Training

hard won lessons on presenting

I really enjoy speaking and facilitating and wanted to share some of the things I’ve learned over the years.

It’s always about the participants. Always. The worst, most boring, least engaging presenters make it about themselves. And no one cares. The best presenters think through every single aspect from the participants’ point of view.

 They are participants, not an audience. This may be semantics, but in my mind participants are involved in understanding and applying the material to their own lives while an audience is passive and just along for the ride. Great presenters engage everyone in the room.

 The participants don’t know what they don’t know. This was the single most freeing concept I ever learned about speaking. The participants don’t know what you intended to say so they don’t know when you skipped something. No point in getting hung up on your mistake. If it’s important, loop it back in appropriately. If not, let it go.

 “Winging it” is for complete amateurs. There is a huuuuuuge difference between knowing your material so well you are able to adjust to audience needs on the fly and making it up as you go. Very, very few presenters are able to go off the cuff and those who are able to are tapping into years of experience and material. Some people complain that preparing makes it mechanical, but if your presentation is mechanical it means you haven’t prepared enough to truly own the material. Respect your participants (and yourself) enough to prepare.

 PowerPoint is a great enhancement, but a lousy focal point. The best speakers I’ve seen have very, very little content on their slides. By only having the most important points, the slides are used to support the mood and tone and enhance and underscore the most crucial information. Anything more risks becoming a distraction and a crutch. Think of it like a tie – it needs to match the suit, it can stand out but should never be the focal point, and if you took off the tie the suit should still look great without it.

 Technology breaks. I was at a conference recently and watched as a speaker went through three laptops, two connecting cables, and several staff and volunteers before he was able to get his slides on the screen. Fortunately, he wasn’t dependent on his slides and just rolled into the presentation while the staff and volunteers got his presentation to work. Once the projector was working, he smoothly transitioned to using it. Never rely on technology more sophisticated than flipchart and markers. Use the technology, but be ready and able to give a full presentation without it.

Everything has a purpose. Every-little-thing. Everything. Don’t do that activity, don’t tell that funny story, don’t show that slide unless it directly supports your presentation. If it doesn’t have a purpose don’t do it. Ever.

Introverts can be great presenters. Never confuse introversion with shyness. Some of the best presenters I know are introverts and they use it to their advantage because they are naturally good at staying on point, keeping the focus on the participants, and never talking just to hear themselves speak. Introversion doesn’t matter and it’s not an excuse. A good presenter is a good presenter.

Mistakes are the best teachers. We all screw up, forget stuff, get it out of sequence, and say just the wrong thing. I can say I’ve learned the most about presenting and made the biggest improvements to my presentations from my errors, not my successes.

Care. This one is simple. If you don’t care, neither will your participants.

Have fun. Relax and enjoy it. Once you get past the nervousness and adrenalin dump, presenting can be great fun. And your participants will reflect your energy. If you’re enjoying it, they will too.

Your thoughts?

rock and roll presentation skills

A side effect of being a presenter and facilitator is that I cannot attend any training, speech, or event without mentally taking note of what they are doing well and what I could do to improve my own skills.20130205_234003

The other night I saw a concert with two local opening bands and a European headlining act on a world tour. A middle of the week show, in club with maybe 100 people, this was clearly not going to make the band rich – it was likely more of a chance to make some gas money to get to the weekend at a much bigger venue.

The local bands were good. For local bands. But there was a big contrast between the presentation skills of those who had day jobs and were musicians on the side and those who were full-time musicians. Lots to learn for anyone who gets up in front of others:

1. Engage the crowd. Connect with as many people as possible on as individual of level as possible. The headlining singer continually referred to the crowd as “friends”, pointed out people in the audience, brought signs people were holding up onto the stage to show them off, gave the audience a choice of what song they’d play next, repeatedly told the crowd how crazy/enthusiastic/loud they were being, and thanked the audience for coming out on a weeknight. Sound obvious? The local bands did none of this. What are the obvious things to connect with my audiences and classes that I’m not doing enough or at all?

