Trainer’s Tip: Trainer Freelancing – The ‘How To’
Gary Gorman shares his top tips. 1. As long as you’re prepared to work hard and be flexible you won’t regret it. 2. The best chance of work comes through personal recommendations, so network as much as possible. This is also the cheapest way to market yourself. 3. Think about your point of difference – […]
Trainer’s Tip: Assertiveness Warm-up/Energiser
Eddie Newall shares an idea. Ask them to identify a situation, from their own personal experience, in which they found it hard/easy to be assertive either outside or at work. Use the hard-to-be-assertive situations as problem-solving group work and feedback. Give them examples of situations, which involve some form of threat, together with one or […]
Trainer’s Tip: Preparation to Delivery Formula Revealed
Rus Slater unveils his formula for calculating the preparation time required per training session. Do you agree with him? Could you put together a concise training session following his preparation to delivery hours formula? I’ve only heard the 1:3 figure once; from a manager whose belief was …“Anyone can write a training course … just […]
Trainer’s Tip: Induction Icebreakers
Buffy Sparks explains the ‘two truths and one lie’ icebreaker. A really simple and old favourite of mine is to ask all the delegates to write two truths and one lie on a piece of A4 paper (its best if they all have the same pen colour) fold the paper four times and drop into […]
Trainer’s Tip: Life Lessons
Stephen Berry, Training Director for Neos Learning, offers some life lessons for success and happiness. Life is temporary, and there are more important things in it than work. Work must be enjoyable, fulfilling and emotionally rewarding. We all spend so much time and creativity within work, it is criminal if we do not enjoy it […]
Trainer’s Tip: Setting Up An Internal Training Programme
Kon Stoilas outlines a plan. There a seven main rules to creating a new internal training programme (ITP). 1. Are you competent enough to facilitate these subjects? If not, is there an internal person who can do this? If the answer is no, seek external help. 2. Use productivity/financial reports to determine where they are […]
Trainer’s Tip: Time Management For Trainers
Karen offers some energy tracking tips for effective time management. I’d like to add two more tips that have helped me but that are perhaps more in tune with an EQ mindset than an IQ one. Respect your energy flow – it’s true that you can often get more done in the time left after […]
Trainer’s Tip: Course Evaluation
Sarah Read explains why she wouldn’t use the tick box solution. There are lots of different types of evaluation. My key points would be: Only ask questions relating to areas you are prepared to change (for example, don’t ask about satisfactory venues etc if you can’t change locations.) Tick boxes provide quick fix answers, but […]
Trainer’s Tip: Prioritising Training Requests
Tom Greenan says keep it simple if you want to succeed. I agree with Tim about not getting too hung up about scoring. Briefly and simply – I would focus on asking the managers and senior managers ‘What are the three key things that you feel need to be done now to get/keep YOUR unit/department […]
Trainer’s Tip: Performance Management Game
Sue Beatt explains the picture, play or song exercise. An exercise that I’ve run before and is great fun is to split your group into three teams. Ask each team to pick one of three pre-prepared envelopes. In each envelope is one word: picture, play or song.They then have 30 minutes to draw a picture, […]
Trainer’s Tip: Corporate Inductions
Neil Wilkins shares some tips on what to include. With regards to what you may like/should put into your corporate induction (in no particular order): Welcome to the company(Welcome to the company and an overview of the Corporate Induction Programme.) Health and safety (Fire evacuation, First Aid, Accident Reporting, Smoking Policy and any specific items […]
Trainer’s Tip: Voice Control
Graham O’Connell offers Zoe Horwood some tips on how to control your voice and stop the croaks when training. Here are a couple of web sites with tips:http://www.presentationhelper.co.uk/voice_tips.htm http://kerrymccall.com/tips.htmlYou might also like to consider finding out more about the Alexander technique – developed by an Australian actor who kept losing his voice. As a start […]
Trainer’s Tip: Age Discrimination Awareness
Jennifer Topping reveals the finer points of her organisations awareness training. We have done four things:1. Carried out an audit of our existing equality and diversity policies to identify any transferable or cross over points to the new directive. 2. Organised a series of in house exhibitions about the new statute. 3. Found an amazingly […]
Trainer’s Tip: Bringing Training to Life
Rich Lucas shares his top tips on invigorating employee training. Here are some ideas: Put it into English – presumably you’re not handing out a policy document and reading through it with your delegates. If you are, change this to a powerpoint / flip chart presentation. Create handouts that cover the key aspects of the […]
Trainer’s Tip: Six Thinking Hats
Paul Sloane shares his version of the model, commonly used to challenge ways of thinking. I teach six hats on my creative leadership workshops. It always goes down well. Here are my tips: 1. Get six hats for all participants if possible. Wearing them helps. 2. Although they can be used in various ways I […]
Trainer’s Tip: Beating The Post-Lunch Training Lull
Annie Lawler suggests some ways to perk up delegates for the afternoon session. 1. What you give them for lunch will affect the depth of the dip! Try to keep away from sandwiches, red meat and foods that lie heavy on the digestive system and stick to light foods like fish, salads, fruit and vegetables. […]
Trainer’s Tip: Saying ‘No’ Activities
Jennifer James suggests some ‘just say no’ exercises. I use the following, very short, scenarios. They require very little explanation and only take a short time: 1. A friend asks you to look after his/her dog for the weekend – you’re not keen on dogs. 2. Someone asks you to lend them a fiver which […]
Trainer’s Tip: Housekeeping
Jennifer James shares her list of ‘domestic’ issues to be covered at the start of any training event. I include: Fire exits and procedures (if you know there is going to be an alarm test say so.) Personal safety and security (personal belongings as well as any internal security arrangements such as badges etc. Toilets. […]
Trainer’s Tip: Distance Learning Material
Ian Woodward shares his top tips on how to hone effective and focused paper-based, distance-learning material. To make your materials more effective, I suggest that you first concentrate on the content and on the support that users will receive (even more than the design): Think carefully about your target audience (e.g. where and how they […]
Trainer’s Tip: An Exercise in Leading Effective Teams
Annah Ross shares her top tips on how to roll-out an exercise on leading effective teams for a large group. I use an exercise which demonstrates the importance of the ‘building blocks of effective teams’. This includes: Balanced roles. Clear objectives and agreed goals. Support and trusting relationships. Co-operation. Openness and conflict. Sound procedures. Appropriate […]
