|
The Bob Pike Group
14530 Martin Drive
|
|
The Top 5 Deadly Sins of Training, Speaking, and Presenting August 7, 2006 • By Bob Pike CSP, CPAE What are the Top 5 mistakes that cause people to walk out, ask for their money back, send letters of complaint, and in other ways torpedo your speaking, presenting and training efforts?
Over the years, I've asked audiences for their list of deadly sins that cause them to tune out the presentations that they have attended. Here are the top five that have come up repeatedly:
1. Appearing Unprepared - This does not mean that you are unprepared; it simply means that you seem to be.
2. Starting Late - Whether everyone is there or not, start on time. Otherwise, we penalize those who are on time and reward those that are late.
3. Handling Questions Improperly - This means putting off question, perhaps abruptly, by saying something like : I'll be covering that in a little while. Please wait until then." Or combining questions and deciding to give one answer to two slightly different question.
4. Apologizing for Yourself or the Organization - If there is a problem, in all likelihood 80% of your participants will not be aware of it. Take care of the people for whom there is a problem on an individual basis.
5. Being unfamiliar with Knowable Information - Example of this would be not knowing the names of the key executives who are sitting in on an executive briefing or not knowing the name of the organization to which you are making your presentation. I am sure most of you will see this coming, I once heard someone say "I really appreciate being invited to make this presentation to the American Society for Training Directors." Yep, you guessed it was supposed to be American Society for Training and Development.
If you would like to share your top deadly sins with our readers please use the e-Zine Editor contact form.
Look in the back of your Creative Training Techniques Handbook 3rd edition for a complete listing of all 22 Deadly Sins.
If learners are motivated, they retain more information. But can you extrinsically motivate your session attendees? Is it possible?
“While you can’t make your participants be motivated, you can create a motivating environment,” said Becky Pluth, vice president of training and development at The Bob Pike Group. Research shows that interacting with your learners “is one of the most powerful factors in promoting learning” while “interactions among learners is another” (Angelo 1993). And teachers who present the information in a dynamic manner and display a genuine interest in what they Getting people to use learning resources in the company library can be tricky, Kathleen Miller-Buettner and Susan Hayley-Gates say.
Their library has books, videos and audio tapes on communication skills, management skills, balancing work and home lives, and dozens of other topics.
But, as in many organizations, the materials once went mostly unused.
To encourage corporate library use—and learning—the training department initiated a TOM (theme of the month) Club. Membership is free. Each month has a topical theme – effective feedback, industry information and the like. Trainers, however, don’t disclose what the month’s theme is. Instead they post clues throughout the office and via email on the first day of each month. Employees guess the theme, placing their guess in one of the special TOM Club raffle boxes around the workplace. A great flip chart tip I learned years ago was to... |
|
