In my initial blog post last year, I stated that the blog would focus on high business value training. I also specified that high business value training solutions improve performance measurably, leading to the achievement of desired business outcomes. As such, solutions that are of high business value are important to the organization, significant, and worth the investment.
The initial post also identified the three main factors involved in delivering high business value training. They are:
- It’s important to understand what the sponsors want the impact of the training to be, or the results they hope to achieve.
- It’s important to make design decisions that ensure the cost of the training isn’t greater than the monetary benefit to the organization.
- The training is effective and achieves the desired results. Employees learn new knowledge and skills, they implement what they learned in their work, job performance is improved, and the impact on the business is positive.
Throughout 2017, several different characteristics of effective training were explored including training transfer, instructional strategies, learner feedback and assessments, and learner motivation.
This month’s post focuses on the actual facilitation of training. It goes without saying that a learning program must be well designed to be effective, but it must also be properly facilitated. While the delivery of training through media such as eLearning, virtual classrooms, and mobile learning is becoming more prevalent, Instructor-led training in a classroom setting remains the most used delivery method. Training Magazine’s 2017 Training Industry Report stated that 42 percent of training hours are delivered by stand-and-deliver instructors in a classroom setting and 34 percent of training hours are delivered through blended learning solutions that often include classroom training.
Good Principles of Facilitation
Here are fourteen principles that should be followed by the facilitator when delivering training programs in a classroom setting.
The facilitator:
- models the organization’s core values and cultural attributes
- demonstrates mastery of the subject matter by elaborating on concepts, sharing real world examples, and making the content relevant to the learners
- delivers the program according to the overall design, including the sequence, level of detail, and strategies and methods
- manages time to ensure that each segment of the program is covered in sufficient detail to achieve the learning objectives
- assesses learners’ entry level knowledge and skills, and when possible, adapts the level of detail and pace of the program to their level
- makes him or herself available to learners equitably – before, during and after the program
- creates a safe, inclusive, and respectful learning environment
- acknowledges learners’ knowledge and experience and encourages learners to share knowledge with the class
- manages learner participation to ensure that learners have an equitable opportunity to participate
- demonstrates enthusiasm for the program
- addresses negative comments that might be made about the content or the purpose of the program in a constructive manner
- successfully employs a variety of questioning techniques to check for learner understanding and facilitate discussion
- treats all learners with respect
- maintains a professional appearance and refrains from the use of unprofessional comments and gestures
In closing, for a training solution to be of high business value it must be well designed AND it must be properly implemented. Because Instructor-led training in a classroom setting remains the most used delivery method, it’s important to ensure good principles of facilitation are followed. If they are not, the overall value of the training to the organization will be reduced.