A Simple Statement That’s Missing From Most Training Sessions

by Alan Matthews

I delivered a 2 day training course for new managers last week and I opened it by saying, “The purpose of this course, as far as I’m concerned, is to make your lives easier and to help you deal with challenging people and situations more successfully.”

I often work with individual trainers and training teams, reviewing training materials and course outlines, and the one question I keep asking is, “Why are you delivering this training? What is the point of it?”

In corporate settings, people often refer me to a list of “learning objectives”. These usually leave me cold.

For one thing, they tend to be written in a form of corporate training jargon which never sounds very exciting, e.g. “At the end of this session, participants will be able to identify ways to use their time more effectively and to be more productive”.

For another thing, they are often written from the point of view of the organisation rather than the learner. They seem to state things the organisation wants people to be able to do rather than setting out very simply what benefits the learners themselves will get from the training.

I know many trainers who religiously go through all the learning objectives at the start of every session (and often show them all written in bullet points on a slide, but that’s an issue I’ll deal with another time).

What I think would be more helpful, and would have more impact in terms of getting learners motivated and interested, is to state very simply exactly what they will get from the training and what it will help them to do.

That’s why I often open with the statement I used above – after all, who wouldn’t want to listen if they were promised something that would make their lives easier and help them deal with difficult people and situations?

It also acts as a challenge to me – I have to then deliver on my promise. I have to make sure that all the content, activities, discussions and examples fulfil that promise.

This is why I challenge trainers I work with to be clear about why they are delivering the training. If they can’t tell me very simply how the training is going to make people’s lives better or easier, they need to go away and do some more thinking.

So, before you deliver any training – in fact way back at the planning stage – ask yourself whether you can make a simple statement of the benefits your learners will get from attending your session.

If you can, it will make your training much more focused, it will help you to choose exactly the right content and it will make a great opening line to start off your session!