• Why use groups at all?
• How do we optimise them?

Groups work well then they are diverse and have either relevant knowledge to share or process skills, i.e. they're good at bringing out the best in groups. The knowledge and expertise in the group must be relevant for the context. (Imagine lying in pre-op surgery while a group of passers-by discuss how they will carry out your operation, with one guy saying “I know what I'm doing - I work in a slaughterhouse”)

In a learning situation, working in groups is an important part of your design - leading to rich learning and collaboration, but… and here's the challenge to all trainers and facilitators:

We often take far too long over the whole process! (compared with the benefits gained)

Too long briefing it, too long a time actually doing the group activity, and too long de-briefing it (I've been on some courses where participants have lost the will to live, never mind the will to internalise the learning, by the time the trainer has debriefed thoroughly!)

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!

Ask tightly focused questions which cue up outcomes. Set outcomes with targets where appropriate, e.g. “Five techniques……….” “Three reasons…………..” Avoid briefing them to “discuss XYZ and come back with your thoughts”. Make it specific and action-oriented.

Use tight and odd times (“you have until 10.27 to do this”) and then enforce the times. Tell people how much time they've already had as a percentage, or nominate a timekeeper in each group.

Where material is complex, give different groups a different part e.g.

1. What factors motivate people? - group 1.
2. What factors demotivate people? - group 2.
3. What can we do to remotivate people once they're demotivated? - group 3.

Then have all the groups present back and build on each others' findings.

Avoid running an activity with more than 10 people where everyone has a turn, one after the other. It's too samey. Get people to reflect individually (2 or 3 minutes) share in pairs or small groups (ten minutes) and summarise back in their groups (five minutes). Or, if it's necessary they all have a go individually, break it up. Intersperse other activities in between.

If you plan to visually capture what learners are saying, think of a fast way of doing this that doesn't reduce quality and ensures people feel listened to. Avoid simply writing up everything that's been said on the flipchart yourself - nominate learners to take turns capturing a high-level summary - or give people post-its or pinpoint cards to write their thoughts on and then read these out and stick them up.

Even where you're using activities deliberately to build collaboration and trust such as ice-breakers - always think: “is there a faster way of getting the same outcomes?”

Honour uniqueness by offering a variety of learning methods, and offering massive personal choice: “Who would like more time to chill and reflect? OK, you go and do that….” “Who wants to discuss these ideas with others? OK, take the next fifteen minutes to do that and come back with the 3 things you're going to do differently when you're back at work”… “Who's ready to move on now to a slightly different topic?” and so on. You could even give people cards or hats - things they can hold up or put on when they'd like a change of style. People don't have to all have exactly the same experience to achieve the learning outcomes.

How can you make every single activity really work for its living? So that you are designing activities that build relationships AS they help participants create important learning AS they create an even more resourceful emotional state?

This book has inspired me to take more notice of the things that I do that only work. In other words, what are the things that, when I do them, guarantee success? There are things in work and play - approaches that I can always rely on to make good times even better and others to help make challenges easier. In the words of Jack Black “they only work”.

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:

1. Outcomes, outcomes, outcomes
2. Manage state transitions 
3. Positive emotion increases learning 
4. Question, question, question, question 
5. Designing in the right place 
6. Eating and sleeping 
7. Make it bigger 
8. Less is more 
9. Listen to yourself 
10. If it's not working do something different 

I'll be expanding on them over the coming months but perhaps, even as you read this list again, it'll remind you to start to use a technique that you've stopped using, or to re-learn a technique that's escaped from your conscious memory.

This week's call for action…

• Re-read my top ten again. Even before you get more detail on each, are there any that you know will help you if you started doing them again? If so, start immediately.
• What is your top ten? Write them down; simply list the things that always work when you do them. Start with training tools or techniques and if it helps do it for other areas of your life.
• As I explore my top ten in more detail, notice which you can apply to improve your results even further.

However, there is a technique used by software companies that is an excellent training device in a wide range of settings called 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, and ask questions about clarity, focus, state, (are you having fun yet?) and the 5 principles of brain-friendly learning and how well you are reflecting them in your design.
• Walk through as a trainer to check any materials, resources or additional research you need to do.
• Walk through the project as a client and check you have enough visibility on outcomes, steps and stages, and results.

It's often a great way of teaching concepts so that learners really “get it” too. For example, on a Finance course, have the learners “become” bundles of cash moving through the business to help them understand concepts like cash flow, profitability, ROI, and so on.

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.

