As I get older, wiser, more knowledgeable, more skilled ... and more impatient, ... OK, and more stroppy, I am increasingly dissatisfied with the idea of rocking up and banging out a few training courses and calling it a learning and development strategy. It doesn't matter how good the workshop is, how dedicated and talented the facilitator is, if the learner goes back to an environment that doesn't support learning. This means that I am increasingly interested in, increasingly fascinated by ......
Jan 31, 2017•42 min•Transcript available on Metacast Despite our best efforts, our thorough preparation, and our fantastic facilitation, sometimes training programmes don't go as well as we hope. Sometimes people turn up with quite different expectations of what the event is all about, or they feel like political prisoners who have been coerced into attending by managerial pressure, or perhaps they are seeking to spend a day playing with their phone instead of working! In this podcast Sunita Sehmi talks about her approach of engaging before, durin...
Nov 15, 2016•46 min•Transcript available on Metacast Hi I'm John, and I'm biased. I am not the only one. You are too. In fact all human beings are born with a set of biases and mental shortcuts that help us survive and deal with the world around us. In the past such biases were vital to survival. We didn't need to worry about being fair and inclusive when we were living in caves; we were more concerned with finding the next woolly mammoth and avoiding being eaten by lions. Issues such as creating a diverse community were way down our priority list...
Oct 15, 2016•1 hr 3 min•Ep 36•Transcript available on Metacast I have found SDI (Strengths Deployment Inventory) to be a really valuable tool in leadership development, despite my being a skeptical curmudgeon about most of these workplace psychometric tools. What convinced me was partly personal - I felt it offered valuable insight into my own self (not a pretty sight) - but also because of the impact I've seen it have within the training room. I've used it mainly for leadership development, so that's my main experience, and I've seen many people (not every...
Sep 15, 2016•1 hr 6 min•Transcript available on Metacast I've never been a big fan of SMART objectives. I accept there is wisdom in the acronym, but I think the process tends to eclipse the most important things about performance objectives: they should provide clarity, challenge and motivation, and when delivered they should add value to the organisation. I made this point in a previous podcast ( The secrets of accelerated learning: what's your objective? with Krystyna Gadd ) and was contacted by Garry Platt who disagreed with some of what I said and...
Aug 31, 2016•48 min•Transcript available on Metacast A few months ago we chatted with Krystyna Gadd about her Five Secrets of Accelerated Learning , and in this podcast we drill down into the first and most important of those: writing learning objectives that link to the business strategy and the objectives of the learners. Apologies that it's a bit long, but when you get talking about this sort of thing it can be hard to stop! Krystyna Gadd is a leading authority on accelerated learning and its application in the UK. As an engineer in a former li...
Aug 16, 2016•58 min•Ep 33•Transcript available on Metacast In this episode of the Trainer Tools podcast, I welcome back Garry Platt to continue discussions on his specialist subject: Transactional Analysis. Transactional Analysis, or TA, is a theory of how humans interact with each other - its main application being to help understand human behaviour and communication: each interaction between people being called a "transaction". It was developed by Canadian psychiatrist Eric Berne and has been a tool in the trainer and coach toolbox for many years in h...
Jul 15, 2016•51 min•Ep 32•Transcript available on Metacast It's been a while since we did a short episode and I've had this one in the can for a while, so I thought I'd edit it up and put it out. In this episode, I welcome back Seema Sarawgi who talks about a simple way to split larger groups into smaller sub-groups for activities. There are lots of ways to do this that are more interesting than saying "1, 2, 3" that can be fun and energising, can break down barriers and can lead into content or fit with teambuilding themes. Seema Sarawgi is a Learning ...
Jul 01, 2016•10 min•Transcript available on Metacast The life of a training facilitator is not as glamorous as it might seem to the casual observer. There's a lot of travel, but that just means a lot of time in airports or stuck on long and boring motorways. L&D professionals don't typically travel in hot air balloons with personal menservants called Passepartout - the budgets rarely stretch that far. It's not just the solitude of travel, it's the loneliness of being in a group of learners in a workshop, but needing to keep distant from them. We e...
Jun 15, 2016•34 min•Transcript available on Metacast Time is running out and you've got so much more content to squash in to the training course ... what can you do? Easy, just drop the action planning session you have penciled in for the end of the day! According to Emma Weber, expert in learning transfer and author of two books on the subject, this would be exactly the wrong thing to do. In this episode - the longest Trainer Tools podcast by a country mile - Emma explains how action planning done well can be the key tool in ensuring knowledge an...
