Creating Inspiring Workshops and Courses in Transdisciplinarity: A Guide - Manual / Resource - Page 37
Maintain situational awareness
As you deliver the training, you will notice the energy of the group waxing and waning; you might notice people needing
more time to complete an activity or to reflect and integrate the learning. You might suddenly have an idea to add a short
activity you did not previously plan on because participants are hung up on something they learned. During the break, you
overhear a conversation that something doesn’t sit well with several participants, or you seek out some feedback from
various group members and decide to change the rest of the training session. Or the slide projector dies, and then the fire
alarm goes off and you must leave the room and lose a significant chunk of time.
The possibilities of things not going as you planned are nearly endless. Even with your best laid plans, these events beyond
your control or the emergent needs of the group will challenge you to be adaptive “on the spot.” Handling such changes
flexibly and seemingly “without a blink” only comes with experience. But you can stay one step ahead if you maintain
situational awareness. Sometimes all that is needed is to shave off a few minutes here and there on subsequent activities,
and hardly anyone will notice. You don’t want to rush through activities and contents in ways that leave you and them
dissatisfied. Sometimes, you can involve the group in choices around what they feel is most important to them – drop the
piece the group (or you) feel is less critical. You may also ask participants if they have a hard stop and must leave at the
expected end time, or whether they are willing to stay a bit longer. Do not feel you have to make the decision alone; you
can make it with them, transparently.
Remember that you, too, are learning
Every training is a learning experience for the trainer. If something went really well, reflect on it and try to discern what
made it work. If something didn’t go well, ask yourself why not. Ideally, debrief with someone else who might be able
to ask you questions you had not yet asked yourself. It could be contextual; it could be that you discovered something
about the audience you didn’t or couldn’t know before that affected how well they responded to your training offerings;
it could be you were not feeling at your best, and missed a few steps. In the vast majority of instances, these mishaps
or mismatches will be forgotten. In the rare case of actual harm, you can follow up afterwards to remedy the situation.
But you can and should carry forward the lessons learned from them. Using (anonymized) evaluation forms at the end or
after the training is a great way to gauge feedback. Important there are the majority responses. Do not just focus on what
was great or what was negatively judged by one or two people. Instead, focus on the major take-aways and debrief with
trusted colleagues to support your own ongoing growth and learning as a trainer.
Basics of training design
Delivery
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