Action:

• What can you have your learners “become” to help them make meaning?

“Start with the end in mind” Steven Covey

Way back when I studied my Certificate in Training Practice, it was drilled into me that designing appropriate performance objectives was the key to a good training course. I still remember `performance, standard, condition', and that the performance had to be observable and/or measurable. I have to say this approach stood me in very good stead AND I found that it didn't quite go far enough.

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. We often want people to live, breathe and ooze with a particular philosophy. Fitting this into `performance, standard and condition' is, at best, limiting.

Secondly, my experience is that objectives often have us operating at the wrong `chunk size'. For example designing a great set of objectives to get people to demonstrate that they can use a CRM system (small chunk), won't achieve the increased revenue that is needed to make the investment in the new system and the training worthwhile. Having an outcome that every advisor will use the system to increase their sales leads month on month (a higher chunk size) will.

I always, always, always get absolutely clear on what my outcomes are before I start designing. Often, they are crystal clear from the data gathering I've done. If not, I'll work with the client to ensure that my outcomes match theirs. Either way, outcomes are always what I will see, hear or feel the learners doing when they are applying the learning in the real world.

It may be increasing their sales, retaining more customers, designing using the five principles or delivering training in less time with improved feedback. Whatever the outcome, it's very tangible and therefore very easy to measure. My outcomes also have a link to how the learning will impact on the business. Often there would need to be some additional data analysis to provide a return on investment figure however the basic success of the intervention would be easy to measure - the outcome will either have been achieved or not.

Through all this, the most important factor of setting the outcome clearly is that I know exactly what needs to be included in the learning intervention. Take the CRM system intervention example I used earlier. Linear objectives could well lead to a training course focussing on getting the learners completely clear on every working area of the system (including areas they won't use), while neglecting how the system can be used with clients. The outcome of increasing sales would lead me to focus the systems training on just the parts they need to do this, and concentrate more on application in the real world, potentially blended with some additional sales or communications training. The content would be very different.

For me, outcomes only work.

This week's call to action

• Look at an existing training intervention that needs to be updated.
• Ignoring the current content, re-write the outcome for the programme. When the training has been outstandingly successful, what will you (and the business) see, hear and/feel the participants doing? How will you know it has been outstandingly successful? 
• Check the current content against your new outcome. Will this course ensure that you the learners achieve the outcome? 
• If the answer is no, redesign your programme using your new outcomes.

This week’s FriendlyBrain Tip comes to you from Patrick Hare of Kaizen Training. Kaizen Training Limited is a well-established consulting and training firm based in the UK and offering its services to the global business community. Training for Excellence is a leading-edge Train the Trainer company based in the U.S. and providing training programs internationally. For more information, contact us at info@wetrain.biz 

"Four!" several children say, some of them holding up four fingers.

"That's right, four," says the teacher, completing the equation and pointing emphatically at the number four. "And if you want to check your work, you can add together the four and the eight"— she makes a sweeping motion around the four and the eight—"and you should get twelve" She cups both hands together, as if bringing the twelve, the eight and the four together. The children nod their heads in understanding.

The teacher, like most people, gestures as she speaks. 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. David McNeill, a professor of psychology and linguistics at the University of Chicago, calls gesture "the long-neglected sister of language." McNeill and others have found that speakers use hand gestures to illustrate concrete images as well as abstract concepts. A student describing an algebra word problem about continuous change is likely to use sweeping or arcing gestures; but the same student, if describing a problem about discrete change, is likely to use choppy or zigzagging motions. Teachers would do well to be aware of the gestures they use in the classroom, says Susan Goldin-Meadow, a professor of psychology at the University of Chicago, because they "offer students a second window onto the task, one that students do take advantage of."

Goldin-Meadow and colleagues published a study in the Journal of Educational Psychology showing that students in small math tutorials were more likely to learn new concepts when teachers used gestures that appropriately reinforced their message. The teachers' gestures served not just to direct the students' attention to the numbers in the problem, but conveyed problem-solving strategies not directly expressed in speech. A teacher explaining the concept of mathematical equivalence might say, "Both sides of the equation have to be the same," first making flat palm gestures under one side of the equation, and then under the other.

Children were significantly less likely to learn if the teacher did not gesture or inadvertently used a gesture that did not correspond with her verbal instructions—a mismatch.

