What is the secret of an efficient training session? Below we will unveil 6 fail-safe tips on how to boost your participants’ engagement. Forget the balloons and confetti and let’s remember the 2 main goals of a successful training:
• full engagement and active participation of your audience;
• making sure that your ideas get across and are not forgotten an hour later!
1. Do not neglect the way you welcome your audience
If possible, analyze your audience: what expectations do they have, why did they sign up for this training? What is the key information that they should leave with?
Be practical: check the room in advance in order to avoid an embarrassing situation, like realizing that the WiFi isn’t working or that it’s impossible to connect to the screen while the audience stares at you and waits in silence. This kind of an awkward moment will be enough to make you want to disappear!
2. Choose the main idea
This idea is your best friend and ally: do not lose sight of it. When you are the only one talking for a long time, it’s totally natural to get off the subject and to forget the main idea. If you reformulate it and regularly repeat it, you will save everyone from drowning.
3. Forget endless PowerPoint presentations
PowerPoint is not a form of entertainment, sometimes it can actually seem like torture to the audience. Go for short presentations: maximum 20 minutes if you want to avoid losing the attention of your audience.
4. Be the MC of the training session
Connect to your audience, make them feel so comfortable that they will forget why they were complaining before entering the room.
A sense of humor always helps: if you hit home with a funny joke in the very beginning, you can be sure to have at least 15 minutes of your audience’s undivided attention.
Create interaction between the participants, that way the heavy feeling of collective loneliness will disappear. Case studies and simulations, games, quizzes: new technologies provide a whole range of fun-filled activities that are sure to make memories. People retain ideas better if a memory (or even a feeling of pleasure) is connected to it.
5. Be specific
Your best bet is a simple and relevant presentation: give specific funny examples with well-known companies and celebrities rather than making boring theoretical demonstrations. People will remember President Macron’s management problems with his cook much better than some obscure A settling a conflict with a mysterious B (and the more details you add to your story, the better, your example will stay in people’s memories for a long time).
6. Some help never hurts
Sparkup is a ready-to-use solution that helps to maintain attention and encourage participation of your audience during trainings. Sparkup platform is a set of activities created to boost your trainings.
- Digitalisation of training content
- Participants’ engagement (quizzes, polls, games, brainstorming)
- Evaluation of results (data analysis, skills mapping)
Zero-yawn guarantee included.
