Rhinos, Lemonade & Why Bad Training can be a Good Thing, part 2

 

The training is dry with no hands-on activities. 

The trainer reads straight from a PowerPoint slide. 

The presentation is one-way with no opportunity to share personal experiences or ask questions. 

We’ve all been there, and we all would rather have been somewhere else. Anywhere else. Bad training makes that chalk on the chalkboard sound seem pleasant. It makes [insert music you don’t like] seem enjoyable. You may prefer to eat stale popcorn while in the middle seat of a plane stuck on the tarmac with no AC, to sitting through another bad training. Take note learning professionals. 

In the spirit of making lemonade, there is no better way to improve your training or instructional design skills than to observe bad training. 

If your fellow participants are disinterested, silent, and likely looking at their phone, it is your opportunity to figure out why and add that to your list of things not to do. Is the training engaging, relevant, and focused on solving real problems? If not, what would you do differently to incorporate those three principles into your program? Do you feel motivated to apply the course content outside of class? Again, if not, determine why and vow not to repeat it. 

Oh, and one more thing: Why is observing bad training better than observing good training? Studies tell us that bad experiences and their impact on the human brain are more powerful (and more disruptive) than good experiences. A blend of avoiding bad training and modeling good training is going to be the best path forward, but you get a bigger bang for your buck when you avoid bad training.