Breathing and Relaxation For Trainers

Category: Train the Trainer, Blog

Solutions focussed action planning, anchoring, timelines, future pacing, flow states, instant confidence, maps of the world, law of attraction, and the impact of language.

These are just some of the tools that I’ve explored with one of my long-term clients. He has experienced some of the most powerful techniques out there. Yet when I ask him what the most important thing he has learned from me during our coaching relationships is, the answer is always the same. “You taught me how to breathe.”

Posted: October 23, 2007 at 8:09 pm | 1,626 Views | Email Post | 1 comment
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Keeping Debriefs Brief

Category: Train the Trainer, Blog

Groups work well then they are diverse and have either relevant knowledge to share or process skills…In a learning situation, working in groups is an important part of your design … In part, this is of course a function of learning style preferences, but there are some things you, the trainer, can do to help learners squeeze out (squeeze in?) all the learning without it having to take forever. None of these ideas will be appropriate in all situations - experiment!

Posted: July 4, 2007 at 3:08 pm | 2,343 Views | Email Post | 1 comment
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10 Things That `Only' Work For Trainers - No. 1

Category: Train the Trainer, Blog

Over the next few months, I'll be sharing the tools that never fail me when I'm in my training role. While some will be straightforward, and the type of thing that lots of you do, I hope that many will offer a new insight, a different approach or even just remind you of the things that you've forgotten work for you. Here are my top ten training tools or techniques that only work.

Posted: July 4, 2007 at 2:49 pm | 2,957 Views | Email Post |
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IT Meets Brain-Friendly Learning

Category: Train the Trainer, Blog

Structured Walkthroughs…In its most useful form, it involves walking, in steps, through any programme and imagining you are the variable, asking yourself “what's happening now?” and “how can we improve it?” … By simply chunking this idea sideways you could use such a technique in course design or to critique a course…Walk through your course design as a participant, a trainer, and a client. In a Kaizen Blitz or Kaizen Workout we often get people to “become” a document moving around the system, in order to reduce process cycle-time and minimise unnecessary paper handling.

Posted: July 3, 2007 at 1:58 pm | 1,615 Views | Email Post |
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Top 10 Things That Only Work - No. 2

Category: Train the Trainer, Blog

Designing appropriate performance objectives (is) the key to a good training course…For a start it is incredibly difficult to design a highly creative, brain friendly learning experience from a set of very linear objectives…For me `stating', `demonstrating' and `describing' is not where it's at…Secondly, my experience is that objectives often have us operating at the wrong `chunk size'.

I always, always, always get absolutely clear on what my outcomes are before I start designing…My outcomes also have a link to how the learning will impact on the business.

Posted: July 3, 2007 at 1:42 pm | 1,913 Views | Email Post |
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Do You See What I'm Saying? The Role of Gestures in Learning

Category: Train the Trainer, Blog

Sometimes gestures are simply visual substitutes for speech: every child knows that a finger held to tightly closed lips means "be quiet"; that the thumbs-up sign means "okay." But we also gesture spontaneously as we talk, even on the telephone. Are these gestures meaningful, or are they just so much hand-waving? Recent research indicates that gestures do convey critical, often unspoken, information … In a 1998 study published in Nature, Goldin-Meadow and Indiana University researcher Jana Iverson showed that children and adolescents who had been blind since birth spontaneously gesture when they are speaking, even if they know that they are speaking to another blind person. "I think this really does suggest that gesture is an important part of the whole speaking game," Goldin-Meadow says.

Posted: June 19, 2007 at 7:41 am | 1,978 Views | Email Post |
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Real Life – A Nice Place to Visit (but you wouldn’t want to live there)

Category: Train the Trainer, Blog

Second Life is a virtual world… It is very similar to real life … There are already many people making a living in the “real” world by earning currency in Second Life and exchanging this into “real” money … Universities are starting to use Second Life (SL) for classes and research projects. Educators are able to meet from anywhere in the world. Companies are developing simulations in SL to train their employees … These are only the tip of the iceberg – and the possibilities for interaction, learning and meaning-making are endless…actually the same is true in real life. We are “making up” our own reality all the time.

Posted: June 19, 2007 at 7:08 am | 1,256 Views | Email Post |
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Tips from the Team

Category: Train the Trainer, Blog

Our Top Tips for Trainers

Live, breathe, walk and talk the Five Principles of Brain Friendly Learning.
Learn how to get people into a flow state, and then get out of the way.

Movies that every trainer should watch…

The Shawshank Redemption (to learn the value of patience and friendship
Pay It Forward (how one person can change the world – or at least a bit of it)

Books for Trainers

The Art of Possibility, by Benjamin and Rosamund Zander
You Can Have What You Want, by Michael Neill

Posted: June 4, 2007 at 9:38 pm | 2,053 Views | Email Post |
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Get Out Your Interactive Whiteboard

Category: Train the Trainer, Blog

Whiteboards are so often overlooked and misunderstood and yet they are probably one of the most versatile and helpful tools at your disposal. They can help you get away from the ‘death-by-PowerPoint’ syndrome, by creating some of the content as you go, rather than presenting a pre-pre-pre-prepared set of linear ideas that are pretty much set in concrete. With interactivity delegates can be part of the process, the process can react to incoming ideas, and interesting red herrings can be deflected to be discussed later, rather than just losing them.

