Engage the Heart in Training

17^th June saw the very first live in-person event for the Training Designer’s Club. The latter part of 2023 and the first part of 2024 were (perhaps understandably) dominated by tech and in particular Artificial Intelligence. I released the “Save Time with AI Assisted Training Design” to help busy L&D practitioners use AI appropriately in the training design process – focusing on good practice and not carried away with all the things we COULD do!

AI is great, BUT… It’s only great at creating content, and content is only half the job of any L&D practitioner or trainer. We need to bring that content to life in a way that is meaningful to participants, that makes them want to do something with it and helps them to change their practice. In short, we need training to engage the heart as well as the head.

So this was the theme of the day.

It’s always tricky working with experienced, successful L&D people – what can I possibly share with them that they don’t already know?

But the day wasn’t about educating them – thankfully!

It was about recognising and harnessing the expertise in the room, sharing it around and bringing tools and techniques that may not have been used for a while back to top of mind. It was about helping them to understand why certain practices that they may have just discovered by accident work so well, and other don’t. It was about building on what they already do well and enhancing that.

You see trainers are (by their very nature) incredibly generous and they love to help others. All I had to do was great the structure and opportunity to do that.

So we had a great day:

understanding what engagement in training looks like
recognising the ‘moments of truth’ in the learners journey – from the very start to the very end
looking at the different theories that help us to design engaging training
exploring different tools and techniques we can use to create engagement
trying a few of them out

and considering how to work backwards from those lightbulb moments, and the actions put into practice to make sure that happens by building it into the design, and not leaving it all up to the facilitator on the day!

It was joyous to behold.

And everyone took away something new they can use to enhance the training that they design and deliver – which was my primary goal.

And I think this feedback says it all… We are HUMAN. We love to connect with other humans. We love to learn with other humans. We are emotional beings and when we connect with the material and the people we learn with, we are far FAR more likely to implement learning. (Indeed one attendee implemented an idea the very next day and got great feedback from her participants!)