Training Industry Magazine - September/October 2021 - 20

Picture this: A training session
is about to start. About 10 minutes
before class is set to begin, a huge
rush of people enters the room. Some
participants start wandering about
looking for a seat, others head straight
for the restroom or the coffeemaker.
Inevitably, whenever your training is
scheduled for one department or for
a larger " all-hands " training, one will
begin to see that participants tend to sit
next to the people they already know,
filling in the back row of seats. And
then there is always that group making
their presence known - talking loudly,
laughing and claiming a whole table as
their " kingdom. " So, you take a deep
breath and think to yourself - here we
go again.
If
this
training
scenario
has
ever
happened to you (or maybe it's just been
our experience), we have a strategy to
alleviate some of the uncertainty, allowing
the trainer to focus on the training. As
our scenario illustrates, the learners are
already looking for guidance, and they've
only just set foot in your classroom. How
do you handle it? What should you do
first? Welcome the introverted, quiet
ones or introduce yourself to the alphas
within the group? You already know
that there are personality differences
amongst your learners, but what about
their life experiences?
Luckily for our fellow L&D professionals,
we have some tried-and-true ways
to foster greater interaction among
participants. It is a known reality
that learners are diverse, so why not
capitalize on one of the critical elements
of
diversity:
varied backgrounds,
especially professional experience,
even if the experience is in various
industries. Organizations that want to
be leaders in training and development
are keenly aware that they must prepare
their training programs with perhaps
the greatest age variation that has ever
existed in the workplace, not to mention
the usual challenges of coping with varied
career experience, motivational factors
and multiple training and development
paths. Our strategy, then, is to utilize this
reality to both foster greater participation
and to drive our training objectives.
This article presents a facilitation
technique which can be added into
| 20
any company's training toolbox. Here
are three areas on which this article
will focus:
How to utilize a round-robin
technique to add networking
opportunities and skills, while
also showcasing the varied level
of experience and expertise in the
training session.
Illustrate how this technique
enables each participant a chance
to engage with co-workers he or
she may not otherwise be able to
interact with on a daily basis (or
even at all, depending on how
large the organization is).
Share how employees may benefit
from the variety of perspectives in
the training session.
The Technique
Typically, a round-robin is facilitated
like a tournament, challenge or
competition,
where each
person
has the opportunity to play with or
against one another. Some trainers
use it as a teach-back, or even to train
on a certain procedure or process
where each participant must fill in the
next or missing step in a procedure.
" Evil " but effective. In addition, a
round-robin training strategy is an
excellent technique to use group
settings whenever a trainer wants the
participants to generate ideas.
technique allows each learner to gain
additional
perspectives
from
one
another, regardless of their experiences
or exposure to the training topic.
Although three categories of employee
experiences tend to be used most
often in our strategy, this facilitation
strategy is flexible and allows for
multiple applications to be utilized within
an organization.
When using this facilitation technique,
it is important, as a best practice, to
use the experiences and backgrounds
most appropriate to the organization
and to the training session's learning
objectives. We see our facilitation
strategy as a " fresh take " on the classic
round-robin:
In our case, we wanted participants
to share their experiences in order to
generate possible solutions to some
company challenges. Our round-robin
The goal: To foster multiple
perspectives on a given training topic,
especially effective at training sessions
which are focused on problem-based
scenarios, solution-generation or for
strategic planning.
Training Industry Magazine - September/October 2021

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Training Industry Magazine - September/October 2021