Posted: June 4, 2007 at 9:34 pm | 4,038 Views | Email Post |
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One Thing at a Time…

Category: Train the Trainer, Blog

When carrying out a task where the level of challenge exceeds the level of skill of the ‘participant’ then a state of stress is experienced … This can explain much of the pressure created by ourselves and how overwhelm becomes self-perpetuating. It is important therefore when coaching and supporting others that we encourage them to focus purely on the current task and ignore any other factors that my be contributing to the feeling of overwhelm.

Posted: June 4, 2007 at 9:24 pm | 1,472 Views | Email Post |
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It's not big but it IS clever!

Category: Train the Trainer, Blog

Whilst researching my next computer (it's that time again) I looked at the IMAC from Apple, which I like because it's an attractive piece of design and therefore adds value when it's switched off. I was slightly disappointed to hear that the new ones have taken minimalism even further. There is no tower, just a flat screen, keyboard and mouse - that's it.

Posted: May 7, 2007 at 6:16 am | 1,437 Views | Email Post |
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Analogies in training?

Category: Instructional Design, Train the Trainer, Blog

Analogies? They're a bit like making love to a beautiful woman!

The “Fast Show's” comic character, Swiss Tony, has one analogy for every eventuality: that of “making love to a beautiful woman”. His one-track mind can twist almost any situation to fit.

Most people are capable of coming up with a wider range of analogies and, in my experience, it's something we human beings can't stop doing. Personally I like the maxim “if an analogy is with pushing, it's worth pushing too far”.

Posted: May 7, 2007 at 6:10 am | 1,931 Views | Email Post |
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The Seven Deadly Sins… (training topic)

Category: Train the Trainer, Blog

Training has come a long way in recent years. Gone are the days when an instructor stood at the overhead projector, and droned on for hours on end. These days it's much more likely that participants take part in activities that involve them moving around a training room which is full of colour and life. The air is fresh and there's a buzz of activity. There is lots of laughter, music is sometimes playing, and people are interacting and collaborating.

Posted: May 7, 2007 at 6:01 am | 1,527 Views | Email Post |
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Questions for Eric Jensen

Category: Train the Trainer, Blog

This TrainingZone thought-leader piece is part of a discussion between two pioneers in the field of brain-friendly or brain-based learning - Eric Jensen and Kimberley Hare of Kaizen Training.

Posted: May 4, 2007 at 5:55 am | 1,496 Views | Email Post |
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The Gift (group exercise)

Category: Instructional Design, Train the Trainer, Blog

How often do we tell people that they are really good at something, they have impressed us with the way they organized an event or we really appreciated a gesture that they did for us or someone else…? If we are really honest - generally it is not enough. Interestingly much work in the training room around team building is about what is not being said within the team - not always the said stuff!!

Posted: May 4, 2007 at 5:47 am | 1,776 Views | Email Post |
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Photos on Tap

Category: Instructional Design, Train the Trainer, Blog

Of all our senses, the one with the potential to receive the most information per second is sight. According to Paul Scheele, 10 million bits per second come to us through our eyes, compared with a total of 1 million plus bits per second from the ears, skin, taste and smell combined. Out of those 11 million bits per second received, we only consciously process 70…yes, that's 70 out of 11,000,000, 40 of which come to us through our eyes.

Posted: May 4, 2007 at 5:38 am | 1,425 Views | Email Post |
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IT Meets Brain-Friendly Learning

Category: Train the Trainer, Blog

For all you afficionados of brain-friendly learning - some IT training can be the very antithesis - “chalk and talk”, or Death by PowerPoint, and endless drills (aka “dentistry”)

However, there is a technique used by software companies that is an excellent training device in a wide range of settings called Structured Walkthroughs.

Posted: April 19, 2007 at 4:53 am | 1,266 Views | Email Post |
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Manage State Transitions

Category: Train the Trainer, Blog

From State to State…

You may want to stand up to read this tip. Walk around, or even just change your breathing.

OK, so those of you who have worked with Kaizen for some time will know of our obsession with STATE! This tip is intended to be a refresher on some of the fundamentals AND to highlight again that state transitions are where it's at. I can honestly say that my most outstanding results gained while working with clients can be largely credited to a great state management strategy.

Posted: April 19, 2007 at 4:46 am | 1,472 Views | Email Post |
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What's in a Name?

Category: Train the Trainer, Blog

What’s in a name? Well for me, quite a lot. Working with a fellow Kaizen team member recently on a design project, we were stopped in our tracks creating the title by one simple question:

Does that word have any ‘baggage’?

Meaning, would our potential customers have any historical or emotional context anchored to the word in question?

Posted: April 10, 2007 at 5:08 am | 1,676 Views | Email Post |
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How Flexible is your Trainer State?

Category: Train the Trainer, Blog

One of the key principles of Brain Friendly Learning is to Honour Uniqueness. (…)

Posted: April 1, 2007 at 11:01 pm | 1,673 Views | Email Post |
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Defogging your Communication

Category: Instructional Design, Presentation Skills, Blog

Communication is a key business priority. With a diverse workforce and with the ever increasing number of communication tools, how do you ensure everyone gets the message? (…)

Posted: April 1, 2007 at 9:05 pm | 2,008 Views | Email Post |
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Putting the Cart before the Horse

Category: Train the Trainer, Blog

I recently learned a very valuable lesson during a day spent working with horses who are completely at liberty - i.e. (…)

Posted: April 1, 2007 at 8:15 pm | 1,684 Views | Email Post |
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