2. Recognize ALL presentations matter. Whether in a stadium or a small bar, all shows matter. The headlining band had played 200 shows around the world in the past 10 months – that’s a show two nights out of every three. Yet, they showed no signs of boredom, exhaustion, or the sense that it was just one more gig. They played as though it were the most important show on the tour. Full out, completely committed, pouring sweat, not an ounce of energy held back. The local bands showed up and played as though it were just another show. Compared to the headliners, they were restrained, half-hearted, and holding back. As a presenter and facilitator it would be easy to fall into the trap of thinking I’ll just wing it, it doesn’t matter, it’s just a little presentation.

3. Make it about the audience, not the presenter. The local bands kept mentioning the CDs they had for sale in the back, that you could download them on iTunes, blah, blah, blah. Any words between songs were few and really focused on the band. Everything the headliners said – every single word– was focused on audience and how fun and great they were. It was clear the band was thrilled and grateful that everyone had showed up to see them. It would have been easy – almost expected – for the headliners to show up with rock and roll egos completely unchecked and complain, gripe, and moan about the small venue, small crowd, lack of attention they get, etc. This is a subtle, but really powerful difference. Our words reveal our focus – is the concern for the audience and participants or for ourselves? As a presenter I have the choice to punish the few that are fully engaged OR be thankful and build their commitment even further – guess which one leads to success and which one leads to rapid obscurity.

4. Keep it simple. Interestingly, both local bands had bass players with five or six string instruments, using sophisticated techniques to play complex lines. The headlining bass player used a traditional four string bass with a pick and often played just one note repeatedly or used comparatively simple bass lines. As a presenter it’s tempting to show off with technology, complicated materials, fancy language, credentials, etc. But that’s all about the presenter. Complex is the lazy route. Simple is difficult, it takes more time to do, and it feels unprofessional when you’re a novice. What amateur presenters miss is that simple often requires expert level judgment, effort, and refinement. Simple keeps it about the message connecting with the audience.

5. Have fun. It’s easy to get jaded and burnt out and feel like you’re not getting the respect you deserve. It’s hard to show up, connect with the audience, be grateful for any opportunity to get your message out there, and have a blast while doing it. Presenting is the greatest job in the world IF you enjoy it. If you’re not having fun, it’s a private hell. 200+ shows into the current tour and the headliners were smiling, playing, and connecting like there’s nothing else they’d rather be doing.

It’s funny how the things that set us apart are often not all that big on the surface. Could the local bands have done all this? Yes. Did they? Not really. They were more than skilled enough, but in the end were no more memorable than the background music the club played over the stereo between the bands.

A nice reminder I need to continually step up my intention, focus, and connection. I need to make sure I’m creating a great user experience and not getting between my message and my audience.

What thinks you?

stuck in yesterday: why is change so hard?

“You can’t get to who you’re meant to be tomorrow clinging to who you were yesterday.” ~ Robin Sharma (@_robin_sharma)

We want different results. We want to be a better leader, better networker, better at communication, better at managing our time, better, better , better. So we take classes and we read books and we get excited about the possibilities. It all sounds like it could really work and we can’t wait to get started.

And then…

We don’t. We don’t change. We wonder what’s wrong with ourselves. Why can’t we do this? Why is change so difficult?

Lots of reasons, really. Two of the biggest barriers are simply habit and our routines.

We have spent a lifetime building the habits that support our status quo. Twenty, thirty, forty plus years of habit rarely change after a class or a book. It rarely changes after a week of intense focused effort. It takes much more time and effort to truly replace one habit with another to the point where the new habit is completely reflexive.

We have also completely and entirely set up our lives to support us EXACTLY as we are right now. Our routines, processes, physical environment, etc. are all perfectly designed to maintain things just as they are. As an example, something as simple as eating healthier would probably require shopping differently – buying different food from different sections of the store, maybe even shopping a different store. Then it would likely require changing your routine so you had time to plan and prepare a day’s worth of food and snacks. Do you do it the night before, get up earlier, spend most of Sunday making meals for the week? And so on. None of it is impossible – it’s all pretty simple stuff – but if we don’t plan for it and realize that we need to change the routines that support our habits then pretty soon we’re eating fast food and snacking out of the vending machines again.

Or, if I truly want to become a better leader or better in my job, then I’ll need to create time to study, plan, think, reflect. I’ll need to seek feedback, evaluate it, and modify my plans accordingly. I’ll need to either invent extra time during the day (time is finite, so what am I going to give up?) or get better at time management or change my priorities and focus. It’s all completely possible and may not even be that hard, but it will require changing up routines and habits.

