As I look back over my career in Learning and Development, training has been a large part of it.
Induction training, mandatory training, clinical training; training on mental health, substance misuse, self harming and suicidal behaviour, the list goes on. I believe that can comfortably say that I have developed into a confident and comfortable trainer. I also have the certificates to back that up. And yet over the past three days of training I found myself struggling to engage a small group of people on a local Induction programme.
You see I am still learning!!!
As someone that is according too my Myers Briggs an INFP (in actuality I am really quite the introvert), I reflected on my own skills as a Trainer, “What was I doing wrong?” and “This must be awful for them” both went through my mind.
Thankfully my Internal Supervisor took over and I began to subtly change my approach and cut down a lot of open questions, started to bring in more examples and hey ho, the group still were reluctant to engage. Internal Supervisor jumps in again and I make more adjustments, I’ll pop in a few more group sessions and pop out of the room. Hey ho, they didn’t talk to each other.
Mmmmm! So what do you do?
I had been using a number of techniques to try and engage the group, use of direct questions, positive encouragement and trying meaningful eye contact and postive body language in order to increase engagement….. didn’t work.
So I had to take a more directive approach and ask what was was happening, explaining how I believed it was going…… silence….. until one person said that she thought it was because everybody was to ‘shy’, quiet and finding it hard to speak. Ok! The agreement was that I would simply continue and share the information, knowing that there would be little feedback so I could test the knowledge they had absorbed and the understanding they had gained (It was too late to throw a questionnaire into the mix as normally the Q&A would be done verbally). I will find out as I catch them all up for Individual supervision.
One session involved a practical assessment which normally I would do the assessment itself in the group setting, true to form they asked if they could do it individually, which wasn’t a problem.
Don’t get me wrong, the individuals in the group were pleasant, friendly and helpful. They sort of laughed at the jokes and nodded, made notes and did on the rare occasion speak. They didn’t ask questions, challenge and banter. Only at the very end did somebody tug my shirt and say that she didn’t understand something and could I go over it again.
Why am I blogging about this? Couple of reasons, I am still reflecting on it and now looking to see if I need change the content of the Induction, I am questioning my own presentation skills. And I am questioning the educational system that leaves people with the inability to engage with learning in a positive and meaningful way.