What Great Trainers Do: The Ultimate Guide to Delivering Engaging and Effective Learning
- 4h 47m
- Dorothy Grover Bolton, Robert Bolton
- AMACOM
- 2016
Corporate trainers are tasked with an awesome responsibility—helping individuals develop the skills they need to advance their careers and boost their organizations’ bottom lines. It’s a challenging job, but What Great Trainers Do is here to help—providing a proven structure for dynamic workshops along with surefire strategies for blending course content with fluid interaction. Readers will learn how to:
- Organize presentations for maximum impact
- Use activities to connect participants to the content and each other
- Create visual aids that reinforce key points
- Fine-tune their delivery
- Listen actively and read the group
- Address questions and concerns
- Make presentations interactive—involving learners early and often
- Manage the tough moments
- Handle resistance
- Use debriefs, demonstrations, and deliberate practice to solidify performance, improve applicability, and make training stick
- Adapt the course to fit the participants
- Promote positive group process
- And much more
Great training doesn’t happen by accident. Accessible and practical, What Great Trainers Do is a one-stop resource for reliable, repeatable learning results.
Watch a dynamic trainer in action, and the learning feels effortless. Concepts are presented in easy-to-grasp steps, skills are practiced and reviewed, and new behaviors are tested before being applied to the workplace.
But great training is rare. Despite so many talented people in the field, only 10 percent of corporate training leads to on-the-job improvements. Why such discouraging results? Because developing training that sticks is an art form—one that few people have learned.
What Great Trainers Do reveals the proven techniques used by the most successful trainers. Written by a team with years of experience training trainers, the book explains how to fuse content with process to create rich, interactive learning environments. From effectively pacing a workshop to developing visuals to handling group dynamics—the guidelines, worksheets, examples, and research findings break down the practice of superior training into a set of repeatable skills and practices. You’ll learn how to:
- Replace outdated practices (like stand-and-deliver presentations).
- Structure workshops into consistent units, modules, and components—the easiest, most effective way to deliver information.
- Build mastery with repeated practice and coaching sessions.
- Gauge “group process” and know when it’s time to shift gears.
- Incorporate lively activities that engage participants.
- Solidify learning with skillful debriefing sessions.
- Throw out dull scripts and deliver extemporaneous presentations based on easy-to-remember outlines.
- Create flipcharts and PowerPoint slides that enhance, not distract.
- Skillfully handle questions and comments, no matter how off-topic or hostile.
- Use demonstrations to go beyond telling how—to showing how.
- Manage disengaged people or groups, and recognize what drives them.
- Avoid the common training mistakes that can damage reputations.
With $60 billion spent annually on training, trainers who consistently deliver real value—helping trainees learn new skills and adapt to changing situations—get noticed by managers and executives. By decoding the craft of training into a set of best practices to emulate, What Great Trainers Do will help you stand out among the most valuable contributors.
About the Authors
Robert Bolton, Ph.D., and Dorothy Grover Bolton, Ed.M., are known for their expertise in training trainers. They are cofounders of Ridge Associates, a training and consulting firm that serves many Fortune 500 companies, and the authors of several books, including the perennially popular People Styles at Work . . . And Beyond.
In this Book
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What Great Trainers Do—The Ultimate Guide to Delivering Engaging and Effective Learning
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Preface
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The Challenge of Training
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Content and Process: The Two Intertwined Elements of Dynamic Training
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A Universal Structure for Skill-Building Workshops
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How to Open a Workshop
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Using Activities to Engage Participants
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Debriefing to Gather the Learnings
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Organizing Your Presentations
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Creating and Using Flip Charts
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Creating and Using PowerPoint Slides
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Fine-Tuning Your Delivery
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Using Disclaimers to Sidestep Resistance
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Listening Actively to Stay in Tune with Participants
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Responding to Questions, Comments, and Objections
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Making Presentations Interactive
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Managing the Tough Moments
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Demonstrating What You Teach
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Leading Practices: Dress Rehearsals for the Real Thing
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Providing In-the-Moment Feedback
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Evaluating the Workshop
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Ending the Workshop
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Understanding Resistance
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Maintaining a Positive Learning Climate
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Intervening to Eliminate an Individual’s Disruptive Behavior
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Observing Group Process and Intervening to Improve Its Functioning
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Redesigning a Troubled Workshop While Teaching It
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Avoiding Trainer Defensiveness
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Three Trainer Qualities that Facilitate Learning
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Course Preparation Worksheets
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Adapting the Workshop to Fit the Participants
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Installing the Training Properly