Personal change isn’t as easy as the infomercials suggest, but recognizing the difficulties and preparing for them makes it that much easier to avoid staying stuck in yesterday.

your customers know, do you?

I was recently reminded (yet again) of the importance of experiencing our systems and processes from the customer’s perspective. Of really understanding the customer experience.

We think we know what our customer goes through, we design our processes and systems to serve them. After all, we use the process all the time. The challenge is that we know how it is supposed to work, we know all its subtleties and nuances, AND we know the shortcuts. In many cases, we never experience the systems and processes we require our customers to use.

A quick example from my own life. A minor part of my job is overseeing a small company library. Employees can find a book on our computer system, check it out, and it will be sent to them via interoffice mail.

So here’s my embarrassing confession. For all my harping on the world about the need for great customer service, I have apparently never actually used the system to check out a book. As the library is 20 feet from my office it almost seems silly to go through the whole process. Instead of going through the whole process, I’d just go grab a book and mark it checked out in the system..

Then, while fixing a minor glitch, I decided to see the whole process from the customer’s point of view. I discovered that the automated emails they received when checking out a book made absolutely no sense. The emails were based on templates used to sign up for classes so they had statements like: Your supervisor has approved you to attend The Strategy Book. Ugh! Their supervisor had nothing to do with it and they weren’t going to attend a book. Fail.

It has been corrected, but it really bothers me because I know better. I know to routinely test processes. But I didn’t. It’s an important reminder that the little things really, really matter.

Think about it:

  • When was the last time you applied at your company, set up benefits, tried to change important personal information? Not using your administrator rights, but the way an actual applicant or employee would?
  • When was the last time you experienced the sales process from start to finish? Not just your part, but right up to when the customer has it in hand. Have you ever tried dealing with your own customer service or returns departments?
  • When was the last time you tried to become a customer of your company? What barriers made it more difficult than it should be?

The only way to find the roadblocks, weirdness, and hassles is to go experience it ourselves. My own situation was minor, but served as a reminder that the only way you’re really going to discover the little things is to experience the process, not as the customer is supposed to, but how the customer actually does.

 

tale of two burritos

Customer service makes or breaks a business and good enough just isn’t. This weekend, I ended up having burritos from two competing franchises. Let’s call them Good Burrito and Better Burrito. Both offer super fresh ingredients, make them with specifically the ingredients and toppings you ask for, are pretty quick, and are very tasty. I never really thought about the differences until sampling them back to back.

Good Burrito asked what toppings I wanted and shuffled me from person to person as the burrito moved down the line. By the end of the line, three different people had contributed to my dinner. Henry Ford would be proud of the assembly line efficiency. Better Burrito had one person who put my food together and what a difference that one person made.

Supergregarious, he seemed to truly be interested in my day. How was my Saturday going, was I working or off, where did I work, did I like it there? When adding ingredients he’d brag on them a little: These vegetables are great, we cook them with… You can’t go wrong with that salsa, it’s great on everything…

A couple of important points. This took NO MORE time, in fact it was probably quicker because I didn’t have to repeat what I wanted like I did when getting passed from person to person at Good Burrito. He never got bogged down in the conversation. I never felt like I was being interrogated. It never felt fake or forced. Instead he gave the impression that he was really interested in my day and in making me the perfect burrito.

Then when I got to the register to pay I asked to get a brownie. The woman at the register (also superfriendly) said, “Let me find you a good one. They put the old ones on top.” And she dug through the basket until she found one. It looked like all the others, but she proclaimed it worthy. When I decided to get a brownie to take home for my wife, she dug through the basket again.

Here’s the most important point: Whether they cared about me, my day, and my lunch doesn’t matter. What matters is that they made me feel like they did. It took no more time, cost no more money, and made all the difference.

The HR and business lessons I take from this:

Hire right! Here’s the secret to hiring people: hire people who give a damn. Nothing else matters unless they care. If they care, the rest is largely irrelevant.  I’ll take under qualified people who care over qualified but apathetic people any day. Qualified and they give a damn? Score! I suspect that the guy making my burrito was following a semi-scripted patter. But he was so fluid and did it so well that it came across as very authentic. And, he was clearly a very outgoing person and a good fit for a customer facing role. The woman at the register went out of her way to find a good brownie. It’s hard to train people to care or go above and beyond. Much easier to hire for it.

