My 35 Lessons Learned as a Trainer

The previous year I wrote a blog post about my lessons learned as an Agile Coach. Because of the number of training I’ve given this year, I’ll focus my lessons learned on my role as a trainer. On behalf of Prowareness I’ve provided training like the Professional Scrum Master (via Scrum.org), Scrum Master Advanced, Scrum Foundation, and several custom-made in-house courses.

Initially, I thought this blog post would have 10 lessons learned, but I ended up with 35…

If you are a trainer as well, these lessons learned might offer you some inspiration, and I’d love to hear about any other personal experiences! If you attend training (who doesn’t?), these insights might help you give your next trainer some constructive feedback

1. Providing quality training requires craftsmanship. Everybody can give training. But not everyone can give training by which the participants are continuously engaged, challenged, and invited to discover and learn. Providing quality training requires you to be a teacher, storyteller, and “entertainer” all in one. So take the craft of a trainer seriously.

2. Be prepared. For every 2-day training, I’ll take at least half a day to prepare myself. I’ll update the training material, study the background of the participants (or the customer), and do some research.

3. Know your training material. As a trainer, you should master all the content you use. You should be able to explain it clearly in your own words using practical examples. Due to teaching, I discovered that I didn’t really understand every topic 100%. This forced me to do some more research and explain it to colleagues to assess my knowledge.

4. Bring sufficient facilitation equipment. A facilitation kit may contain learning aids (facilitation “toys” with purpose), paper rolls, paper cutting knife, masking tape, markers of all sizes, (super) sticky notes of all sizes, paper clips, sticky dots of various colors, glue stick and pushpins, pads of paper and pens/pencils, music speakers.

5. Provide clear directions to the training location. Nothing is more frustrating for participants than unclear directions to the training location. Make sure the direction is clear and that there are enough free parking spots.

6. Ask participants to prepare themselves. This is a very important part. By asking the participants to prepare themselves you will increase the chance of delivering high-quality training. For PSM training, I’ll ask everyone to study the Scrum Guide, watch the video “Product Ownership in a Nutshell” and already do the Scrum Open Assessment. This ensures everyone knows their actual knowledge of Scrum and will write down more detailed learning objectives.

7. Let them create their ideal room setup. After the introduction round, I invite the group to create their ideal room setup. If they want to use a desk, pick one. If they want to create a small team corner, go ahead. The first time I was extremely busy doing it on my own, and no matter how hard I tried, it just wasn’t ok for them. The best solution: let them figure it out! Something with self-organizing teams…

8. Create small teams. As an introduction exercise, I ask the group to form small teams and even pick a team name. During the training, they will do a lot of exercises as a team. It encourages collaboration, teamwork, and sharing experiences. Important: let them form their own teams. Never do it for them!

9. Use ELMO. Enough Let's Move On! Use ELMO as a work agreement to end discussions that aren’t relevant anymore for the majority of the group.

10. Create a knowledge base. At the start of the training, I create a flip-chart sheet to use as a knowledge base. During the training, it’s a shared responsibility to write down all the interesting books, articles, and movies that are mentioned. Especially with the upcoming Christmas days, it provides more than enough ideas for your wish list!

11. Provide a physical knowledge stack. Create a table with e.g. books, card decks, flyers, and articles related to the training. Not only it can provide useful information for the participants, but it also helps to create an atmosphere of knowledge sharing.

12. Use a parking lot. During training, participants will have questions that might be off-topic. By using a “parking lot” you can capture all the questions that may not necessarily have to be answered directly. Therefore I write these questions on a flip-chart sheet and discuss them later on.

13. Use a Minimal Viable Agenda. My biggest pitfall was (and maybe is…) stuffing too many topics in one training. This leads to rushing the transfer of knowledge, skipping interactions, moving every off-topic question to the parking lot, and all kinds of other bad stuff. Nowadays I use “bonus topics”. I define the minimal agenda I need to use and if there’s more time left I add some bonus topics to the schedule. These are my gifts to the participants.

14. Say no. I love a group that’s eager to learn. And I’m more than willing to fulfill their needs. But sometimes you just have to say no. During a recent training, the group wanted to know more about scaling. With only a few hours left — and given the remaining agenda and training goals — it was impossible to give this topic the attention it would need. It would cause more confusion than clarity. Therefore I just said “no” — ain’t gonna happen…

15. Be agile with your program. With every training, I’ve got a goal in mind that I want to achieve. In the beginning, I synchronize my goal with the participants learning objectives. The goal is fixed. However, the precise amount and type of topics are flexible. In collaboration with the participants, I refine the agenda. It’s their training. It’s up to me to support them to realize their learning objectives. And no, to me this isn’t a contradiction with #14.

16. Don’t provide all the answers. The best training I’ve attended myself are the ones that gave me the least answers to my questions… Challenge participants to think for themselves. Sure you can share war stories. But let them discover their own solutions.

17. Play some music. Music can be an extremely powerful instrument to use during training. I use it before starting the training to create a relaxed atmosphere. You can also use it during exercises when the music stops, and the time-box for the exercise is over, works great!

