In training the trainer, I learnt a lot practical techniques from Dr. Jeff to reinforce my training effect, especially how to engage my audience. However, it is indeed difficult to put them into practice in my training at the beginning, so I try my best to deliberately design these techniques to my training.
For examples, Mr. Jeff told us there are usually5ways to engage our audience in the training. They are having a chat with friends, telling lots of true stories, showing vulnerability or humility, asking and listening, forcing audience to participate respectively. I think I can make good use of two of them, which are telling stories, asking and listening in the training because I often practice these two communication skills with my audience in my speeches of toastmasters, but it’s hard for me to use three other skills.
In my first training, I tried to chat with my audience like their friend rather than a trainer, so I selected very popular & familiar topic on how to achieve higher position in our career, what’s more, I started my personal stories when I trained the Pathways in the training. I felt a little nervous and it seemed unnatural at the beginning, so I decided to come close to audience and talk in emotional tone. The audience started to focus on what I said to them. I thought it did work at last. I felt very excited at that time when my training attracted more attention of audience through my practice.
But another problem was coming afterwards, which is how to force audience to participate in one activity. I was afraid I couldn’t control the situation if no body attended my designed activity after I initiated it. Meanwhile, I thought table topic session in the regular meetings of toastmasters was very similar with such this situation, so I tried to do the Table Topic Master several times with our hearts and quested the feeling and experience on how to control the activity, which encouraged audience to attend as many as possible. Step by step, I found I could also use the skills in my training affluently. First, I have to find interesting topic or stories, which drag more audience attention. Second, I try to design it into my training very skillfully. Third, create a very friendly atmosphere with audience. Fourth, start to ask audience to involve in the activity. It is a little difficult for trainers to master this skill, but we can learn and use it by more practicing if we really want to become a good trainer.
For most of trainers, the most difficult is how to show vulnerability or humility to our audience in the training. This is also very challenging to me because it can’t be predicted and prepared in advance. I have to find and catch the improvisational chance in the training, otherwise, it will disappear immediately. I can’t find any effective solutions at the beginning, but after I thought for a long time, I decided to try the toastmaster of meeting or general evaluator more to practice the ability or sense in the meetings. I started to focus on how each speaker or role taker perform and what they said on the stage and tried to response to what they just spoke. It started to show some vulnerability or humility to them little by little. More practicing makes me use this skill more frequently and regularly.
When I am confident to understand and master these five skills on how to engage our audience more attention, I start to put them into effect in my training. In each training, I usually try to design these five skills into my training and ask their feedback from my audience after the training. In my opinion, the audience engagement should be targeted firstly for a good trainer. As trainers, we have to care more about their interesting, demanding and engaging in our trainings no matter what we train them.
In Training the Trainer, I also learnt how to represent my training on the spot more vividly and impressively to audience. We would like to use Power Point technique to show our training content currently. Peculiarly, we prefer to put much more texts and photos into our PPT on the screen. From Dr. Jeff’s point of view, the simpler the PPT, the more powerful to audience. Furthermore, the PPT should be well prepared before. For instance, the font, words, color and structure should be much more thought when we decide to use PPT in our training. Only several key words should be on the screen, simultaneously, we represent our important ideas and messages to audience. We had better use less colors, usually less than 3 colors in one training PPT. In meanwhile, we are suggested to use the comfortable fonts with suitable size. I indeed learnt a lot front this part training because I didn’t care too much to my PPT. I usually put too much stuff into one slide of the PPT and the PPT looked so crowded. It reminded me what I wanted to say easily, but it was very difficult to recognize for audience. It was really bad experience for a good trainer, so I have to change this situation. I use these simple but helpful skills Dr. Jeff taught us in the training to redesign my PPT seriously. When I finished, I found it more impressively than ever before. I also received many positive feedbacksfrom audience, which made me to have more confidence to confirm my effective training.
All in all, I learnt a lot from the Training the Trainer hosted by D85, and I put these skills into practice in my training. I received positive feedback from my audience, which makes me more confidently and helps me to become a better trainer. Finally, I believe we can make better of ourselves through our hard efforts with the help of professional training like the Training the trainer.