Train right. Again, I suspect that much of it was patter, but done so well it felt natural, not forced. That requires a lot of practice, role playing, feedback, more practice, etc.

Think twice about your dress code. Employees at both places were clean and well groomed. Except that the three workers I saw at Better Burrito had long hair (male), blond dreadlocks (female), purple hair (female), and a heavy emphasis on tattoos and face piercings. And they were supernice, not too cool for you, not angsty, not indifferent. Let’s see, person who gives a damn and has nose rings or one who is unpierced and indifferent? Hmmm, easy choice.

Sustained business performance requires great customer service. Great customer services requires great people. Great people requires an intense focus on hiring right and training well. That requires leadership that truly gets the DIRECT connection between people and performance.

The final lesson? Great customer service trounces good customer service every time. Good enough customer service never is.

all you need to know about training design (repost)

When training fails, it is generally because the learners haven’t understood the material on both an intellectual AND an emotional level. Intellectual level training focuses on the “what” and the “how”. What needs to be done and how do I need to do it?

We see this all the time. Where people say they don’t need training because they already know it, but they aren’t doing any of it. They haven’t truly connected with the “why”. Why is it important that I do it? What are the benefits of doing it or the consequences if I don’t?

There are only two reasons that humans do anything: 1) to seek pleasure; and 2) to avoid pain.  These are the same two reasons that humans learn anything. Why do we learn the newest version of Microsoft Office? To do our jobs better (pleasure) and to avoid failing at our jobs (pain). Why do we learn new exercises or diets? To get sexy and delay death.

So, no matter how much we read, research, discuss, and ponder, we never truly learn until we connect with the material at an emotional level. Everyone knows that smoking, drinking, or eating too much will shorten their lives. We know at the intellectual level, but often don’t get it at the emotional level (if we did, we’d stop). Until a person really, really connects with the consequences at an emotional level, intellectual warnings do zero good.

All great training – regardless of topic – teaches the what, how, and the why. And it does it in a way that each participant can individually understand and key into. Experience is the best teacher because it provides the emotional learning.

Will Rogers really understood this principle. He summed up everything important about training design in three sentences: “There are three kinds of men. The one that learns by reading. The few who learn by observation. The rest of them have to pee on the electric fence for themselves.”

Design and evaluate your training programs accordingly…

 

Note: this is a repost of my very first blog post from almost a year ago. Hope you enjoyed.

training is (still) stupid

“Training is a complete waste of time!” Not true, but that’s what I got out of an article in ASTD’s Buzznews published yesterday. A report by ILX Group “revealed that 63% of HR professionals and business managers conduct training to boost business capability.”

Pardon me while I go hyperventilate and scream in rage against my profession! So they are reporting that 37% conduct training for reasons unrelated to boosting business capability?! Anyone else see a potential problem? How about a real, right now, in your face problem? And some wonder why training is the first thing cut when money gets tight!

It gets worse: “30% said training had a positive impact on achieving profit.” SEVENTY PERCENT of those surveyed believe that training doesn’t have a positive impact on profit!!! Why are we bothering?

The actual focus of the article was that 40% of companies want tablet computers for training. Well, sure, if your training doesn’t do any good you might as well spend money on toys and at least entertain the participants. New technology doesn’t improve bad training. EVER.

For a more in-depth and less exclamation point filled response, I’m reposting a piece I originally published on June 04, 2011.

 

Training is Stupid

There is one and only one purpose for training: to increase performance. That’s it. Training provides new knowledge and skills that allow a person to perform better than they could without the information or practice provided by the training. It doesn’t matter if we’re talking about training for leadership development, college classes, or even physical fitness. Any training that doesn’t increase performance is stupid.

I once observed a safety training where the trainer was showing the participants how to fill out a government form. Not the most exciting topic to begin with, the training was so slow, dull, and unengaging that the trainer made Mr. Rogers look like Tony Robbins. The more experienced participants were getting caught up on reading spy novels. The others looked like they were wishing for sweet, sweet death – his or theirs, it didn’t matter. It was total waste of time and money, but the company was able to check the box and say that their employees had attended the required training.