Goldin-Meadow found that all eight of the teachers studied produced mismatches about 20% of the time, often when explaining what not to do. In explaining strategies for solving a problem such as problem 3 + 4 + 5 = __ + 5, the teacher might say, "You need to make both sides of the problem equal," but point to all four numbers. The problem is that when children point to all four numbers in such a problem, said Goldin-Meadow, they mean to indicate that they would add all four of the numbers. When they wrongly repeat that strategy, Goldin-Meadow said, "the teacher is shocked as to where the child came up with that answer. When in fact, if you look a turn back, the teacher gave them that strategy with her hands."

Michelle Perry, an associate professor of educational psychology at the University of Illinois, has carried Goldin-Meadow's research into the classroom. She just completed a three-year study that looks at how teachers use gesture and other forms of nonverbal representation, including manipulatives, pictures, or writing. "A whopping amount of information is communicated in the non-spoken channel," says Perry. "We found that teachers use some sort of non-spoken representation every ten to twelve seconds, and approximately 50% of those are gestures that convey a concept."

In fact, humans seem to be hard-wired to gesture when they speak. 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. Obviously, the young people had never seen gestures, and so had no model for gesturing. "I think this really does suggest that gesture is an important part of the whole speaking game," Goldin-Meadow says. She suggests that gestures may reflect or even facilitate the thinking that underlies speaking, adding "We don't know much about [the area of the brain] that generates language, let alone gesture. But we do know that gesture and speech are very much integrated at the behavioral level, that they're nicely timed with one another, and that they're semantically coherent."

This week's action suggestions:

• Pay more attention to the gestures you are using when you're training. Have a buddy watch you and give you feedback afterwards - or video yourself. Are your gestures helpful and congruent, or confusing?

This week’s FriendlyBrain Tip comes to you from Kimberly Hare of Kaizen Training. Kaizen Training Limited is a well-established consulting and training firm based in the UK and offering its services to the global business community. Training for Excellence is a leading-edge Train the Trainer company based in the U.S. and providing training programs internationally. For more information, contact us at info@wetrain.biz 

For those who haven’t come across it yet, I’ll try and explain it briefly.

Second Life is a virtual world. It is a bit like a computer game, but also very different. The players (residents in the world) are able to create their own content, their own living and working space, their own objects – and it is growing very quickly into a community of businesses, shops, learning and social environments. 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.

Don’t think this is just for nerds who need to “get a life”. As I said, it is growing very fast, and businesses and educational institutions are starting to explore its potential.

There are people building "homes" and renting them. People designing clothes, toys, artwork, and clever scripts that animate things. Many people share by giving or copying their stuff, but also many are selling services and products. There are hundreds of artists and film-makers working alongside programmers to stretch boundaries and imagination.

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. There are already several libraries, newspapers, museums and classes running.

Of course, there are fairly dubious activities going on – as in real life – but also many areas of interest to those of us passionate about learning. See http://secondlife.com/community/education.php 

There is a separate "Teen Grid" where adults are not allowed. One of the projects running there is called Global Kids - building and connecting a community of socially aware young people.

There are two-way conferences taking place both in the virtual space and in the real world - the same for live music, learning and just about anything.

There is a "Zen" healing community.

These are only the tip of the iceberg – and the possibilities for interaction, learning and meaning-making are endless.

There is no charge to set up a basic account - have a look on the website for the requirements.

A Depressing Thought?

Exploring Second Life has been causing me to reflect on all sort of other things too – like the identity we choose for ourselves. In Second Life, you design and create your own avatar – you can be anything/anybody you like – male, female, young, old, noisy, quiet, friendly and so on, and you completely choose your own appearance and name. Last night I logged on to Second Life and whilst exploring, ran into a group meeting for people whose avatars were “depressed”. 

Now, don’t get me wrong – if people feel supported through doing this, more power to them. But I can’t help asking myself why anybody would join a virtual world where they can be anything they want to be – and then CHOOSE an identity of “depression”?

And then it struck me that actually the same is true in real life. We are “making up” our own reality all the time. And, as long as you’re making it up, why not make it up brilliant?

This week’s action suggestion:

Go check out www.secondlife.com

Spend some time reflecting on these questions:

• Who would you be if you could be anybody you chose?
• How are you moving towards that identity?
   

• 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.
• Only train on subjects you are passionate about. 
• Raise the bar for yourself and your learners. Raise your expectation about what they will go back and do differently. 
• Lose the PowerPoint! 
• Learn to let go. Content isn’t the experience and sometimes learners need to go off track to get the real learning. 
• Build a great relationship with your client (internal or external). Be business partners rather than a service department. 
• Build your outcomes with your client. Once you’ve got the outcomes right, design and evaluation are much easier. 
• State is part of the design process. Plan what states will be best to learn the content, and design activities that drive the learners into that state. Oh, and be in that same state while you are designing.

