Tips for Training Transfer

Saturday April 28, 2007

I attended a national teleconference training session Thursday that violated the three cardinal rules of training. It took me a couple of days to reach this conclusion because my initial reaction to the training session was not positive, but I was reminded of several important factors in dealing with people at work. And, I learned a new approach to thinking about building trust. So, the hour and a half was not totally wasted.

But, retrospectively, the session was a disappointment. The speaker made several really bad assumptions about his audience.

He assumed that his listeners all worked for bad, hierarchical, old-fashioned companies that did not value and trust employees, and treat employees positively. Consequently, in my group, most of the examples didn't fit our culture. We do value, trust and care about employees who have a lot of freedom to innovate and make a difference. Talking about how to rebuild trust in a trusting environment, doesn't work, as an example. Nor does talking about how to encourage management to communicate when there is already a deep commitment to communication.
He used all big company examples. Our company has 150 well-loved employees.
He failed to take into consideration the range of knowledge of his attendees. So, much of the early part of the teleconference was far too basic for our attendees. By the time he presented his new, and not so basic material, he had, for the most part, lost our attention. We listened, but his words had already lost their potential for impact.

On a whole different level, the trainer failed to do anything that would facilitate the transfer of the training to actual actions and behaviors in the workplace, but what can you expect from an hour and a half? I provide training as part of my consulting practice, and attending this teleconference was a huge reminder about what not to do.

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_{Image © Marcin Balcerzak}