I’ve also known trainers so charismatic and entertaining that everyone has a great time and universally gives the trainer high marks on their evaluation. Yet, said and done, the participants can’t remember what the program was about or don’t understand how to apply it to their own lives. A good time was had by all, but it was still a horrific waste of time and resources.

Sometimes the training is a hodgepodge of great ideas and techniques, but there is no plan to bring it all together so that the person can consistently apply it and improve. Every been at the gym and seen someone “training” their friend by almost randomly showing them different exercises? Information is dumped on them, but they have no understanding of how to truly apply it. There’s no plan, no tracking of progress, and minimal (if any) improvement.

The biggest challenge is that increasing performance means change. Scary word. Our performance gets better only when our behavior changes (we’ll never get better if we keep doing the same things). Changing others – even simply helping them change themselves – is incredibly difficult. That’s why most training fails us. It’s much, much easier to provide information and call it “training.” It’s much, much easier to be entertaining, have fun, tell some great stories that kind of relate to the topic and call it “training.” It’s much, much easier to string together a bunch of ideas than organize them into a plan that will create ongoing improvement. It’s much, much easier to think of training as a one-time, check the box event than to approach it as an ongoing process. How different would training be if every aspect was scrutinized to determine if each bit of information was truly important and if it would create the changed behavior that leads to increased performance?

And here’s why we care. Company performance improves ONLY when individual performance improves. It’s painfully funny how many leaders insist on improving company performance without ever trying to create higher performance from each and every individual. Training is crucial to any company that wants sustained performance.

Except when it’s stupid…

 

how to ruin a business (and an athlete)

In business, learning and development is often viewed as a necessary evil or even an expensive distraction. In sports, on the other hand, athletes spend an enormous amount of time learning, practicing, and improving.

Imagine if you owned a sports team. It would be absolutely ridiculous to hire great talent and then not develop them further. Would you say, “I already spent millions on them, why should I spend more? They need to just get out there and play.”? Would you save money by not allowing them to practice? Would you worry that if you invested heavily in training them, they might someday leave for another team? Would you hire an athlete who wasn’t willing to spend most of their career getting better? Would you tell them that you can’t afford to develop them and they better just do their best?

Absolutely not! It would obviously be insanity. If you took that approach, your team might do well occasionally, but would be crushed in the long run. Luck and residual talent will only get an athlete so far. All great athletes know that the competition is always gaining and if they aren’t continuously improving their game, the competition will soon pass them by.

Are you letting the competition pass you by? How much of a learning (read as: performance improving) environment do you foster with your team? How much do you hold people accountable for continuously developing and improving their results? What about for yourself? Are you a business athlete on autopilot, hoping that what you learned years ago will carry you through? Or are you forever looking for ways to step up your game?

when training doesn’t make sense

I am passionate about personal and professional improvement, firmly believe in investing in employees, yet recognize that training doesn’t always make sense. Here are a few of those situations:

  • Your company is hyper-focused on quarterly results. Training is a long term proposition. If you only look at immediate performance, investing in tomorrow is counterproductive. Unless you think you’re going to want the business to get better a couple of quarters from now, training is pointless.
  • Your company is more focused on saving money than making money. Training is expensive and an easy way to save costs. You can also save a few more bucks if you fire your maintenance staff and never upgrade your equipment. After all, the corresponding decline in individual and organizational performance will take time to show up. Two years from now, when you are in steady decline and your competition blows past you, you can blame the economy. If you try hard enough, you can save yourself broke.
  • You like mediocrity. Not everyone wants to improve their results. I get that.
  • You cannot handle the idea that some of your best performers will leave. Yep, if you really invest in your people, some of them will be lured away. If you want to keep the completion from eyeing your employees, be sure to hire underperformers and keep ‘em stupid.
  • You are so behind because of perpetual fire drills that you can’t keep up with today, let alone think about tomorrow. Don’t worry, once the company goes under, you’ll have plenty of free time.
  • Your employees hate training and complain loudly. Don’t bother wasting training dollars on them. They won’t learn anyway. Good job on selecting people who will save you money by refusing to improve. Maybe you can hire some more just like them – then you’ll really be profitable.
  • You can’t afford high performers. High performers cost more to hire and cost more to keep. They tend to want to get better and be attracted to organizations that will invest in them.

So you see, training and development really only makes sense if you want individuals, teams, and an organization that performs well and improves over time. If you don’t want that, you needn’t bother with training.