May 15, 2016•1 hr 1 min•Ep 29•Transcript available on Metacast I am not the world's best at planning, and probably wouldn't rank very highly at following a plan either. I've often felt that this was a weakness - I know it's also a strength (I am good at thinking on my feet and coping with change), but it's also true that it mightn't be such a bad thing to plan ahead and perhaps stick to a schedule every now and again ... so, when Paul Levy proposed talking about the role of improvisation in training delivery, I was rather excited! In this podcast he talks t...
Apr 15, 2016•39 min•Ep 28•Transcript available on Metacast Evaluation is the most neglected part of the L&D cycle. My guess is that this is because most people in L&D prefer to be in training rooms or designing workshops, or creating transformational strategies to allow individuals and organisations to reach their potential ... I'm getting carried away now ... the point is that few of us get excited about the subject of evaluation. Merle Van Der Voorde was no exception, and wasn't exactly thrilled when asked to deliver an evaluation project for the vari...
Mar 15, 2016•37 min•Ep 27•Transcript available on Metacast Stories are the oldest and best way of passing on information in an engaging and memorable way. They are a key tool in learning, and a nice break from PowerPoint and flip charts, and they can be used to make things easier to remember, to raise a particular issue for discussion, to challenge the way people think, and to make learning easier to transfer back to the workplace. We don't need to rely solely on real things that have happened either - although real life stories are really good - we can...
Feb 15, 2016•37 min•Transcript available on Metacast Accelerated learning is a term that is oft heard, but not oft understood, and even less oft applied effectively. It's not just about playing some music, putting a load of fiddly toys out, and then forcing delegates to flip chart stuff for hours, there's more to it than that. In this episode, I talk to accelerate learning expert Krystyna Gadd about her five secrets of accelerated learning: five areas that need to be considered to ensure that a learning event takes full advantage of all the benefi...
Jan 15, 2016•32 min•Transcript available on Metacast Accelerated learning is a term that is oft heard, but not oft understood, and even less oft applied effectively. It's not just about playing some music, putting a load of fiddly toys out, and then forcing delegates to flip chart stuff for hours, there's more to it than that. In this episode, I talk to accelerate learning expert Krystyna Gadd about her five secrets of accelerated learning: five areas that need to be considered to ensure that a learning event takes full advantage of all the benefi...
Jan 15, 2016•33 min•Transcript available on Metacast With so much great content available freely online, why would anyone bother paying for a training course? It's almost like people can go round learning stuff, willy-nilly, without us learning professionals getting involved at all! Obviously that would never do, so what can we do to rise to the challenge of technology? In this episode of the Trainer Tools podcast, I talk to Larry Reynolds about his ideas for the future of the training facilitator, including his experimental use of social networks...
Dec 15, 2015•48 min•Transcript available on Metacast In this short extra episode of the Trainer Tools podcast series, I talk to Seema Sarawgi about a simple but effective technique she uses in teambuilding events. The Paper Tower is very simple to prepare for and run, and can be used as a quick way to get people talking and moving about, or to develop deeper learning around teamwork, planning, communication and leadership in the context of the organisation. Seema Sarawgi is a Learning and Development professional with around 8 years of experience ...
Nov 28, 2015•11 min•Ep 22•Transcript available on Metacast Some things come up again and again in learning needs analyses, whatever the organisation, whatever the circumstances, and "assertiveness skills" (or something similar) is one of those things. It crops up in the middle of loads of different structured training courses, it forms part of many coaching relationships, even pops up on teambuilding workshops from time to time. It seems like many of us human beings just aren't naturally that great at being assertive in a positive way, we tend to be eit...
Nov 15, 2015•36 min•Transcript available on Metacast Many managers are keen to create great teams, and there's no better way to do this than ask someone from the training department to come along and deliver a teambuilding day! This is true of internal and external training providers equally, and although a teambuilding session can be truly effective and a lot of fun, it can also be an enjoyable waste of time, or even a total disaster. In this episode of the Trainer Tools podcast, I talk to Paul Tizzard, author of The Teambuilding Pocketbook, abou...
Oct 15, 2015•44 min•Transcript available on Metacast Most of us working in learning and development get involved in training delivery. This usually involves a bit of teaching and a lot of facilitation. We work this out over many years. Maybe we start by giving PowerPoint lectures, and only over time, as we learn more about our craft and gain in confidence, are we able to take a step back and focus on the process and a lot less on the content of training sessions. This is facilitation: the management of the process that allows learning and understa...
