeply buried in the cobweb corners of your mind vault are your assumptions about the RIGHT way to learn which, translated, means the way YOU learn. Unless we take out those assumptions and dust them off we’re at risk of teaching how we like to learn which is great … for the portion of your learners who happen to learn like you. Examine your training content and delivery methods to make sure they’re both accessible and inclusive.

6.   Avoid the hairy, naked guy; part A

When we’re stressed, our brains aren’t primed for objective thinking; rather we’re focused on how to stay safe. When stressed, our hearing can actually tank by up to 68 per cent – talk about not being able to respond to learners! As trainers, when we’re stressed we default to our level of preparation. To help you and your brain avoid the effects of stress, create a training supplies kit that goes with you to every training session (no matter the audience or the content). Mine is in a ziplock plastic bag so I can easily see what’s in there and it’s full of fasteners, chalk, whiteboard markers, felts, a mirror, tape, scissors, kleenex etc. Easy peasy – pack and go.

7. Avoid the hairy, naked guy; part B
As a trainer, when our brain’s under stress (we’re behind time, a participant is being particularly challenging or we’ve just realized we’ve been training with bits of lunch stuck between our teeth) we’re not primed to be operating at peak efficiency. For proof just look at said hairy, naked guy trying to absorb his doctor’s advice. To help you avoid his state make your training agenda easy to read – make the font larger than you normally would, underline bits of your agenda that have a corresponding handout, highlight parts of your agenda that have a corresponding powerpoint slide. If you’re co-facilitating, highlight (in a different colour) the parts of your agenda that your colleague is responsible for. If you do find you’ve had spinach stuck in your teeth for the last few hours at least you’ll be able to easily find your place in the schedule.

8.  ‘Ah ha’ is most powerful when preceded by ‘huh?!’
Curiousity is to the brain what a cold glass of lemonade is to a thirsty throat on a scorching hot summer’s day. Our brains LOVE being curious – they automatically seek to satisfy that curiousity. As the Heath brothers talk about in their book Made to Stick the ah ha of discovery, of powerful learning is most powerful when preceded by huh?! or what’s going on, you have my attention, I’m engaged, I’m paying attention. Create learning situations that arouse learner’s curiousity and they’ll be powerfully motivated to satisfy that curiousity.  Confession: I used this strategy by referring to bumblebee butts in the title.

9.  Once upon a time
We all want learners who are engaged and curious and one way to get them there is to tell engaging, true stories. Stories are a powerful shortcut to great learning and increased retention. I have a whole back pocket full of stories at the ready – there’s the one about training in East Africa when at night I had to watch out for hippos and during the day monkeys were on my radar … Make it real, make it personal and have several at the ready. Most of all, make sure your stories are related to your learning objectives.

10.  Group groans
Group groans, a.k.a. learning activities that are embarrassing and/or silly, dampen learning faster than your teenager can come up with multiple excuses as to why their homework’s not done. If participants feel embarrassed or are made to feel silly, their brains are focused on keeping them safe, not on learning. Group groans are defined by the learner’s perspective, not ours – you may find an activity engaging but if it looks like your participants are sucking on lemons ditch it and change tracks fast. Still not sure what a group groan is?  Take a listen.  It’s any activity that prompts a participant to audibly or inaudibly do this: group groan

So there you have it. 10 tips for trainers – everything from bumblebee butts to avoiding hairy, naked guys. I welcome any tips you’d like to share in the comments.

Lee-Anne Ragan is presenting Training Skills for HR Practitioners in Vancouver on February 2. For more information on this and other professional development opportunities, please refer to BC HRMA’s online calendar.

Lee-Anne Ragan is President of Rock.Paper.Scissors, Vancouver’s award winning training and entertainment company.  Since 1992 R.P.S. has been helping people laugh, learn & lead.  For more information see www.rpsinc.ca and her training focused blog at www.rpsinc.ca/blog.