18. You’re a storyteller. I’ve been in lucky circumstances to learn from a few great storytellers (thanks to Stephan van Rooden). Ideally, you can provide a powerful story for every topic. Storytelling translates dry and abstract numbers into compelling pictures. A story is something that comes from the outside. But the meaning is something that emerges from within. When a story reaches our hearts with deep meaning, it takes hold of us. Once it does so, we can let it go, and yet it remains with us (via Steve Denning).

19. You’re a facilitator. A good trainer is a skilled facilitator. Because facilitators create an environment where learning can take place. Facilitators possess a set of specific training tools for their subject matter to ensure that knowledge transfer is effective.

20. You’re an entertainer. But this doesn’t mean you’re a clown. As Artie Mahal wrote: “In the art of facilitation (and training), 50% of success is preparation, and the other 50% is “theatrics”. With theatrics is meant keeping workgroups engaged, energized, and focused on the topic at hand while “entertaining” them with relevant stories, metaphors, exercises, and good humor.”

21. Feedback is your friend. Feedback is the breakfast for champions — or something like that. At least is very valuable to ask for feedback during and after the training. The Happiness Door hereby is a good practice. Besides asking for feedback, actually doing something with it is even more important.

22. Sharing is the new teaching. I love the concept of Learning 3.0 as described by Alexandre Magno. In learning 1.0 the expert defines the questions and answers. In learning 2.0 the learner defines questions, and the expert defines the answer. In learning 3.0 the learner defines questions and answers. Hereby the motto is “sharing is the new teaching”. It’s up to the trainer to create an environment where the participants are invited to share experiences and create a learning atmosphere.

23. Be aware of your presence. Hands out of your pocket, be approachable, smile, relax, and be energetic. The attitude and behavior of the group are a reflection of your own presence. So be a role model for the participants.

24. Know your tone of voice. What you say is obviously important, but even more important is ‘how’ you express yourself. Use as few words as possible to transfer your message. Don’t hide your message in a flood of irrelevant words.

25. Don’t mutter. Make sure everybody can hear you clearly.

26. Balance theory and stories. People love stories “from the trenches”. So do I. But use them wisely. Especially when you need to prepare a group for an assessment, war stories can also cause confusion when you explain the tailor-made approach you’ve applied. Within Professional Scrum Master courses I focus on “speaking Scrum”. Hereby I don’t always answer all their questions, but it’s also up to the group to discover their own answers.

27. Train from the back of the room. The concept of “Training from the Back of the Room” is about stepping aside and letting your learners take center stage as they discuss, question, reflect, experiment, participate, present, practice, teach, and learn from each other. When learners talk and teach, they learn. It embraces the earlier mentioned Learning 3.0 principles.

28. Do as little as possible. Continuously ask yourself “is this something I have to do, or can the group do this by themselves?” I always try to do as less as possible. And the group highly appreciates it. Let them do the work, it’s the best way to engage them!

29. Use a co-trainer. Especially with larger groups, it’s very useful and valuable to use a co-trainer. It helps you give everyone the right amount of attention, prepare upcoming topics, and balance group dynamics.

30. Learn by playing. A great trainer is able to use the concepts of game thinking and game mechanics to engage the group in solving problems and hereby increase their contribution. Although my style as a trainer is more focused on giving the group assignments and exercises to solve for themselves, I fully embrace the strength of a well-chosen game.

31. Visualize your message. Don’t bother a group with lots of boring PowerPoint slides. Instead, share a compelling story and write down the highlights on a flip chart sheet simultaneously. Create some nice visualizations to emphasize your message. If you want some inspiration, check the book “Bikablo 2.0“, it’s a visual dictionary and contains images for meetings, training, and learning.

32. Use PowerPoint slides! Yes, a seeming contradiction… Although I’m a huge fan of using flip chart sheets for visualizations, I’m not against PowerPoint slides. For explaining exercises or sharing quiz questions they’re very useful. Often the material I draw on a flip chart sheet is also available in a PowerPoint presentation which I’ll send to the group afterward.

33. Give them homework. Challenge the attendees with questions like “identify 3 actionable ideas or improvements from this class you will try”.

34. Provide after-care. After training, I always take sufficient time for some after-care. I’ll send some specific material to the participants, share observations individually, and will check if they succeeded in translating the lessons learned into their daily job.

35. Have fun! This is my advice with everything I do: have some fun! Share some jokes, entertaining stories, energy boosters, etc. Sure, the most important part is to ensure the group reaches its learning goals, but I’m convinced this can be achieved by having some fun together!

Wrap Up

There you have it, my 35 lessons learned as a trainer so far. Having the ambition to become an awesome trainer, my learning is far from done, so I’ll probably update this list next year.

If you take the most awesome trainer(s) you’ve ever had in mind, what was it that made this trainer awesome? I’d love to learn from your experiences!

Originally published at www.barryovereem.com on December 24, 2015.