Sep 25, 2015•53 min•Ep 19•Transcript available on Metacast More and more people are turning to the Internet for training opportunities. Face to face courses are expensive, often in inconvenient locations, and at fixed times in the distant future that may not suit your requirements. They survive because they're often very good. You get the opportunity for social interaction and discussion, key factors in creating knowledge and understanding, and it's a very engaging experience away from normal work so you can focus and get on with it ... but the drawback...
Sep 10, 2015•45 min•Transcript available on Metacast Cultural diversity can be a real minefield. It's very easy to put your foot in it and say or do the wrong thing, making learners feel vulnerable and uncomfortable. All of this cultural diversity business puts a host of precarious obstacles in your way. You want them to engage with the course and the other learners, you want them to enjoy the experience, and of course (most importantly) you want them to learn. They won't do this if they feel threatened, unsafe or insulted because of some avoidabl...
Aug 25, 2015•42 min•Transcript available on Metacast I didn't want to leave a big gap over summer, so I thought I'd chuck in another short podcast about a simple energiser, or icebreaker (it can be either, or both) that anyone can use on any course. It's not just an icebreaker though, it also has positive health benefits (see here ), including preventing hair loss! Something I wish I'd known about a few years ago. Seema Sarawgi explains how she uses this and how it's a simple, fun and energetic way to start a training day. Seema Sarawgi is a Learn...
Aug 01, 2015•8 min•Ep 16•Transcript available on Metacast It is a rare performance management training course that doesn't include the ubiquitous SMART acronym within it - and it is a rare organisation that doesn't demand its people create a yearly clutch of SMART objectives to meet the needs of their performance management process. And that's the problem. SMART objectives are often written to meet the needs of the process - not the people - they are written to fulfill the requirements of the clever acronym, but not actually to respond to the particula...
Jul 25, 2015•26 min•Transcript available on Metacast R equals e to the power of minus t over s. Or, to put it another way, people forget about 80% of what they learn on a training course. That might not be exactly true, Ebbinghaus's research and "curve of forgetting" equation is not the most rigorous of science, but it's probably true-ish and that's good enough for this podcast! In this episode I talk again to Roger Greenaway, an expert in experiential and innovative training methodologies. We talk about what "learning transfer" really means, and ...
Jul 10, 2015•47 min•Ep 14•Transcript available on Metacast Human beings need to feel comfortable to be able to learn. To feel comfortable within a group they need a sense of acceptance and control. To build rapport with other learners and the trainer, they need to go through rituals. Icebreakers can help us do that. However, they can also help us achieve the exact opposite. If they are not well designed for the course content and the group they can make people feel uncomfortable and wish they were anywhere else but in your training room! In this episode...
Jun 25, 2015•41 min•Transcript available on Metacast I thought it'd be a bit of fun to chuck in the odd short podcast at random intervals (this might stretch the definition of "fun" to breaking point) in a new sub-series of casts called TT Shorts. This is the first one, from our old friend Jon Kersey, and it's a quick and easy technique you can use during teambuilding events. Jon Kersey has over 15 years experience in the training and personal development world, significant experience of the retail (The Burton Group, Comet and River Island), finan...
Jun 17, 2015•11 min•Ep 12•Transcript available on Metacast How we begin learning events is vital in setting the right tone for the day. To get the best learning, we want to create a creative a safe environment that is fun and allows for people to express themselves playfully, allows for mistakes, lets people feel that they can challenge and be challenged, and above all exposes the learners to views and perspectives different than their own. There is no one single magic bullet for achieving this, it's done through lots of little things that together cont...
Jun 10, 2015•23 min•Ep 11•Transcript available on Metacast In this episode of the Trainer Tools podcast, John Tomlinson talks to Larry Reynolds about three different ways he uses stories during his training events. Stories are memorable, they're fun, and they can be used to help break down barriers, build relationships between the trainer and the delegates, and to help establish credibility. Larry Reynolds is managing partner of Courageous Conversations at Work . He help business leaders to create high performing teams where people love to work. If you ...
May 25, 2015•39 min•Ep 10•Transcript available on Metacast "Some learning happens in the training activities, but there's a whole lot more learning that can happen in the review process" - that is the philosophy behind Roger Greenaway's Active Reviewing model. In this episode of the Trainer Tools podcast, I talk to Roger about his method to not only keep the energy, enthusiasm and inclusion of training activities high during the debrief session, but also to dig deeper and maximise the learning opportunities from training room activities. Roger Greenaway...
May 10, 2015•50 min•Ep 9•Transcript available on Metacast 