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)
• Educating Rita (to re-connect with how new worlds open up when you’re excited about learning)
• A Bridge Too Far (Just because you have ‘rank’, doesn’t mean you are always right.)
• Field of Dreams (Sometimes your decisions don’t have to make sense to those around you. If you want it, do it!)
• Crash. (The new version with Matt Dillon, not the other one! It shows how one small quote/decision can have widespread ramifications.)
• The Office. (Not strictly a film I know but I challenge anyone to watch David Brent and not cringe at something they have done or seen themselves in business. Especially the training episode!)
• Dead Poet’s Society. (Because that’s what education is all about…Carpe Diem!)
• Remember the Titans. (An encapsulation of all that is good about learning, leadership and change!)
• Coach Carter. (As above! Also for anyone who still disagrees with our belief that there is no such thing as a difficult delegate, only an inflexible facilitator!)

It is interesting for me that a number of these are true stories or are based on true stories. May be there is something here about ‘keeping it real!’

More books that everyone should read…

Before I give you them I should make a couple of things clear. Firstly there is a huge reading list on our website, if you’ve not visited this before, please do. Some of the best works in the fields of learning, leading and change are listed there.

Next, this is just so hard for us to do! We are reading constantly, I’ve got three books on the go right now (A Return To Love, An Insider’s Guide to Getting Your Book Published and The Skilled Facilitator). I also revisited three other books today for some work I’m doing with some coaches of future Olympic athletes next week…and I probably read less than some of the other members of the team.

To try and choose just three out of the hundreds and thousands that we’ve learned from was a joyful and almost impossible task.

At the time of writing here are our recommendations

• The Art of Possibility, by Benjamin and Rosamund Zander 
• You Can Have What You Want, by Michael Neill
• Tools for Engagement, by Eric Jensen 
• The Naked Leader, by David Taylor 
• The ‘Rules’ Series, (Rules for Work, Rules For Management, Rules for Life)
• How To Be Brilliant, by Michael Hepple 
• 51 Tools for Trainers, by Kimberley Hare and Larry Reynolds (Not just because Kim wrote it. It is the brain friendly toolkit for trainers.) 
• Solutions Focus, by Mark McKergow and Paul Z. Jackson. (So simple, so applicable!) 
• The Passion Test by Janet and Chris Attwood 
• The Power of Full Engagement: Managing Energy, Not Time, Is the Key to High Performance and Personal Renewal by Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz

This Week’s Call To Action 

• Do them, watch them, and read them!

This week’s FriendlyBrain Tip comes to you from  Richard Nugent of Kaizen Training. Kaizen Training Limited is a well-established consulting and training firm based in the UK and offering its services to the global business community. Training for Excellence is a leading-edge Train the Trainer company based in the U.S. and providing training programs internationally. For more information, contact us at info@wetrain.biz 

Later in the session I needed some exciting background music so I clicked a different icon and the Boo Radleys’ “Walking on Sunshine” filled the room.

Later on still I wanted to promote a sense of questioning and puzzlement and so used colours to partly hide what we were discussing – making the delegates try to work out what was behind the scribbles.

At the end I wanted to go through the whole session, re-visiting each area of learning. This time I used the screen shade to cover parts of each ‘page’. Everyone made a picture of each page in their minds as they tried to remember what each one contained – they almost couldn’t help themselves.

After the training event I wanted to email everyone a copy of the notes made so I saved it all as a .pdf file and sent it off.

OK, so how was this all done? I did it by using the board that so many training venues have been persuaded to buy but have never used. Interactive 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.

Things you can do with an interactive whiteboard during a training session:

• Use pictures to illustrate 
• Record delegates' ideas in the same environment as the main ideas 
• ‘Mind map’ - create it as the ideas come in, illustrate it with graphics, move elements as the map develops, use a variety of colours – all the time working with the delegates rather than presenting a finished item 
• Re-organise information in order of priority as a result of delegate input 
• Access live information on the internet 
• Save all notes and print out anything helpful at the end

Some possible techniques that make your input rich and multi-sensory:

• Embed sound effects (e.g. Simpsons sound clips, Mastermind theme tune)
• Add video content 
• Use colours creatively (Studies have shown people learn worst off a white background)
• Drag items around on the board, re-ordering, prioritising, grouping, and so on (Kinaesthetic learners really appreciate these moments)
• Hide information and reveal it bit by bit, (making learners create their own images and meaning)

Call to action:

• If you are one of the lucky ones who owns a board then dust off the instruction book and take another look.
• Find somewhere/someone using a board well and go and watch them.
• Make a stand and decide never to use PowerPoint again – with interactive boards there is a better way!

