Keeping it Alive
- Translating the programme outcomes into directly applicable behaviour
- Operating at the belief level
- Integrated into your culture, values, and training programme
- Follow-up courses and support
We believe that Keeping It Alive is one of the most overlooked, most challenging, but most important aspects of training. One of the worst training outcomes is for individuals to return to work and instantly slip into their old routines and approaches. There is no more certain way of wasting time, effort and money.
We address the need to keep the training alive using the following techniques:
- We ensure that our training is a fun, memorable, shared experience. That way, the “watercooler” conversations back in the office will refer back to that experience, and trigger the memory of what was learnt, discussed, and tested. Just as certain scents or sounds can be a mental hook for other memories, so a memorable experience can be the hook on which new skills, approaches and thoughts are hung.
- We review with delegates throughout our programmes. Our approach is not to tell, but to facilitate learning. By encouraging individuals to verbalise their thoughts and experiences in their own language, we ensure that those thoughts and experiences are much more deeply embedded.
- We gather and summarise individuals’ feedback at the end of every course, and then e-mail this back after two weeks. By reinforcing the memory a short time after the event, it is more likely to remain in the memory in the long term.
- Finally, we are only interested in people learning useful things. We focus exclusively on practical, usable, tangible and effective skills that can be applied back at work, straight away. Success is facilitating the development of real skills for powerful, ongoing, personal and organisational development.