It's always amazed me how training works. You take a bunch of fully autonomous adults in a room together - and there is an automatic consensus about the conventions we operate under. Yes, we socialise, crack jokes, make conversation, have fun. But it's not a social situation in the normal sense, apart from in the breaks.
The conventions around how we operate in a training context form an unwritten social contract. Most of us are unaware of it, and just naturally enter into it. Someone tells the others what to do - and they do it!
It was trainer extraordinaire Rich Allen who first made me conscious of just how extraordinary the training context is. He pointed out that as trainers, once we've built rapport with our trainees, we can say things like, "Now go back into your groups for this activity," or "Pick up your materials and move to your new places." He said we use a "special trainer voice" for this - it's friendly - but it's also clear and commanding. And he made us all burst out laughing when he said that you'd never use that tone of voice at a dinner party - imagine saying, "Pass the salt" in "trainer voice"! It's a very specialised tool to be used only in a specialised context.
So why would a roomful of adult professionals, each and very one of whom is an expert at his or her job, submit to "trainer voice" in a workshop?
Well, that's the convention!
All animals learn from each other, and humans seem to spend the longest time doing so, in our childhood, adolescence and early adulthood. But we may be more rare in that, at intervals throughout our life (if we're lucky!) we also enter into formal and informal learning situations, some spontaneous, some institutionalised. And while we know that many people end up on training courses they don't particularly want to attend, most of us (including most of our reluctant trainees) still enter into the convention of the workshop when we get there.
That convention really is a mutual contract that does two main things. It allows the trainer to use "trainer voice" and other modes that focus attention, and it engenders in the trainees a willingness to embrace the process. And those two things are possible because we all know that we are doing it in a learning context.
So the role of the trainer is to be conscious of and respect that context, and the very specialised, highly evolved behaviours that go with it.
And while trainees "submit" to the conventional behaviours that allow the training to proceed in a timely and fully inclusive manner, adult learning also offers the joys of mutual respect and celebration of each others' expertise. Some of my most enjoyable moments in training have been when trainees have raised questions or commented on things in a way that reveals the depth of their knowledge and their interrogation of the training itself. That too is part of the convention: we are all learning together, and some of our best learning comes from challenging what we are told.
Good trainers remain aware of their own and their trainees' dynamics, and operate in the full knowledge that breaching the unwritten workshop contract will result not in revolution or an overt display of bad manners, but most often in suspicion and withdrawal - and, worst of all - a failure to learn effectively or a lack of willingness to apply the training at work.
I should add that there has been a long gap between blogs, as I've travelled to the UK to collect copies of my book and meet some great people there and in Europe. I'm now starting to promote the book and the speaking and training that will accompany it - more on this soon!
Find out more about Rich Allen and subscribe to his training tips at http://www.justrightevents.biz/.
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