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 - anything from mild anxiety to overwhelm. Many people associate the excessively high levels of challenge to external factors such as tight timescales or new tasks. 

Here’s the twist though – our experience and research has shown that many of the excess challenges are actually created by internal pressures that we create ourselves. For example if when completing a project for our boss we are also trying to prove the manager wrong on a previous judgement of us - we are effectively doubling the pressure of the task. Another example would be completing a task while thinking about a recent mistake that we have made. As we think of the previous mistake and what we should have done instead, as well as doing the task, we are in effect completing two tasks simultaneously.

We’ve also applied this research in our recent work with professional footballers. Even elite players seemed to lose focus following mistakes – they focus on the mistake whilst playing in the here and now. This was clear in my recent work with a Championship player and former Under 21 international (for those of you not into football, this basically makes him pretty good!). His passing was uncharacteristically inaccurate. The previous ‘bad’ pass continued to play on his mind as he played the next pass. As he was focussing on that action, he was also mentally trying to correct the previous one; in effect the player was mentally playing two passes at the same – and even the best players can’t do that!

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. For example if they are completing a project for their line manager, they should focus purely on the tasks required by the project and trust that by doing this effectively it will create the right impression with the manager. Similarly in sport, focus purely on the task in hand (pass, tackle, shot) and trust that this will lead to the appropriate results.

This Week’s Call To Action…

• Revisit (or find out about) Csikszentmihalyi’s work on ‘Flow’.
• Think of a recent task that sent you into ‘overwhelm’. Consider the factors that created the feeling of stress or pressure. As you reflect, which of these were external factors and which were internal?

The next time you are faced with a similar situation focus simply on the immediate task (trusting that by doing this any other internal issues will look after themselves). Notice the positive results of this renewed focus.

Also see ‘The Complete Guide To Sport Motivation’ Ken Hodge ISBN 0-7136-7465-2

This week’s FriendlyBrain Tip comes to you from Richard Nugent of Kaizen Training. Kaizen Training Limited is a well-established consulting and training firm based in the UK and offering its services to the global business community. Training for Excellence is a leading-edge Train the Trainer company based in the U.S. and providing training programs internationally. For more information, contact us at info@wetrain.biz  

This got me reflecting on the advantages of miniaturisation - and that in turn brought back to mind a course I used to run many years ago. Whilst the course and some of the assumptions behind it have dated somewhat, one thing stands out as being of lasting value. As part of the (extremely expensive) resource pack, the learners left with a plastic credit card style wallet with a series of credit card sized cards which had reminders of the key models and processes from the course.

I've met a number of people over the years that still carry the cards in their wallet and refer to them before particularly tough meetings or interactions.

To give this proven approach a more Brain Friendly edge:

• Why not just give the learners an empty plastic (or leather if the organisation is feeling flush) credit card wallet and get them to design and produce a set of prompt cards?

• Get them to produce a set of prompt cards that capture the key learning and processes for quick reference in the live environment. Limit the cards to the number of pockets in the credit card wallet (otherwise they will just be miniature notes which go the same way as the ordinary sort).

• Credit cards these days come with all sorts of interesting backgrounds that they can emulate. For example use pictures of the delegates or particular moments during the programme as watermarks. You could even give each delegate a choice of different backgrounds. This way the cards and the wallet are not only a practical reminder but also an anchor for the states the group experienced during the programme.

• How about this for long-term set down? Put issue and expiry dates on the cards and at 6 months, a year and two years (or intervals appropriate to your organisation) send an expiry notice! At this point the group can reconvene and, through sharing results and experience, refine the guidance on the cards.

My belief is this will work better because:

• We tend to give more currency to self generated learning

• Learners can take credit for their learning and not give it to you

• Their interest in the topic will be encouraged beyond the workshop

• They will have easy access to the learning they have invested in

• On balance…. (Oh stop it!).

This week’s FriendlyBrain Tip comes to you from  Kevin Cherry of Kaizen Training. Kaizen Training Limited is a well-established consulting and training firm based in the UK and offering its services to the global business community. Training for Excellence is a leading-edge Train the Trainer company based in the U.S. and providing training programs internationally. For more information, contact us at info@wetrain.biz