Last week, on our family holiday in Centre Parcs, we did the high ropes course (complete with a zip wire over the lake to finish!).

I don’t consider myself a particularly brave person, but I’m pretty fearless on these courses, because I KNOW I’m safe. Not all of the obstacles are easy. Some of them stretch me physically, but I know that if the worst happens, I’ll just be left dangling. I’ll be embarrassed, a bit sore maybe and have to wait to be rescued, but then I’ll just carry on.

Without the harness, I’d be a heck of a lot more cautious, quite scared, and may not even trust myself to try.

And of course, there’s a metaphor in this! In professional terms, the SESSION PLAN is the harness. It ensures our safety, as we’ve thought everything through. If something unexpected happens, the session plan will rescue us and get us back on track. We won’t be left dangling for long. With a robust session plan behind us, we can be braver, have the confidence to push ourselves and throw ourselves into the experience.

If you deliver training without a session plan, you may be unconsciously limiting yourself, or at least making things harder that they need be. And if you don’t use one because you don’t know HOW to design one, this short online course can help you.